May 2016

  • Tuesday GEEP

    Today is the last day of the GEEP meeting in Bristol, and we probably all felt that some progress was made yesterday in setting goals and reaching an understanding of what it's possible to achieve. Looking at it from an...

  • GEEPing in the UK

    I'm still GEEPing in Bristol.  I've been thinking about the 'country needs survey' I wrote (asking a number of people about it) before it all began.  Has anything changed the UK since that time, I wondered. Here are links to...

  • GEEPing Today

    I'm spending today – a UK holiday – bunkered with environmental educators from across the globe at a GEEP executive / steering committee meeting in Bristol. We're talking about GEEP's goals, objectives, etc – again.  I had to remind myself that I...

  • Learning outside the classroom in local natural environments

    I've been reading a draft of the Natural Connections Final Report which is a whopping 91 pages – almost as long as the evaluation proforma that Natural England suggested I use to provide my comments on the draft.  Needless to say, I...

  • The coming together of NAAEE and NAEE

    This is the text of a guest blog that I have contributed to NAAEE's eePRO website in advance of a GEEP steering committee next week.  You can read it on line here, where you will find links to the wider...

  • The OECE strides into a quagmire

    The OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher, has written an article for the BBC about his brave 'n' bold plans to have a focus on "global competence" in forthcoming PISA exams.  Good luck, I thought when I read it.  This is a...

  • GEEP, GEEP, geep and geep

    I've decided to collect GEEPs.  So far, I have four. You might recall that I wrote about the international one last year when I attended a meeting in San Diego.  The Global Environmental Education Partnership [GEEP] is coming to the...

  • Compensation for VCs

    The Times Higher has a feature this week on VC pay, or "compensation package" as we're being encouraged to call it.  Here's the THE: "Vice-chancellors have again come in for flak over what they are paid.  We look at how their...

  • The nature of Nature

    Thanks to the SEEd / NAEE blogs for alerting me to  recent paper in The Conservation by Hannah Pitt, Research Associate at Cardiff, comments on research by Natural England on the extent to which youth is ‘engaging with nature’. I’ve been commenting...

  • Liberate your degree

    Rather inevitably, perhaps, since my post on Wednesday following my meeting at the NUS, I've been reading around the notion of a "liberated and sustainable curriculum".  Here's something of what NUS has to say about it: Universities rely on rigid curricula...