Re-Inventing Education: All the right notes … in all the right places.
From ‘memorization’ to co-construction
The ‘sustainable landscape’
For Educationalists already awake to the notions and values embedded within sustainability; there is a renewed hope for real, impactful change.
Internationally, calls for something ‘other’, something better for our children and young people are growing. What could sustainable education look like, and what could it deliver? We invite participation in the sharing of ideas and innovations.
A curriculum driven by narrow attainment targets is stifling the joy in learning, undermining creativity and also impacting on the wellbeing of many learners.
Renewed hope lies in skills, knowledge and understanding.
We suggest that renewed hope lies in the skills, knowledge and understanding achieved through ‘sustainability education’ with its greater context and connectivity.
Schools have not managed to facilitate a productive balance between the notions of attainment and achievement.
Educationalists have argued for some time that schools have not managed to facilitate a productive balance between the notions of attainment and achievement and a gap has developed. Awareness and recognition of a spiritual dimension may be a step towards identifying that missing part of the educational jigsaw. This will be explored as a golden strand in subsequent workshops. In the UK ‘Citizenship’ Education has sought to fill the gap, arguably with limited success as a stand-alone curriculum area.
Awareness and recognition of a spiritual dimension may be a step towards identifying that missing part of the educational jigsaw.
Nonetheless, it is through this creative and innovative space, through a shared values lens, that we will consider how to spark real interest in education amongst our youth and new ‘future thinking’ ideas for integrally linked sustainable employment.
A key to such a new cycle of education is co-construction. This platform opens up opportunity and brighter horizons for the children and young people we seek to serve, together.
Offering ideas for project-based learning as an aim of the platform is to encourage and connect primary and secondary schoolteachers and pupils alongside their communities and Higher Education lecturers and their students (service-learning) as learning communities. Pump priming and fostering soft outcomes ( fun enjoyment wellbeing creativity ) can naturally lead to hard outcomes (like exam results and employment) if we work together within a collaborative, loose framework . In this context , we look forwards with excitement to travel with you on a creative journey framed by ‘togetherness’ and sustainable education. Our destination is that where children and young people are offered better opportunities and outcomes through a more collaborative and thus, richer input.
A backdrop potted history
For decades, organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have sought global solutions through learning communities in the hope of forging a formula to reconcile social cohesion with economic success. Social Capital Theory (i.e. that networks of neighbourhoods working together can secure positive outcomes like employment, better health and lower crime) has driven rafts of funding interventions - such as No Child Left Behind in the USA and the equivalent Every Child Matters in the UK, including also Excellence in Cities and Objective One funding across Europe ( prior to the UK leaving the European Union). Many would argue that the UKs departure opens the door to wider opportunities for educational collaboration with our cousins ‘across the pond’ as this platform right here clearly illustrates. The potential outcomes will bear witness.
SO what ? and what next?
Arguably, on the whole, and certainly in UK there has been limited success from funding interventions. Amongst the complex reasons for this, a failure to embed in community stands out, as does Governmental desires for ‘one size fits all ‘ parachuted-in curricula. What has been missed, and often time ignored, is the need for individualised , localised curricula of relevance to local communities . Together, we can challenge this.
What has been missed and often ignored, is the need for individualized, localized curricula of relevance to local communities.
Within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) world, the saying remains as ‘content is king’. Collaboratively, we can explore what works across our community of learning; generating our own curricula content and innovations whilst sharing best practice. The outcomes we secure, hard action-researched, can inform the powers that be to resource what we know we need, not what they think ( somewhat condescendingly perhaps) we should be granted ……..here lies a focus for change through our solidarity.
Collaboratively, we can explore what works across our community of learning; generating our own curricula content and innovations whilst sharing best practice.
In co-constructing a new landscape through sustainable education, we share an academically researched and published formula as the foundation. We explore the formula through key areas of creativity ( music, art, dance, drama , sport, ICT and the environment ) to connect simultaneously YOUR specialisms and interests, the creative areas and each other. Practical ideas and piloted projects will be offered, underpinned by this formula from which we can move forwards as a force for change :
Social/human capital + citizenship + service-learning + creativity= OUTCOMES
Join in this quest! Become a member of our growing Sustainable ED group! Sign up for the RSS feed and get notified on updates, news, best practices.
COMING UP NEXT in Sustainable ED: The Common Voice of Music - Medicine of the Soul
Dr Patterson is a former engineer who retrained as a teacher. He has worked across public, private and voluntary sectors and Primary , Secondary and Higher Education including Senior Lecturer and Head of Physical Education at Liverpool Hope University and as a consultant to Objective One funding . He is a qualified specialist teacher for Visually Impaired (VI)having been Principal at St Vincent’s school for sensory impairment. He is internationally published on his MSc and PhD specialisms of citizenship, curricula generation service learning and entrepreneurial learning with innovations shared in over 20 countries. As a member of Liverpool City Region Task Force under ‘Sister Cities’, he has advised on visits to China and Indonesia . Currently he is leading on a Gubay Foundation environmental project.
