Global Outdoors

Project Aims

Valuing Places is an inclusive project which aims to generate discussion and curriculum materials relevant to both teachers and pupils of geography at key stages 2 and 3 which:

*     increases public understanding of our global mutual dependence and the need for international development by valuing the uniqueness of places at a variety of scales and exploring how these are interconnected

*     has the potential to involve every pupil in England through the Geographical Association's networks and mailings to all schools, thus supporting DFID in calling for every child to be educated about development issues so that they can understand the key global considerations that will shape their lives.

*     by starting with local connections motivates and engages all learners to consider that development education is going beyond attitudes to development based on compassion and charity and establishing a real understanding of our interdependence and of the relevance of development issues to people's everyday lives

(Bold text from Building Support for Development: Raising Public Awareness and Understanding of Development Issues (DFID, 1999).)

In addition we hope that the project will provide some exemplification as to how effective geographical education can contribute to the two over arching aims of National Curriculum 2000,

·         ‘The School Curriculum should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve

·         ‘The School Curriculum should aim to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and prepare all pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life.'

The poverty reduction agenda is facilitated in part by awareness.  The creation and interpretation of the complexity of place is part of this.  How your place is created and linked is an important part of realising that all of us have a role and responsibility as members of our global community.  By exploring localities familiar to us and linking these at a variety of scales, Valuing Places is about valuing ourselves in those places, revealing our roles and responsibilities towards both the people and environment in that place and all the places that our place is linked with.

A key focus of this project is inclusivity.  Through the involvement of an extremely large number of teachers and pupils a wide range of teaching and learning styles will be used both in terms of professional development and in terms of the curriculum resources.

This project also aims to promote opportunities to raise standards of achievement.  Teachers will be engaged and motivated by their involvement in some sophisticated debates about the global dimension in their teaching about place.  Pupils will be valued, since the starting point of this work will be themselves, their views, their place and challenging them to consider the connections with the wider world and the implications that this has for their views and their place and their rights and responsibilities as global citizens.  As Clare Short stated at the Secondary Head's Association Conference, ‘I want to look at how we can help bring international development issues more fully into the work and life of schools in a way which prepares young people to understand and feet able to shape the globalising and increasingly interdependent world which they will inherit.'

Valuing Places will enable teachers and pupils to critically evaluate their taken for granted ways of living and understand the implications and impacts of these practices for the development of other people, places and regions.