Care, Well-being, Sustainability, and Geography: Exploring the Connections

1. Westminster Institute of Education CARE, WELL-BEING, SUSTAINABILITY AND GEOGRAPHY: WHAT IS THIS REALLY ABOUT? Simon Catling

2. Context 1: The Sustainability Agenda Key sources: DfES (2006) Sustainable Schools: For pupils, communities and the environment – Consultation Paper, London: DfES DfES (2007) Sustainable Schools for Pupils, Communities and the Environment: Government Response to the Consultation on the Sustainable Schools Strategy, London: DfES DfES (2007) Sustainable Schools for Pupils, Communities and the Environment: An Action Plan for the DfES, London: DfES DfES (2007) Sustainable Schools, London: DfES [leaflet] See: www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools/ Westminster Institute of Education

3. Context 2: Every Child Matters ECM promotes 5 key outcomes: • be healthy; • stay safe; • enjoy and achieve; • make a positive contribution; • achieve economic well-being. The ECM agenda connects with the child’s social, community and physical environment. Source: DfES (2004) Every Child Matters:Change for Children in Schools, London DfES [www.everychildmatters.gov.uk] Westminster Institute of Education

4. Context 3: Sustainable Schools Sustainable Schools is premised on: • placing high value on the well-being of pupils and on the school environment; • recognising cultural and global interdependence; • fostering community cohesion through inclusion and participation; • advancing local well-being, through social change and community transformation. Guided by the principles of: • Care for oneself; • Care for each other (across cultures, distances and times); • Care for the environment (far and near). Westminster Institute of Education

5. The Concept of Care Care is an ethical idea at the heart of a number of social professions, not least education. [Noddings, 2005] Education as care implies ethically that it: • is for the benefit of all children; • recognises and values difference and diversity; • provides a responsive environment of support and development; • offers varied approaches and stimuli for learning; • involves children as active participants. Westminster Institute of Education

6. Care – 1 The idea of care is central to the notion of sustainable schools. It is ‘taken’ (unacknowledged) from the work of Nel Noddings, who uses it to challenge the highly instrumental, labelling and measurement approach to education in the USA. The concept of Centres of Care: • care for oneself; • care for family and friends; • care for the wider local/global community; • care for the natural/human-created world; • care for ideas. Central to the idea of care are responsibility and commitment. Source: Noddings, N (2005) The Challenge of Care in Schools, New York: Teachers College Press Westminster Institute of Education

7. Care – 2 The precepts of care. In the context of responsibility and commitment, care requires us to: • be outward looking, not selfish; • focus on the community and through global citizenship, not be self-interested; • have at the core the interests of the future of life and the environments in which lives are lived, not be based solely in the present and on immediate needs and desires. Westminster Institute of Education

8. Well-being – 1: Life qualities The idea of care implies the idea of well-being. • It has been foregrounded for children since the initiation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Well-being is concerned with the quality of children’s lives: • life and economic chances; • material basics and benefits; • health and safety; • family life; • access to play and leisure; • educational opportunity; • behaviour and risks; • the impact of conflict. Westminster Institute of Education

9. Well-being – 2: Common views Well-being is concerned with physical & mental health, emotional & social stability, economic soundness, comfort in social relations and interactions, spirituality. It describes more than the means of survival (food, warmth, shelter). Well-being describes senses of satisfaction, contentment, feeling positive, enjoying life. It is not about great happiness or high achievement but about a life that is of reasonable to good quality. Well-being concerns achieving some personal preferences. Westminster Institute of Education

10. Well-being – 3: Beyond the self Like care, well-being goes beyond personal interests. • It is social, altruistic and responsible. Well-being involves: • concern for the ‘other’: people, environments, species; • fairness and justice; • solicitousness for others; • priorities and ‘sacrifice’; • balance and the benefit to others; • exploring opportunities locally/globally for others. Care and well-being are relational, receptive and reciprocal – central to being human. Westminster Institute of Education

11. Sustainability in the current context There are two uses of the term sustainable being employed: • Consistency principle: that developments that are undertaken can be maintained; • Improvement principle: that everyone might “satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life, without compromising the quality of life of future generations”. [HMG (2005) Securing the Future, London:TSO] Sustainability involves: • Impact principle: consideration of present actions and implies change based on minimising damage, indeed, on making improvements; • Obligation principle: responsibilties to future generations, providing opportunity and benefit. Westminster Institute of Education

12. An idea of sustainability Sustainability concerns: • using all resources wisely (finite and renewable); • maintaining and improving the quality of life for all people; • not storing up problems for future generations; • not impacting unfairly on others’ lives; • tackling misuse, injustice, exploitation……. • concern for the physical environment and for places (natural, modified, built and social); • considered and considerate present actions; • obligations to future generations. Sustainability is an ethical position, directed to care and well-being for ourselves and others now and in the future. ‘We do not inherit the world from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.’ [Kenyan proverb] Westminster Institute of Education

13. Key concepts of sustainability • Interdependence: society, economy, natural environment,local/global; • Citizenship and Stewardship: rights/responsibility/participation; • Needs and Rights of future generations: impacts/obligations; • Diversity: cultural, social, economic, biological,respect/valuing; • Quality of life, equity and justice: meeting basic needs; • Sustainable change: development, carrying capacity,care in use; • Uncertainty and Precaution in action: change, flexibility, thoughtfulness. Source: Defra (1998), Sustainable Development Education Panel: First Annual Report – Annex 4, London: Defra [www.defra.gov.uk/environment/sustainable/educPanel/1998ar/ann4.htm] Westminster Institute of Education

14. Ideas of place Within the Every Child Matters and Sustainable Schools agendas lie both the notion that places are important and ideas about place. Three interrelated interpretations of place can be detected as implicit: • Place as an entity: the physical and social environments – the build and natural, the people, the activities, uses and events occurring there, where people live and life occurs; • A sense of place: feelings for and responses to places, emotional attachments, notions of identity with and belonging to; • Valuing places: social values in place, appreciation of and respect for the environment and the people who live there, concern for/about change and development. Westminster Institute of Education

15. Environmental Well-Being Care, well-being, place and sustainability are connected up in the government policy on Sustainable Schools. • To develop the ECM agenda fully, “The area underrepresented is the environment or, more specifically, the environmental well-being of children, which as a major influence on their health, safety and overall life chances, sometimes very starkly.” [DfES, 2006, 14, italics added] • Our environmental well-being directly affects our sense of identity, respect for the environment, care for oneself and others, how life might be lived, how distant others might be valued. It is explicitly stated that environmental and place experience, understanding and attitudes matter – and matter in education! Westminster Institute of Education

16. Sustainable Schools: Connecting Locally A sense of environmental well-being is developed through: • awareness of one’s own community; • recognising local interdependence; • building a sense of belonging and identity locally; • encouraging concern and respect for ‘the local’; • fostering a sense of care for the community; • becoming engaged with community groups; • observing and participating in sustainable practices; • empowering children’s involvement. Westminster Institute of Education

17. Sustainable Schools: Connecting globally Environmental well-being is also developed by examining global concerns and issues and considering personal, community and (inter)governmental responses and actions to such matters as: • climate change; • people living in poverty, inequity and injustice; • access to clean water, sanitation, health care and education; • future access to and the use of natural & human resources; • trade and consumption; • social and environmental change and development; • environmental damage, pollution & destruction and management, care & improvement; • energy needs & supply; • leisure opportunities. Westminster Institute of Education

18. Overlapping Geography and Environmental Well-Being Inevitably, central to the Sustainable Schools agenda are geographical ideas and skills: • Place; • Space; • Scale; • Interdependence; • Physical and human processes; • Environmental interaction and sustainable development; • Cultural understanding and diversity; • Enquiry processes and attitudes; fieldwork skills and activity; graphicacy and visual literacy; communication. Source: QCA, Geography:Programme of study: Key stage 3, London: QCA [www.qca.org.uk/curriculum] Westminster Institute of Education

19. Opportunities The Children’s Plan does not refer directly to the Sustainable Schools agenda. It does make points about: • developing community cohesion; • understanding and applying sustainability; • increased play facilities and safer environments; • tackling poverty and improving housing; • recognising global influences in the local communities; • supporting young people’s development of self-identity; • recognising young people as citizens and involving them; • creating ‘places to go’ for the young locally. Secondary geography has a role in promoting community cohesion, developing self-identity and exploring social justice and global interdependence. This links with citizenship. Source: DCSF (2007), The Children’s Plan, London: TSO Westminster Institute of Education

20. A rationale for geography? The ECM, Sustainable Schools and Children’s Plan agendas provide a rationale for geography as an essential curriculum – indeed, whole school – subject. Geography already provides the basis for developing children’s understand and engagement in these agendas in all key stages through the current curriculum and the revised KS3 PoS. What is this really about? Westminster Institute of Education

21. What is it really about? • Why is there no proper and appropriate reference to the Sustainable Schools agenda in The Children’s Plan? • How is it that we now see references only to the Humanities and Creative Arts in the possible revised primary curriculum – for increased literacy and mathematics? • What really is to be done to raise the status and take up of geography in secondary education? • To what extent is children’s voice and engagement taken seriously (ECM agenda) in and out of school? • How is geography in schools to be in the local and global communities – getting out, being topical, exploring problems/issues and exploring solutions/ways forward, engaging in meaning and identity? • If education for sustainability is about positive attitudes and actions for the environment and places, to what extent do/can/will teachers of geography – indeed all teachers – commit to and act on this? Westminster Institute of Education