Listening to children: environmental perspectives and the school curriculum

Researchers
Professor William Scott
Dr Robert Barratt
Professor Andrew Dobson
Elisabeth Barratt Hacking

Institution
Keele University
Open University
University of Bath

Summary of Project
Researcher Profiles
Researcher Contact Details
Publications

Summary

The study is concerned primarily with the attitudes and behaviours of children towards their environment. This is an interdisciplinary endeavour, drawing on educational, geographical and environmental psychology perspectives.

The study is set in Stoke-on-Trent, a city that faces significant social, economic, environmental and educational challenges. It is concerned with the affect such an environment has on its young population. It will consider how their environmental experiences can be incorporated into the curriculum through the Citizenship and Education for Sustainable Development requirements of the National Curriculum (England, Wales). It further sets out to explore whether young people's participation in community-based action research can effect change in their attitudes and behaviours and so contribute towards more sustainable urban environments.

The study aims to:

• understand children's evolving urban environmental experience
• increase the relevance of the school curriculum to children, their families and the local community
• develop ways of involving children, families and community representatives in curriculum development
• develop ways of involving children in sustainable environmental action in the local community
• inform local environmental and educational policy.

The study will take place within one city school community. We contend that a curriculum developed in collaboration with children will be sympathetic to their environmental needs and aspirations. Further, that the process will address the challenge of encouraging self-determination and participation, and will act to empower children. The study will demonstrate how schools can play a significant role in supporting children to become environmentally conscious and active citizens.

Key Research Questions
Research questions The following research questions frame the study's intentions

1. How do 11/12-year-old children in Stoke experience and think about their local environment?
2. How can schools make use of this knowledge in order to increase the relevance of the curriculum to the environment of children, their families and the local community?
3. How can schools make use of these emerging data in innovation related to citizenship and sustainable development requirements of the National Curriculum (England and Wales)?
4. How can schools provide for children, parents, community workers and teachers to participate in the curriculum development process, viz., to develop a curriculum that relates to children's local environment perspectives and help shape behaviour?

Research approach
The study will be carried out over a 12-month period with one year 7 (11/12 year olds) pupil population in one Stoke-on-Trent city school. Essentially, it will adopt an innovative research-based approach to curriculum development that will be relevant to similar urban settings.

A management group, constituted by higher education, school children and parent partners, will manage the study. The study will adopt a participatory action research approach to explore participants' group and individual experience of a collaborative curriculum development enterprise. This approach will enable participants to reflect on their experiences in order to understand and improve the educational process.

Data collection will occur in two phases. Phase one will focus on generating a body of data concerned with the local environmental experience of y7 children, via questionnaire, environmental videoing, and small group discussion. Phase two will focus on establishing school environmental curriculum councils who will work with this data to develop innovative learning opportunities. Children, parents, teachers, community workers and local authority officials will constitute councils.

We are concerned to represent the voice of children in this research. Therefore children in the study school will devise all research instruments, lead all discussions and set their own agenda within the framework of the study. We are also concerned that the local environment experience of children is represented authentically in the data generated. Children's video material will be supported by interview and questionnaire data, gathered from children of the same age also living in the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

Intended outcomes

1. Knowledge about how children living in an urban environment experience and interact with and view their local environment.
2. Teachers and children as researchers.
3. An approach to school curriculum development in which
   • children's local environmental experiences are incorporated into the school curriculum
   • the curriculum is more relevant to children, their families and the local community
   • children question their environmental attitudes and behaviours
   • children contribute to more sustainable urban environments through local community action in conjunction with local authority and community workers.
4. Ways of meeting the Citizenship and Sustainable Development requirements of the National Curriculum (England, Wales) with reference to local citizenship and sustainability issues.

Researchers

William Scott
William Scott is Professor of Education at the University of Bath. He is Head of the Department's Culture & Environment research group, and Director of the Centre for Research in Education and the Environment. He edits the international refereed academic journals: Environmental Education Research, and Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of the Research Commission of the North American Association for Environmental Education. He contributes to environmental/sustainability education teaching programmes at doctoral, masters and diploma levels, and has conducted a range of externally-funded research, development and evaluation studies on behalf of government, industry, NGOs and other agencies.

Robert Barratt
Robert Barratt is a Lecturer in Education at Keele University. His research interests are concerned with exploring young people's urban environmental experience. He is particularly interested in the relationship between the every day urban lives of young people and the secondary school curriculum. He has taught in primary, secondary, special and further education contexts. He is a member of an international environmental research network, Research in Participatory Education Network (RIPEN). He is currently researching a book on curriculum relevance and ownership. He is also the founder of the Millennium Mapping Research Project, which is concerned with children's environmental learning and teaching and learning at Key Stage 3 (KS3)

Elisabeth Barrett Hacking
Elisabeth Barratt Hacking Lectures in Education at the University of Bath. Her research and teaching are in the fields of geographical and environmental education and she is a member of the university's Centre for Research in Education and the Environment. She has extensive experience of curriculum development including through her work as Research Officer for the former national project, Geography Schools and Industry Project, based at the University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies. Elisabeth is Honorary Editor of the professional journal, Teaching Geography.

Andrew Dobson
Andrew Dobson is Professor of Politics at the Open University. He is the author of two books on intellectuals in politics (Jean-Paul Sartre and the Politics of Reason and The Politics and Philosophy of Jose Ortega y Gasset), but for the last 10 years he has devoted his research to environmental political theory. He is interested in the way environmental questions impinge on enduring themes in political theory, and the way that these latter are complicated by the former. He has worked, especially, on the relationship between environmental sustainability and both democracy and social justice, asking whether they are compatible, and if so, how and why. During these investigations he has published Green Political Thought (three editions) and Justice and the Environment, as well as two edited books. He is presently completing a book on Citizenship and the Environment, due for publication with Oxford University Press in 2003.

Contact Details

Professor William Scott
Centre for Research in Education and the Environment,
Department of Education,
University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY

Dr Robert Barratt
Department of Education
Keele University
Staffordshire ST5 5BG

Professor Andrew Dobson
Department of Government and Politics
Open University
Milton Keynes MK6 7AA

Ms E C Barratt Hacking
Lecturer in Education

Department of Education
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY