"The project has helped us to expand and enrich our ESD teaching beyond all our expectations. It has introduced an international/global dimension and helped us to deepen our understanding of many sustainability issues. The whole school has become aware and active in the field of sustainability and an example of good practice for other schools. It is also a project with no end - we can take it forward in many exciting ways."

 

Environmental Co-ordinator, (LfSC Primary School, Sale, Greater Manchester


What is Education for Sustainable Development?

 

Combining Development Education and Environmental Education
In the UK, ESD has effectively meant the coming together of two important strands in education: Development Education Eduaction (DE) and Environmental Eduaction (EE). These grew out of the social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s (although both can trace their roots much further back). Development Education embraced a number of other agendas such as peace education, human rights education, multicultural and anti-racist education. This article explores how ESD evolved and outlines what it is about.

Local - Global Connections
You can find schools who claim to be involved in Development Education through studying, or linking, with countries / cultures in other parts of the world and yet whose pupils have no concept of cultural diversity in their own country or even locality. In the same way, there are schools that claim to be involved in Environmental Education through litter reduction campaigns, yet who fail to address the bigger issues of consumerism and unequal access to, and use of, global resources. An Education for Sustainable Development approach seeks to make these wider local - global connections.

The LfSC project recognises the importance of ecological education. Pupils brought up in cities need to feel a sense of connection with the natural world if they are to understand ideas of ecological limits.

Baba Dioum from Senegal receiving an award for his work on conservationAs the Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum said:

"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

(photo shows Baba Dioum receiveing an award for conservation work)

 

Roger Hart adds:

"We should feed children's natural desire to contact nature's diversity with free access to an area of limited size over an extended period of time, for it is only by intimately knowing the wonder of nature's complexity in a particular place that one can fully appreciate the immense beauty of the planet as a whole."

A nursery school in Manchester practices half of its curriculum outdoors, whatever the weather. Children learn about natural cycles, do fun and practical work and grow a variety of plants, food and trees. They learn that there is no such thing as 'bad' weather, just how to dress accordingly, as the school has range of appropriate clothing.

It is interesting that several of the LfSC project schools started with school grounds improvement, nature and gardening projects that have really given pupils and teachers a sense of doing something useful. However, they have gradually got the community more involved and then got more involved in issues in the community. For examples of project work, see Case Studies.

Find out about teachers' attitudes and experience of implemented ESD through the Cities Project