Geography, citizenship and education for sustainable development (ESD)

Citizenship overlaps and complements the geography programme of study. Sustainable development, an integral part of citizenship, is clearly relevant to geography too. The challenge is to make the most of geography's contribution to citizenship and education for sustainable development. This will enable pupils to:

• understand that despite physical, material and cultural differences, there is a lot that connects us with the wider world
• think critically and challenge injustice and inequalities
• identify, respect and value diversity
• develop a concern and commitment to environmental issues and sustainable development
• be willing to act to make the world a fairer and more sustainable place
• take responsibility for their actions.

Both citizenship and ESD provide great opportunities for active, child-centred learning styles from which children get a sense of their role as global citizens. Such an approach to learning is already alive and well in innovative geography lessons that explore distant localities and environmental issues.

			Bright idea
		Similarities and differences What are different places like? Children need to gain as full a picture as possible of a locality when comparing places. Challenge the class to find as many pictures as they can about England, and supplement these images yourself by finding pictures that show opposites, such as traditional and modern, urban and rural, rich and poor, young and old people and work and leisure. Repeat the exercise with another locality in the developing world to illustrate that every country has wealth and poverty, modern things as well as traditional and so on.

			Bright idea
		What's in the news? Create a display board for news stories about a range of different countries. As far as possible ensure that the ongoing display includes a wide representation of each place. You will have to be ready to supplement the news items to this end. The 'other information' section below gives sources of positive images and information. News on the countries could become a regular assembly slot too.

			Bright idea
		Interdependence Food connections Children can investigate where our food comes from, and calculate how much carbon is used to transport different foods at the Global Eye Primary (spring 2002) website. The action page shows how primary schools in Devon met for a big picnic to explore the idea of food miles in a practical way as part of the Food for Thought project. Visit the teachers' notes page for ideas for additional activities on this theme. Oxfam's 'Making a meal of it' links well with the issue of food miles, giving a downloadable set of photos and a range of ready-to-use activities to examine our links with other parts of the world through food.

			Bright idea
		Promoting empathy and challenging stereotypes 'One day we had to run' by Sybella Wilkes (Evans Brothers/UNHCR/Save the Children 1994) is a very useful book about the lives of three children who escaped war and persecution in Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia to become refugees in Kenya. The children tell their own stories with paintings and words.

			Bright idea
		Environmental concerns Brainstorm the class to consider which environmental issues are the pupils' greatest concerns for the future. Through discussion and negotiation, achieve a class consensus on five environmental concerns. Read a poem called 'Names' by Brian Moses (from 'Moses B Somewhere to be', WWF). Children can follow this up by writing their own poem in response, expressing what they would do to deal with the environmental concerns described in the poem. Afterwards, children can edit each others' poems in pairs. Once the poems are re-drafted they can be presented for display. [Janet Chapman, Primary geographer, Geographical Association, January, 1998]

		More developed ideas Interdependence Globingo Aa fun activity to investigate the concept of interdependence PDF 38Kb | RTF 11Kb | Help Promoting empathy and challenging stereotypes A true or false activity Questions to challenge pupils' perceptions PDF 44Kb | RTF 10Kb | Help Who benefits from tourism? A geography unit of work linked with citizenship and sustainable development A village in India An activity for Year 6 children designed to promote understanding that there are differences within countries as well as between countries and to encourage children to challenge stereotypes and develop respect for different cultures Mapping our area’s global links An activity for Year 5 children designed to promote knowledge and understanding of Britain's social and cultural heritage, and of its interdependence with the wider world Views about the local area An activity for Year 5 children designed to encourage them to consider the many groups and communities that make up the local area and their positive influences Environmental concerns Our environment and transport A geography unit of work linked with citizenship and sustainable development PDF 66Kb | RTF 39Kb | Help

Other information

Global issues

BBC Newsround has a variety of pages for pupils following the programme's focus on Africa in January 2003, including interactive activities using photographs and games.

The Two Cities BBC website allows pupils to compare their lives with children in Belfast and Mexico City. The website includes different views of children in both cities, and city tours to important landmarks.

Devon County Council has a wide range of resources that support teaching about The Gambia put together by primary school teachers in Devon. The website includes tips on using photographs, downloadable Gambian stories and links to other recommended websites.

Suffolk County Council's on-line St Lucia project promotes enquiry-based learning amongst pupils. The site includes open questions, photographs and film clips of St Lucia pupils asking their questions plus suggestions for establishing links with schools in St Lucia.

Visit a website on St Lucia put together by pupils at Sir Robert Hitcham's Primary School, Suffolk.

Action-Aid's photograph pack on Chembakolli in India can now be supplemented with new downloadable materials, including 300 photographs.

Christian Aid's colourful 'Global Gang' website contains downloadable teaching materials and on-line activities for children on a variety of global issues, including refugees, health, water, fair trade, disasters, the environment and peace issues. Children can compare their lives with the personal stories of children in different parts of the world.

Save the Children's 'Eye to Eye' website uses photographs as a starting point to enable children to compare their lives with young Palestinians.

The CAFOD website includes primary classroom activities and assembly ideas focusing on refugees, life in a village in Sudan, the story of tea, fair trade coffee, caring for the forest and a day in the life of a boy in Cambodia. The CAFOD website has a number of user-friendly ideas to teach global citizenship through geography, including an activity for pupils to develop their own special island that stimulates creative thinking, writing, speaking and design skills by:

• designing an illustrated map of their own island, full of special places for children from different parts of the world
• taking the rest of the class on a guided tour round their island
• making an illustrated guide brochure of their island.

The Oxfam Cool Planet website provides guidance on how to teach about distant localities.

School linking

The British Council's 'Windows on the World' website is designed for schools seeking international links. The website includes existing links between schools and how you can set up your own. The North-South partner site focuses specifically on links between schools in the UK and schools in the developing world.

Making a link with a school in the developing world is an exciting and effective way of addressing the global dimension of citizenship. The Link Community Development, a registered charity, enables UK schools to set up links with schools in Africa. The Link Schools Programme currently has 182 pairs of schools in the UK and Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. Visit the Link Schools Programme and you can see an example of one of the links in action at Global Eye.

Trade issues

Produced by Comic Relief UK and the Day Chocolate Company, the Dubble chocolate website invites children to follow an interactive 'cocoa trail': meeting people, watching film clips and playing games to understand the issues behind fair trade in chocolate. You could combine activities on this website with Cadbury's learning zone, which contains a wide range of on-line activities, developing and extending numeracy skills in the context of chocolate making.

Produced in association with The Guardian, learn.co.uk contains pages of activities to explore the world of work with an emphasis on fair trade.

Environmental issues

The QCA ESD website has plenty of practical examples of how geography can contribute to ESD, as well as providing more general support and guidance on ESD.

Ollie's World gives children fun ways of exploring sustainability issues in recycling, energy, water and biodiversity.

The 'kids' corner' of the Global Footprints website uses literacy and numeracy games, quizzes and other activities for pupils to assess their own 'global footprint' and to explore ways of achieving a sustainable future.

The Tide website describes work on education for sustainable development that took place in and around schools in Birmingham. There are also details of teachers' handbooks which contain more teaching and learning ideas on sustainable development.

For on-line activities on waste and recycling plus comprehensive teachers' notes on how to use the activities, visit the Learn.co.uk website.

The Channel 4 Planet.com site provides activities for pupils on a range of topics connected to sustainable development, for example water, rich world/poor world, food and farming, and energy.

Promoting empathy and challenging stereotypes

Global Eye Primary (summer 2001) focuses on refugees and asylum seekers to foster empathy and understanding amongst children and enables them to draw comparisons with their own lives. There are a variety of interactive activities, using photographs, stories, facts and figures. The website was written with assistance from the Refugee Council, Save the Children and RefAid/UNHCR.

Use children's true stories in Angola, Colombia and Kosovo (supported by maps and 'factfiles') to develop children's understanding of refugees by visiting Save the Children's 'Back to school' website.

For more information and other materials on the theme of refugees and asylum seekers, contact UNHCR or the Refugee Council.