Sustainable Learning:
Annual Conference of the Values Education Council
Bristol, Oct 2002

The Sustainable Learning conference took place at the Create Centre, Bristol, 5th October 2002 and addressed an area of growing concern given the bureaucratic pressures that are building up within the education system. Organised by Antidote, this was the eighth annual conference of the Values Education Council.

Bart McGettrick, Professor of Education at Glasgow University, approved a definition of sustainable development as 'decision-making that left the world a better place' and suggested a similar way of thinking about sustainable learning. For him, the main thrust of learning/education should be on developing humanity and building communities that had a steady regard for the common good.

Professor McGettrick spelt out this theme with great humour and wisdom, placing much emphasis on the importance of relationships in learning. It was through relationships, for example, that learners 'caught' the love of a subject, and that teachers were able to 'feed the dreams' of children. If his call for a 'pedagogy of justice' seemed a little high-flown, it was immediately grounded in the story of a recent visit he made to Palestine, where the idea of educating for peace took second place to that of educating for justice.

In short, this morning speech and the discussions that followed laid the ground for a closer look in the afternoon at possible ways of implementing such a vision of education. One was to seek an alternative curriculum that could move away from too narrow a focus on content and measurement and open new possibilities for teachers and learners - 'coverage' being, in Bart's words, 'the enemy of thought'.

One of the most promising such curricula was the 'Opening Minds' one that has been developed by the RSA exam board over the last three years. This focused on 'competences' rather than content. (For details, see www.rsa.org.uk/newcurriculum.) Lesley James, coordinator of the project, described how it had succeeded alongside the national curriculum in a number of schools, but had pointed new and more agreeable ways of organising learning in those schools.

In a second afternoon presentation, primary headteacher Beverly Ball gave a detailed account of another way of framing learning in a school - with an emphasis on learning to learn. Inspired by Professor Guy Claxton and supported by Dr. Ruth Deakin-Crick, of Bristol University, her had not only engaged their children imaginatively in their learning but had significantly improved academic results in the process.

Although voicing a few caveats about the challenge of introducing new curricula into the national education system - in England, at least, if not in Scotland! - or of introducing new attitudes into communities where the prime value was survival, conference delegates generally took up Professor McGettrick's call to respond with optimism to the afternoon's inspiring examples.

They accepted the challenge to 'resist the notion that government is the only agency to set the agenda for education', and resolved to take further steps in building a coalition that would celebrate healthy and positive values in education - or, in the words of one member, would aim for 'sustainable moral development' within the education system.


Conference reports