Global Learning and Sustainable Development

Helen Gadsby, Andrea Bullivant

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136728914
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Global learning and sustainable development encompass some of the key ideas and challenges facing the world today: challenges such as climate change, globalization and interdependence. Schools increasingly recognize the role of education in addressing these issues with young people, but exploring global issues across the curriculum requires a considerable amount of time and planning across subjects.

This book aims to reduce this workload by providing a clear overview of global learning, its development in policy and what this means for teachers in practice. It outlines the different ways in which global learning can be delivered as a cross-curricular theme, with examples of current activities and practice in schools.

Features include:

• an examination of key influences and debates in this area
• guidance on how to plan, implement and evaluate change in the curriculum to incorporate global learning
• the role of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills as a way of exploring global learning and sustainable development
• ideas from the "global context" of practice in Europe and beyond
• activity ideas supported by case studies of innovative practice
• links to other educational agendas, relevant topics and resources.

Providing clear guidance on the underpinning theory and policy and drawing upon current initiatives in schools, this book will be of interest to all trainee and practising secondary teachers wanting to help young people engage critically with global issues.

1

Global learning: a historical overview

Andrea Bullivant

What are the origins of concepts such as the global dimension and sustainable development and what do these concepts mean within the wider context of global learning?

What are the key milestones in the development of global learning in the UK?

How have different perspectives and debates shaped the direction of global learning and what are the implications for developing practice in schools?

Sustainable development cannot be achieved in isolation. The air we breathe, the food we eat and the clothes we wear link us to people, environments and economies all over the world. There is a global dimension to every aspect of our lives and communities.

(www.teachernet.gov.uk)

The drive to address global issues in education has been gathering momentum in recent years. Since 2000, when Developing a Global Dimension in the School Curriculum was first issued to all schools by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE 2000), terms such as ‘the global dimension’ and ‘sustainable development’ have increasingly featured both in education policy documents and, in the case of sustainable development, across a range of government policy from business to other areas of civil society. Schools have been offered guidance on integrating global learning across the curriculum and encouraged to support this through engaging in initiatives and award schemes such as Eco-Schools and the International School Award. Ipsos Mori research carried out on behalf of the Development Education Association (DEA) also shows that 94 per cent of teachers in England ‘feel that schools should prepare pupils to deal with a fast-changing and globalised world’ (DEA 2009: 5). However, the same research shows that only 58 per cent believed that the current education system incorporated this in practice. The DEA suggests that this may be due to teachers’ lack of confidence in teaching certain global issues (DEA 2009). Our experience of working with schools also suggests that faced with an increasing array of duties and agendas with a ‘global dimension’, such as citizenship, Sustainable Schools and Community Cohesion, it can be difficult for teachers to establish a clear and coherent sense of what global learning means and how it should best be taken forward in their school.

This chapter offers a starting point for teachers wishing to develop a better understanding of both the global dimension and sustainable development and the broader picture of global learning by setting out the historical context from their origins to the present. It will aim to show that while terms such as ‘the global dimension’ and ‘sustainable development’ appear to have emerged fairly recently, there is a long history of attempts to incorporate a ‘global dimension’ into education stemming back as far as the 1920s and 1930s. Understanding this history can help teachers make sense of the different concepts and perspectives influencing the direction of global learning in the UK and why particular terms and approaches have emerged into present use. It should highlight the extent to which this is an area in which ideas and practice are continuing to evolve, but one where there is a wealth of resources and support to develop approaches which are critical and enquiring rather than prescriptive. It should also enable teachers to develop a clearer vision of global learning, one which can help bring greater coherence to the different agendas and initiatives introduced in recent years and considers the needs of young people growing up in today’s world.

The Emergence of ‘issue-based Educations’

In 1998, the Crick Report, which led to the introduction of citizenship as a core subject in the National Curriculum, stated that students should learn ‘not only about the United Kingdom – including all four of its component parts – but also about the European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of citizenship’ (Citizenship Advisory Group 1988: 18).When the global dimension was introduced in the DfES policy guidance in 2000 (later updated in 2005), it appears to have been intended as an ‘umbrella’ term for a framework of eight key concepts relating to different global issues or themes (further outlined in Chapter 2) (DfEE 2000; DfES 2005). In 2004 the global dimension was again referred to in the DfES document Putting the World into World Class Education: An International Strategy for Education, Skills and Children’s Services, which included the aim to:‘instil a strong global dimension into the learning experience of all children and young people’ (DfES 2004: 3).

At the same time as the global dimension was emerging, the term ‘sustainable development’ began to feature increasingly in government policy, being presented both as a significant issue in its own right and closely linked to the concept of the global dimension: sustainable development is one of the eight key concepts of the global dimension framework and the global dimension is one of the eight ‘doorways’ of the Sustainable Schools framework introduced by the Labour government in 2006 (again, both of these are outlined in more detail in Chapter 2). More recently, the two concepts were linked as one of the cross-curricular dimensions introduced as part of changes to the Key Stage 3 curriculum in September 2008.

In fact, the global dimension and sustainable development have emerged from a long history of what Harriet Marshall has described as ‘a variety of different traditions each with their own distinct histories, pedagogic approaches and objectives’ (Marshall 2005: 78). One of the most useful guides to understanding these ‘traditions’ is provided by David Hicks, who categorises them into seven ‘issue-based educations’ which emerged from the 1960s onwards (Hicks 2007: 5). Table 1.1 provides a brief guide to each of these issue-based educations and what follows is more detailed discussion of three of these educations: global education, development education and education for sustainable development (discussed further on in the chapter).These three fields encompass many of the key milestones in the development of global learning, although there will be further reference to contributions made by the other issue-based educations.

Global Education

Early attempts to promote a global outlook in education took place through several key organisations formed in the early part of the twentieth century:

League of Nations Union: established at the end of the First World War and a forerunner of the United Nations. The League was influential in promoting a peace movement in the UK.

Council for Education in World Citizenship (CEWC): this body took over the work of the League of Nations Union in 1939 and aimed to promote education for international understanding. Government funding for CEWC was withdrawn in 1994, although it still exists today having merged with the Citizenship Foundation (www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk).

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO): established after the end of the Second World War. Its aims were to ‘establish the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind’ through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information (www.unesco.org).

In 1953 UNESCO set up the Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet), a global network of schools which were encouraged to promote UNESCO’s aims for education and work on projects around themes such as human rights, peace, democracy, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue. The UK, along with the USA, withdrew from this network in 1985, and although it rejoined in 2005, the network appears to have a relatively low profile in the UK. However, there were two initiatives that took place during the 1970s and 1980s which significantly influenced the emergence of global education, or ‘world studies’ as it became known during this period:

TABLE 1.1 A guide to ‘issue-based educations’

Global education	Originated in ideas and initiatives set up by teachers and educators in the early twentieth century. Later projects were developed by educators between the 1960s and the1980s.
Development education	This relates to education programmes developed by NGOs such as Oxfam and Christian Aid from the 1960s and 1970s onwards. Similar work has been undertaken by a network of Development Education Centres (DECs) supported by the Development Education Association (DEA).
Education for sustainable development (ESD)	Originally termed ‘environment education’ in the UK. ESD emerged from international conferences and the work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which promoted the role of education in addressing sustainable development.
Peace education	Emerged as an area of academic study during the 1950s and initially focused on peace in relation to armed conflict, but went on to address peace and conflict in a wider sense, reflecting similar developments in other issue-based educations. Less visible in education in recent years.
Race, diversity and multicultural education	Shifted from an emphasis on multiculturalism and values of racial equality and diversity to a more distinctive anti-racist approach in the 1980s and 1990s. More recently race and diversity issues have been addressed through citizenship and community cohesion.
Futures education	Emerged in the 1960s and 1970s internationally as an area of academic study, to explore ‘possible, probable and preferable futures’ (Bell 1997: 73). It has been taken up by some educators who emphasise the importance of a futures dimension or perspective in education (Hicks 2006).
Citizenship education	Following a long history of debate around citizenship and education, it achieved much greater recognition in the UK during the 1990s, leading to the Crick Report (Citizen Advisory Group 1998) and the inclusion of citizenship in the National Curriculum. Initially focused on issues related to national citizenship, but increasingly viewed in relation to global citizenship.

Source: adapted from Hicks (2007).

World Studies Project: between 1973 and 1979 this project was directed by Robin Richardson and colleagues at the University of London Institute of Education. The project was initiated by the One World Trust – a body set up in the 1950s by mem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Abbreviations used in the book
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Global learning: a historical overview
• 2. Current policy and practice
• 3. Educating for global citizenship
• 4. Towards a European dimension in education: developing an intercultural pedagogy
• 5. Planning your curriculum
• 6. Classroom approaches: walking the walk, (and more importantly) talking the talk
• 7. Provocations for Chapter 6 (how to do it)
• 8. Case studies of school practice
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Index