{"id":7332,"date":"2018-10-24T07:01:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T07:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7332"},"modified":"2018-10-24T07:01:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T07:01:48","slug":"ee-practitioners-perspective-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/10\/24\/ee-practitioners-perspective-1\/","title":{"rendered":"EE: practitioners\u2019 perspective 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here's my initial comment on the\u00a0new research on EE in secondary schools from King's College: Understanding Environmental Education in Secondary Schools. Where is it, what is it and what should the future be? \u00a0 <\/em>In this, I focus on\u00a0Report 2:\u00a0The Practitioners\u2019 Perspective<\/a>\u00a0whose recommendations were:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. Environmental education should be recognised in future Ofsted\u2019s school inspection framework.<\/li>\n
  2. Effective environmental education needs to encompass equal opportunities for environmental activism, subject acquisition, and skill development.<\/li>\n
  3. Environmental education should be recognised in the Teachers\u2019 Standards.<\/li>\n
  4. Examination boards need to be encouraged to development and promote assessment procedures that capture equally environmental education\u2019s three underpinning values: social responsibility\/activism in the environment, knowledge about the environment and skills for the environment.<\/li>\n
  5. Senior leaders need to be encouraged to include environmental responsibility and activism in their mission statement\/school aim and school operations policies and practices.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So: my first thoughts:<\/p>\n

    Environmental education should be recognised in future Ofsted\u2019s school inspection framework<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

    Whilst you can understand why this recommendation has been made, it is a clear statement of the desperate policy position we are in England (something Report 1 dwells on). \u00a0However, whilst it is one thing to require Ofsted to inspect and report on an issue that has the force of legislation and\/or government deliberation (itself subject to parliamentary scrutiny), it is quite another to tell\u00a0Ofsted to take on that role in the absence of any higher-level guidance and authority. \u00a0This is, in essence, to tell Ofsted to have a curriculum determining function which in other circumstances we would all likely deplore. \u00a0It also would also open the floodgates to anyone with a bee in their bonnets and\/or an axe to grind. \u00a0Anyway, despite a long and distinguished (pre-2014) history of interest in environmental matters [See, for example this<\/a>], the Inspectorate is unlikely to do anything except where a school flags it up\u00a0for <\/em>inspection.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Effective environmental education needs to encompass equal opportunities for environmental activism, subject acquisition, and skill development<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

    If the word \"equal\" were removed, I'd say that this might well be reasonably uncontentious. \u00a0I say this because it seems that equal<\/em> would be hard to enforce and needless anyway. \u00a0However, just how reasonable it is depends on what activism means, what is to be acquired, and what skills developed. \u00a0There is, of course, a strong tradition within EE which sees activism as a means to the acquisition of skills. \u00a0I'm thinking here of\u00a0action competence\u00a0<\/em>where the skills are those associated with being an engaged and effective citizen with the activism focused locally and student-influenced (if not actually determined). \u00a0It would be well if more people knew the action competence literature.<\/p>\n

    Perhaps we need to begin at the end: that is, with a set of minimal outcomes (skills \/ competencies \/ knowledge \/ values \/ whatever) that all this EE is to lead to. \u00a0Just to write this down is to illustrate the difficulties.<\/p>\n

    Environmental education should be recognised in the Teachers\u2019 Standards<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Well, good luck with this. \u00a0I have already spent too many years toiling in that storm-lashed vineyard to want to comment any further. \u00a0I just think that the issues raised in the\u00a0Ofsted<\/em> section (above) apply here as well, apart from giving any credit to those controlling the standards about having any interest in EE.<\/p>\n

    Examination boards need to be encouraged to development and promote assessment procedures that capture equally environmental education\u2019s three underpinning values: social responsibility\/activism in the environment, knowledge about the environment and skills for the environment<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Are these really EE values? \u00a0I doubt it. \u00a0Then again, the activism \/ knowledge \/ skills framework is not unique to EE. \u00a0All social activism includes these. \u00a0Therefore, saying all this is meaningless unless there's a specification (or at least an indication) of the skills \/ knowledge \/ responsibility involved. \u00a0At heart, this is a restatement of the IN \/ ABOUT \/ FOR mantra that follows EE around wherever it goes, and is widely misunderstood.<\/p>\n

    Of course exam boards should be encouraged to feature environmental and sustainability issues in a meaningful, non-trivial fashion. \u00a0The question is how. \u00a0NB, \"encouraged to\" is much more realistic language that the \"should be\" terminology used above.<\/p>\n

    Senior leaders need to be encouraged to include environmental responsibility and activism in their mission statement\/school aim and school operations policies and practices<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    Of course they do, and leaders here include governors. \u00a0But why should they do this? \u00a0And why haven't they done it already and do it all the time? \u00a0Some do so, of course, but these days are more likely to do it in the context of the SDGs, not EE. \u00a0I note, in passing, that the report only contained one reference to the SDGs, and that was a negative one:<\/p>\n

    \"Perhaps notable in its absence given concurrent press\u00a0coverage was any discussion related to air pollution\u00a0and its role in respiratory and other diseases. The role\u00a0of politics, the economy, and any reference to the\u00a0international Sustainable Development Goals were\u00a0also missing<\/em>\u00a0[from interviews with educators].\"<\/p>\n

    There are push and pull factors here: we can argue that schools need to take EE \/ the goals \/etc seriously because the world is in a bit of a state, and\/or\u00a0we can argue this because it's good for the school's image locally, and\/or because it's good for student learning. \u00a0The last of these is likely to be the most persuasive if the evidence is there. \u00a0Is it? \u00a0If it is, where is it?<\/p>\n

    If you had 15 minutes<\/a> with the secretary of state for education to argue the case for EE, what would you say?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here's my initial comment on the\u00a0new research on EE in secondary schools from King's College: Understanding Environmental Education in Secondary Schools. Where is it, what is it and what should the future be? \u00a0 In this, I focus on\u00a0Report 2:\u00a0The...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}