Global learning and the school curriculum

The global society of today is one that children and young people are aware of but this has not been fully recognised by education policy-makers despite the efforts and activities of many civil society organisations and the enthusiasm of teachers. Since 2010 in England, a government-sponsored programme, the Global Learning Programme, has been a conscious attempt to equip children and young people with the knowledge and skills to not only understand but actively engage with global issues. This programme is beginning to show the value of a 'whole school' approach in terms of increasing not only knowledge and understanding about the wider world but putting themes such as social justice and concern for the environment as key themes of a child's learning

Fairtrade in Schools and Global Learning

This paper aims to provide an overview of evidence of schools’ engagement in Fairtrade in the UK through the Fairtrade Foundation’s Fairtrade School Awards programme. The paper provides a summary of the comments from schools’ engagement with the programme based on data from teachers and pupils’ learning with evidence from the different levels of the award. The paper also aims to locate the evidence from the award programme within the broader landscape of global learning in the UK

School Linking - where next?

Linking between schools in the UK and schools in sub-Saharan Africa has been a feature of the educational landscape for more than twenty years, but became a government priority between 2000 and 2010. Whilst the interest in Ireland was less, both countries resourced linking programmes primarily as a means of raising awareness of development issues. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also became involved in school linking during the first decade of the twenty first century with Plan UK and Link Community Development (Link) being the leading organisations in this field. However due to funding constraints and change in UK government policy post 2010, both of these NGOs ended their linking programmes in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Link’s involvement in school linking came from a development perspective; links were primarily seen as a mechanism for improving schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Development education only became a main feature of their linking programme with their European Union funded project, Partners in Development (PiD), which ran from 2010 to 2012. This project was funded from a development awareness budget line, but the NGO’s proposal included development goals within the project. This became a major source of tension that was unresolved throughout the life of the project. This report is an evaluation of the Partners in Development project that was based on linking schools in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with schools in Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and South Africa. The evidence gathered was based on a combination of quantitative based questionnaires, interviews with key staff within Link and in-depth data gathered from a number of schools in Scotland

Gyaan Yatra - Final Evaluation

Asian Foundation for Philanthropy (AFP) is a UK-based charity that was established in 2004 with the aim of linking British Asians with innovative social change initiatives in India. This report is a final evaluation of the AFP’s Gyaan Yatra project. The project began in April 2010 and ended in March 2013. The overall aim of the Project was to engage and build the capacity of a team of British Asian Development Ambassadors (DAs) so that they are equipped with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of challenges and prospects for development and poverty reduction, global consequences of poverty. The main features of the Project were: (1) Training a team of Development Ambassadors (DAs), and later Gyaan Yatra Fellows, who developed their knowledge and understanding of development issues and shared their learning with contacts in UK Indian diaspora communities. (2) Supporting the DAs to run events and to raise awareness and understanding within their communities on global and development issues. (3) Creating a range of communication tools to promote greater understanding of development issues. This included an online portal that acted as a focus for sharing ideas and debating key issues of interest to members of diaspora communities. In addition, a series of videos were produced by some of the DAs and supporters and then shared via AFP community YouTube channel. Gyaan Yatra more than achieved its project target of engaging 30 Development Ambassadors. In the end, 26 DAs and 20 Fellows were actively engaged in the project through training and activities provided by AFP. In addition, the project raised awareness of development and global issues with several thousand people within the wider UK Indian diaspora communities. This is illustrated by the fact that over 4,500 people attended events and nearly 5,000 people joined the debates on the AFP website. The project was also an excellent example of how to engage members of Indian diaspora communities in development education by (i) building on existing social and cultural perspectives, and (ii) focusing on a learning approach that encourages debate, dialogue and critical reflection

Returned Volunteers and Engagement with Development: Final Report for VSO Longitudinal study

The Development Education Research Centre of the Institute of Education was commissioned by VSO to undertake a longitudinal study of how returned volunteers (RVs) take forward their enthusiasms, skills, passions and learning from their placement once back in the UK or Ireland. Following an initial baseline study with 49 Returned Volunteers (RVs) in May 2009 via a questionnaire, 21 RVs were each interviewed three times between July 2009 and April 2010. In addition, the research team conducted a series of discussions over the course of the research with staff from VSO in order to compare data gathered with other known evidence. The main themes from these interviews are given below and compared with other existing published research on international volunteers

Extensions of Picard 2-Stacks and the cohomology groups Ext^i of length 3 complexes

The aim of this paper is to define and study the 3-category of extensions of Picard 2-stacks over a site S and to furnish a geometrical description of the cohomology groups Ext^i of length 3 complexes of abelian sheaves. More precisely, our main Theorem furnishes (1) a parametrization of the equivalence classes of objects, 1-arrows, 2-arrows, and 3-arrows of the 3-category of extensions of Picard 2-stacks by the cohomology groups Ext^i, and (2) a geometrical description of the cohomology groups Ext^i of length 3 complexes of abelian sheaves via extensions of Picard 2-stacks. To this end, we use the triequivalence between the 3-category of Picard 2-stacks and the tricategory T^[-2,0](S) of length 3 complexes of abelian sheaves over S introduced by the second author in arXiv:0906.2393, and we define the notion of extension in this tricategory T^[-2,0](S), getting a pure algebraic analogue of the 3-category of extensions of Picard 2-stacks. The calculus of fractions that we use to define extensions in the tricategory T^[-2,0](S) plays a central role in the proof of our Main Theorem.Comment: 2 New Appendix: in the first Appendix we compute a long exact sequence involving the homotopy groups of an extension of Picard 2-stacks, and in the second Appendix we sketch the proof that the fibered sum of Picard 2-stacks satisfies the universal propert