Curriculum Workshop 2016

A workshop was held on 14–15 April 2016 co-funded by Pembroke College and the Pathways Project. It brought together project participants including teachers from Mongolia, Mexico, Italy and East Anglia with some virtual input from teachers in South Africa and Alaska. It was an opportunity both for contributors to share experiences of working on the Pathways Project and to facilitate writing a series of articles for a special issue on place, changing climates and school curricula for the journal of the National Association for Environmental Education.

Day 1:

During the workshop researchers and participants made formal presentations about their involvement. These created lively discussions of how the methods used in the project (such as walking around local villages, visiting local museums, Skype communications between schools in distant countries, working with archaeologists and artists and story tellers and so on) had influenced how curriculum objectives were being met in these different international settings.  Through the sharing of experiences across cultures and languages we were able to identify some commonalities and differences in how teaching about changing climates emerges. We were able to identify the relative importance that these different settings place on issues pertaining to environmental change. Using the comparative data gleaned from the workshops we were able to begin to identify what contextual elements were at play in each setting. We could then start to make connections between these elements and the way in which environmental issues are being addressed at the school level. These data will inform how we approach policy on education and the environment; and how we seek to influence that.   

Day 2: 

This day was given over to in-depth discussions between our visitors from Mongolia, Mexico and Italy. They shared details of how school days were organised, how schools addressed national curricula and what sorts of improvements they, as practicing teachers would like to see in their regional and national contexts.

They also spent quite some time thinking about writing their articles for the journal which is now well underway and will be published in February 2017.