Global learning provides schools with opportunities to refresh their curriculum, make it more responsive to learners needs, and to plan more effectively around skills and ‘big ideas.’ It raises questions about schools’ relationships with their local, national and global communities, supporting issues of sustainability and cohesion. It can serve as a catalyst to re-invigorate teaching strategies and ‘loosen up’ planning, without losing direction or rigour, or detracting from a proper focus on children’s achievement.
Senior leaders from schools who have engaged in this process will share experiences at a day conference ‘A world fit to grow up in?’ on 16th November 2011.
In the sections below, we highlight resources developed by teachers and senior managers, which share ideas about:
- Curriculum and planning;
- CPD and leadership;
- Sustainable development;
- School links and community cohesion,
We hope that these resources will inspire you to explore the potential of global learning as a vehicle for change in your school ~ we would love to hear how it went!
Contact us to find out more about the support we offer, including our professional development programme and current projects for teachers and senior managers.
Curriculum and planning
'Global learning in primary schools’ proposes five ‘Core Ideas and Understandings’ as a framework for global learning across the primary school, and offers resources and practical approaches for engaging with these. It invites professional reflection on the demands of global change on curriculum design – how will the world have changed twenty years from now? What should primary schools be doing now to prepare children for that world?
A series of conferences, working groups and whole school projects have been actively engaged in recent debates about the primary curriculum – and what it might look like if it were fit for global learning purposes. ‘Ideas into action’ shares some work in progress.
CPD and leadership
A suite of activities in ‘Global learning in primary schools’ supports staff groups in reflecting on the broad challenge of global learning, and their own school’s priorities in relation to it. This includes downloadable activities which act as a stimulus for staff meetings, courses and TED days
In ‘School leadership for quality global learning’, Jeff Serf offers some thoughts about what this means for those in a leadership role, building on the work of the Leadership of Learning group of heads and senior managers.
Sustainable development
The idea of ‘sustainable schools’ has proven a powerful stimulus for whole school change, addressing as it does the inter-related concerns of curriculum, campus and community.
The Bill Scott Challenge offers some examples of imaginative work on sustainable development in primary schools, and offers some challenging ideas about the future, and what it might mean to have ‘Schools, but not as we know them.’
The discussion paper, ‘The educational implications of climate change’ raises debates about how schools might respond effectively to the threat posed by global change, and do so in a manner which reflects professional, educational and organisational integrity.
We offer two online directories of organisations offering support: around sustainable schools and around water, energy and climate change.
School links and community cohesion
Primary schools not only prepare children for life in changing local, national and global communities, but are also very much a part of those communities themselves.
‘Exploring Ubuntu’ draws on the experiences of educators in South Africa to raise important questions about change in the wider world, and considers how schools can relate and respond to that change.
Partnerships between schools, locally as well as internationally, can offer a powerful resource for teachers and learners to consider their relationship to wider communities, and learn from the experience, perspectives and practice of others. ‘Global learning and school partnerships ~ thinking it through’ offers a wealth of guidance to support school partnerships which aim to bring about whole school change, curriculum enrichment and enhanced community cohesion.
