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Building Sustainable Communities - First Session
This page provides links from the first session notes. It can also be downloaded as a Word document.
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Purpose:
Introduce scope of the project
Negotiate next steps in action-research
- engage in practical activities that demonstrate the potential to build young citizens' skills for participation in sustainable communities
- consider the geographer's role of informing young people about occupations in sustainable communities
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| 1. Drivers of Change 2006 – Arup |
Source: http://2006.driversofchange.com/
It is worth noting that this 'futures' pack was designed by Arup, the global engineering consultancy, because their planning for business takes place years so far in advance.
Select a question for comment to the rest of the group which illustrates change for the next generation.
Rate your feelings about this future prospect on a five point scale (negative, OK or positive) on one or more of these components:
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Does this relate to one, or more, of these geographical concepts or big ideas?
Place
Space
Scale
Interdependence
Process (physical and human)
Cultural Diversity
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| 2. Should Greg and Anne live in High Halden or Ashford? |
Download: Anne & Greg Mystery Exercise
What are the geographical skills that would help Greg and Anne play an active part in their community?
Source: www.geography.org.uk/projects/bsc
Real and relevant geography
The agenda of skills for sustainable communities and promotion of related occupations sits neatly with the immediacy shown in work on children's geographies and the geography of children.
Given the importance of imagination and perceptions, the realities faced by young people form a central focus for the teaching and learning about their communities.
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| 3. What is a sustainable community? |
| 4. The Egan review: skills for sustainable communities - definitions of generic skills |
| 5. Occupations (vocational opportunities) |
Every Child Matters includes specific aims for young people to 'engage in decision making and support the community and environment' and 'live in decent homes and sustainable communities'. This has permeated OfSTED's Self-evaluation Framework completed by schools:
- How well do learners make a positive contribution to the community?
- How well do learners develop skills that will contribute to their future economic well-being?
Source: Self-evaluation Framework
It has also been incorporated into the DfES Sustainable Schools initiative:
(4.5) To what extent do our efforts to promote sustainable development help us explore professions and careers with pupils?
(5.3) To what extent do you enhance pupils’ capacities to make positive contributions to the places where they live?
Source: Sustainable School Self-evaluation (S3) Tool
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| 6. Inter-professional collaboration |
Source: Adams, Eileen (2006) Shaping Places: built environment design education, Chatham: The Kent Architecture Centre. Page 94-95 www.architecturecentre.org
An important feature of the project is the engagement of teachers with other organisations, including an active role for ASC, the Architecture Centre Network, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and local government bodies. This is necessary for the localisation of learning resources and the intention to maximise opportunities with existing and continuing networks in related fields of educational activity.
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| 7. Reporting on action-research |
Diaries
'It is useful to keep a diary on a continuous basis. It should contain personal accounts of "observations, feelings, reactions, interpretations, reflections, hunches, hypotheses, and explanations". Accounts should not merely report the "bald facts" of the situation, but convey a feeling of what it was to be there participating in it. Anecdotes, near-verbatim accounts of conversations and verbal exchanges; introspective accounts of one's feelings, attitudes, motives, understandings in reacting to things, events, circumstances; these all help one to reconstruct what it was like at the time.'
Source: Elliot, J (1991) 'A practical guide to action research' in Action Research for Educational Change, pp69-89, Open University Press.
McNiff, Jean (2002 3rd edition) Action research for professional development: Concise advice for new action researchers.
www.jeanmcniff.com/booklet1.html
More detail and further references from Jack Whitehead's ActionResearch.net
http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/
Smith, M. K. (1996; 2001) 'Action research', The encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/research/b-actres.htm
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'Living Geography' is how the GA is working to 'brand' a fresh approach to school geography. It captures geography which is:
- Current and future oriented
- Local but set in wider (global) contexts
- Investigates change processes
- Evaluates change
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| 11. Country Life – Steve Knightly |
www.showofhands.co.uk
Download: Lyrics
The live version on 'As you were' (2004) includes a spoken verse on the impact of two supermarkets being built on the edge of a small town in Dorset.
Consider:
market towns
seaside towns
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High Halden's post office and shop - closed 2006
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The project receives funding from the Academy for Sustainable Communities. It is also running in collaboration with the local architecture centres which are members of the Architecture Network.
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