It was a nice Christmas present to get a note from the ASE to say that they'd like to re-print an article I'd written for them. It'll appear in the new year 2022 edition of ASE International.
What took me slightly aback was that this had originally been published in 2010 in School Science Review. Talk about a slow burn. The article was Science and the Sustainable Schools Initiative: opportunity and imperative. This is the Abstract:
This article explores the development of the UK Government’s Sustainable Schools Initiative and examines the contribution that science teaching can make to this. Drawing on recent research in schools and on development work in initial teacher education, the article argues that, in the absence of policy that enables schools to bring subject areas together, schools will have to take responsibility for this themselves. Schools should develop new ways of thinking about the focus and nature of science education, given the scope that this has for helping young people understand their world and what they can contribute to making it more sustainable.
The sad truth is that I'd completely forgotten I'd written this. However, given the DfE's new-found interest in environmental education and sustainability, this is a timely re-issue. It was therefore very good to be reminded of what I'd written, and to get the chance to re-read it.
At its heart is a section that draws directly on my work with PGCE students since the late 1970s. This was the aims of environmental science education. It had three sections:
– Students should have an appropriate knowledge and critical understanding of xxxxxxxx.
– They should acquire such knowledge and understanding in a way which xxxxxxxx,
– So that they, individually and/or collectively, will have both the ability and the motivation to xxxxxxxx.
For example:
"Students should have an appropriate knowledge and critical understanding of ways in which both social and economic human activity is thought, increasingly, to disturb and stress natural cycles and flows, and jeopardises the viability of such systems. They should acquire such knowledge and understanding in a way which gives them appropriate first-hand experience of environmental issues in an authentic context, so that they, individually and/or collectively, will have both the ability and the motivation to help influence those around them at work and in the community to raise the level of awareness of environmental/sustainability issues and the implications of actions."
I developed this through my work with the PGCE students over many years, and would revise it every year in the light of their feedback.
It ends with ... Two final thoughts and here's an extract:
Of course, most of the issues to do with sustainability are controversial one way or another. If facts are not disputed, then there will probably be disagreement about how best to take action, or which values are superior. There are uncertainties galore, both in the sense just mentioned and in the usual scientific meaning of setting out the range within which a measurement will lie, but it can be difficult to find these. ...
It is now common in schools to find posters exhorting particular actions, for example ‘Buy Fairtrade’ and ‘Eat less meat’, which show how much schools are now involved in public debate around social change. So, faced with this, what should a conscientious science teacher conclude from all this? That it is all too difficult, not really science as we know it, and perhaps all too political? Or that science teaching has suddenly been gifted a wonderful opportunity to engage young people in the most compelling issue of our time, and one that they recognise as such? Put like that, the answer seems obvious.
It still does.
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Scott WAH (2010) Science and the Sustainable Schools Initiative: opportunity and imperative. School Science Review 338 59 – 66
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