Tide~ aims - West Midlands Coalition for global learning

Aims:
to build capacity within the education system by:

	enabling thinking, appropriate strategy and support to global learning;
	contributing to the entitlement of teachers to professional development that offers creative space to learn about global issues and their educational implications;
	enabling schools to build on their role as "learning communities" … using frameworks for curriculum creativity about global dimensions;
	helping to shape and establish a recognised learner entitlement to "global learning".

Objectives:

1 ~	To support and increase strategic thinking about global learning at a local authority level and amongst key partners and networks
2 ~	To develop strategic thinking about global learning and the implications for leadership at school level
3 ~	To develop ‘global learning’ teaching and learning approaches focusing on development, specific curriculum or issues.
4 ~	To enable practitioners to synthesise and share proposals about holistic teaching and learning strategies for global learning in schools
5 ~	To increase access to quality professional development support for global learning.
6 ~	To strategically use and profile experiences from the West Midlands to contribute to policy debate & change at a national level.

Frameworks to enable strategy

Long-term the Coalition project seeks to contribute to change that shapes and establishes a learner entitlement to "global learning". It aspires to such learning being valued [by the education system, teachers and young people] as a core aspect of meeting young people’s education needs in the context of an increasingly globalised society.

Three strategic frameworks focus the engagement of practitioners in the West Midlands. The framework themes are:

c
wmc 1 Global citizenship	wmc 2 Sustainable development	wmc 3 Diversity & commonality
c

Each provide the focus for :

mutual support, networking and sharing experience across the Region;

innovation about strategy [for the Coalition project and for those contributing];

innovation about teaching and learning responding to global dimensions;partnerships involving a range of organisations.

Together they offer a range of opportunities to practitioners including:

access to ideas, resources and support;

courses, events, conferences, study visits;

teacher innovation, curriculum projects and the generation of new resources.

The frameworks have used the model suggested in Essential Learning. They all have common elements that contribute to an holistic approach. Each also has distinctive propositions about ‘ideas & understandings’.

The process of negotiating these ideas was an important part of enaging people in the shaping of each framework.

Replicating such a process, perhaps using these as a draft, would be better than seeing them as prescriptive.

Change [as John Huckle puts it in Essential Learning]

"a world of processes and contradictions rather than a world of objects and certainties ... a dynamic world to be created rather than a static world to be accepted."

The idea of the coalition grew out of the work of the Tide~ West Midlands Commission on Global Citizenship chaired by Professor Lynn Davies. The report Whose Citizenship? featured contributions from numerous teacher groups. It raised debate ... and offered proposals for the future.

Essential Learning for Everyone was the title of one of the key documents from the Development Education Commission which involved key educators from each of the five jurisdictions in these islands chaired by the human rights lawyer Professor Kevin Boyle. The Commission was a joint Tide~ 80/20 project

Learning from those experiences each of the coalition frameworks seeks to offer space for plans. It is however also important that we see the challenges in a holistic way. Each framework seeks to contribute to young people’s sense of citizenship and potential to engage with change.

We aspire to designing frameworks:

which give priority to enabling;

which are inclusive;

which share the responsibilities for change;

which build on existing strengths and practices and bring added value to them;

which build on the motivation and interests of those we work with.

Essential Learning raises many debates but at the core there are perhaps four key questions:

1. How aware are we of how young people see their citizenship?

~ how do they see issues about war, environment, democracy, identity?

2. How do we see the West Midlands region?
[that stretches from Oswestry to Rugby, Hereford to Stoke]

~ how aware are we of the nature of our connections with the wider world?

3. How do we bring together the many dimensions that contribute to a sense of citizenship?

~ how do we make this manageable for teachers? ... and for young people?

4. How do we make use of the experiences and issues of citizenship
in other parts of the world to bring insights into our own citizenship?

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