Tasting Snowflakes

We recently featured the work of Dr Suzanne Major, who specialises in the anthropology of early childhood education. Suzanne has written a series of posts for the eePRO webpages of the North American Association for Environmental Education [NAAEE]. This is an extract from another of her posts,General and Specific Educational Objectives and Strategies in Baby’s…

June 13th 2022

Counting Bees – Defra has launched a new app to encourage the public to count bees, butterflies and other pollinators.  The Flower-Insect-Timed Count (FIT Count) is a free app which asks people to spend ten minutes of their day collecting data on the number of insects that visit particular patches of flowers.  The efforts are part of Defra’s new Pollinator Action Plan,…

Center for Sustainable Futures

The Center for Sustainable Futures (CSF) at the University of Columbia’s Teachers College looks forward to a regenerative world in which we achieve a balance between planet, people, and prosperity. CSF’s mission is to promote learning, awareness, attitudes, and skills to work individually and collectively toward long-term sustainability of complex living systems. It supports and…

Reflecting on the Westminster Forum

In today’s post, Sue James reflects on the Westminster Education Forum policy conference held on 18th May 2022.  The focus was: Green and climate education in England – sustainability and action on climate change in the curriculum, outdoor learning, and priorities for further study and skills. As with all our blogs what is written does not necessarily represent the…

June 6th 2022

The DfE’s new models – The Economst has a feature on the DfE’s innovative way of changing the curriculum.  Rather than the bother of having to go to parliament to enact primary leglislation, it is using the device of a “model curriculum”.  One of these already exists (music) and another is in the offing (history).  A third, primary science, is promised.  As…

Gaps in climate Change Education

In a blog for Carbon Brief, Andrew Charlton-Perez, professor of meteorology and head of department at the University of Reading argues that there are gaps in how UK schools teach students about climate change. This post coincided with Reading’s recent  Climate Education Summit. The post begins: “While the impacts of global warming are already being felt across…

May 30th 2022

GreenComp – The EU has published a European sustainability competence framework: GreenComp.  This identifies a set of sustainability competences to feed into education programmes.  The framework defines the four competence groups that should be acquired by learners of all ages related to sustainability.  These are: [i] embodying sustainability values; [ii] embracing complexity in sustainability; [iii] acting for sustainability; and [iv] envisioning…

A Recent Research Update from Natural England

Here’s more news from Natural England by way of relevant evidence and reports, policy agenda developments, large scale delivery sector initiatives, resources and news items from the UK and abroad, with a focus on schools, education and learning. This supports the Strategic Research Network for People and Nature to develop better coherence and collaboration in…

DfE Activity Update

Here’s what the DfE says about its new awards: “The Department is looking for a successful lead provider, or consortia, to successfully deliver the following key areas of activity:  1. A prestigious National Education Nature Park that will drive and increase in engagement with nature for all children and young people whilst also developing their…

May 23rd 2022

More NAEE Manifesto Reviews – So far there have been a number of comments on the NAEE Manifesto on naee.org.uk, and you can find the latest here (Richard Jurin) and here (David Dixon).  There will be more.  If you’d like to comment please just let us know. . UKSSN – The UK Schools Sustainability Network (UKSSN hosted by Global Action Plan) is an umbrella group…

Remembering Geoffrey Hopkinson BEM

It’s with sadness that report that Geoffrey Hopkinson died recently, age 94. Geoff was appointed as Adviser for Environmental Education in Staffordshire in 1969 at a time when environmental education was not only emerging from its rural studies background across England, but also becoming established internationally. NAEE was created in 1971 out of the National…