The Scottish Executive’s focus on Sustainable Development and, in particular, the Sustainable Secondary Schools Partnership.  

The publication of Determined to Succeed  with the requirement to “develop enterprising attitudes and skills through learning and teaching across the whole curriculum”.  

The Citizenship Agenda with the need to develop the skills for active citizenship:

• Secondary school education in Scotland is still largely based on a reductionist approach where the curriculum is seen as a syllabus of separate subject disciplines. Targets are set for success in final qualifications.

• It is clear that the three areas of Education for Sustainable Development, the Citizenship Agenda and Enterprise in Education have, in addition to areas of overlapping content, ways of learning which are participative, enterprising and encourage decision making by individuals.

• The concept of Sustainability is usually broken down into three connected areas: Social, Economic and Environmental. Ecological thinking is a term used for the holistic or systems approach to development issues.   Future thinking demands not only flexibility but also the need to recognise mutuality and the interconnectedness of our social, economic and environmental systems.

• Determined to Succeed emphasises enterprising “can do-will do” attitudes as necessary for a Scotland where the contributions of citizens to society as well as to the economy is both encouraged and valued. An entrepreneurial attitude is built on confidence and the desire to make a difference. (This is equally true for the community leader and the environmental activist as for the businessman.)

• Citizenship education goes beyond the teaching of knowledge and the discussion of values.   It requires a participative approach in which pupils (and teachers) actively engage in their communities, make decisions and are empowered as citizens.

• The changes that these complementary agendas demand will challenge the management of secondary schools.   The research undertaken as part of the 2GETHER project has identified a number of exciting ventures in schools as well as a range of providers of useful development materials. (See Appendix).   However, many of these initiatives are not embedded in the mainstream curricula of secondary schools.   Primary school practice has been much more successful in this regard, evidenced by the comparative uptake of the Eco-schools programme in each sector.

A focus for the 2GETHER project has been to develop a short course for teachers to introduce the related concepts of sustainability, enterprise and citizenship; to provide an approach, which uses open ended, creative and generic learning, allowing for choice and decision making. The aim is to give ownership of course content to learners and to try new ways of working, moving beyond the safe and familiar content based approach to teaching and learning.

The rationale for this work has been the conviction that learning processes in, and out, of the classroom can best be active, experiential, challenging and entrepreneurial. Teachers will necessarily be required to deliver lessons that allow for, and nurture, these opportunities. Pupils learn much from the message implicit in the management of the lesson and the classroom.

Creativity is another current cross-curricular focus in Scottish education and is implicit in the approach we are suggesting.

The learning environment in the classroom is determined by the behaviour of the teacher.   Successful teachers are self-motivated, creative and use creative thinking skills.  They enjoy doing things for the pleasure of it, rather than simply to achieve a later goal  and seek to empower rather than coerce young people.