I wrote yesterday about Jesuitical tendencies in Liverpool that were on show at the Cambridge Primary Review Trust event last week, but there was more to the conference than that. I liked the way that the whole thing was organised with time well balanced between plenary and small groups, and the groups each focused around one of the 8 priorities that the Cambridge Primary Review Trust saw for the development of the curriculum. Sustainability was one of these. The others were: Equity – Voice – Community – Aims – Curriculum – Pedagogy – Assessment. At the heart of it all was a talk by Robin Alexander which you can read here.
There were two sessions focused on sustainability / global learning, and, along with Ben Ballin and Fran Martin, I made a contribution to the second of these. Fran and Ben discussed the work they'd been involved in with other countries (including Spain and The Gambia). Ben talked about a pedagogy of global learning; Fran, about the inter-cultural dimension of teachers' learning about global issues of hunger, poverty and sustainability.
I added some context about the SDGs, and I'll set out what I said later in the week. Of course, not everyone thinks that the SDGs are a good idea – Goal 5, for example, Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls hardly gets a fair hearing in many parts of this benighted world. I got to wondering whether there are any of the goals that everyone might agree with. I came up with Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. But is that right? Surely, the devil is in the detail, and would everyone really agree with the "sustainable management" part of this? That sounds like a good global learning discussion.
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