A highlight of the recent Beijing Forum was a field visit to No. 55 High School. You can find details of the school here. This is one of Beijing's experimental ESD schools which also has an international arm.
Now, I usually find school visits absorbing, but this one was compelling. I was impressed by what we saw of the relationship between students and teachers, and by the facilities, and was told by others that the geography lab looked more like a museum than a normal classroom, so good were the resources. I went to see an English and then a physics class, as I thought I'd have a fighting chance of understanding what was going on. The former was conducted all in English, with strong student participation, although it was firmly based on a workbook that was looking dated even though the issues it focused on were timeless. There was a European geography theme to the class, though whether a real geographer would have said that is a moot point. The physics class was about resolving forces and had demonstrations and student practicals. Again, participation was strong. As there was a significant integration of maths within the class, this gave me the chance to rehearse my sines and cosines. I was shamelessly pleased to work it all out; hope for me yet. I certainly wished I'd had a physics class like this when I was 14/15.
To produce high quality education in the process of sustainable development education
"The main goal of the ESD is to teach students the knowledge, learning abilities, values and ways of living that sustainable development requires. Learning abilities include basic and sustainable learning ability. In previous education methods, teachers emphasise on teaching students basic learning abilities rather than sustainable learning abilities, abilities like literacy, basic calculation, problem solving, reading, oral communication, writing, etc. There is no doubt that these abilities are extremely important and necessary for the future studies of students, especially in high school. However, only possessing basic learning abilities is not enough for the sustainable development of students.
ESD allows us to realise that, throughout the process of teaching basic learning abilities to students, there is also the need to enhance the students' sustainable learning abilities, as it is a necessary factor in the students' future studies and development. Sustainable learning abilities include: the ability to actively collect data and further process it, to independently reflect on and analyse problems, to cooperate with others when solving and exploring problems, to individually face issues about sustainable development and propose solutions to these issues and so on.
Over the past few years, our school has been putting the 16 word principle of ESD in China into practice, using this as a basis to create new and effective ways of teaching. [The principle is: primary research, comprehensive infusion, activity co-operation and the unification of knowledge and action]. The school's highest objective is to create quality education within education of sustainable development. ..."
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