Sustainable
Development Education Panel:
Survey of Youth Work
4. Desk study
The investigation of the print resources relating to sustainable development held by the National Youth Agency (NYA) and the Council for Environmental Education (CEE) revealed that most of the materials concern youth work designed to promote global or environmental awareness (see Selected Bibliography at Appendix 5). These comprise reports on particular projects, guidance to youth groups and organisations on good practice, or ideas and principles which should underpin any curriculum. For example, the CEE identifies five criteria for good practice in environmental youth work.
Good practice should..
- illustrate the links between the local and the global environment
- make connections between social issues and the environment
- enable individuals to convert their environmental concern to action
- develop skills in changing things at a political, social and practical level
- enhance understanding of the ecological processes that sustain life and our own relationship to the environment
Council for Environmental Education (1995)
6.3 The audit of the youth service in England, commissioned by the Department for Education and Employment and undertaken by the NYA in 1998, revealed that where local authority youth services have curriculum statements, some mention work on environmental matters and a few give this priority. However in the sample of statements seen there were no instances, for example, of youth services undertaking "green audits" of their units; and objectives tended to be expressed in very general terms without any learning outcomes or activities being specified for achieving them.
6.4 We noted two examples of detailed specifications for a curriculum framework differentiated by age and stage, one designed to promote global citizenship (Oxfam, 1997) and the other on sustainable development, submitted to the QCA on behalf of the Sustainable Development Education Panel (1998). Both identify key concepts and ideas and associated learning outcomes and differentiated between values, skills and knowledge; but these are designed to form frameworks for use in schools. We used these as a starting-point and selected from them a smaller number of outcomes for possible use by youth workers.
6.5 We deemed it important to reinforce and support any work being promoted through the formal education system rather than supplant or replace it. However it is equally important to adapt these ideas to ensure that the concepts and language in which they are expressed can be readily understood by youth workers and young people; and that any framework is sufficiently flexible to be used in the wide range of contexts in which youth work takes place.
6.6 The desk study also helped to identify organisations and services which seem to be most active in this field and any particular projects which have made sustainable development a focus for their work. On the basis of this information, supplemented by advice from the consultative group we were able to draw up a list of projects for visits in our trawl of good practice. The intention was partly to find out to what extent some of the key ideas and concepts were being pursued as learning outcomes in the field; and identify some of the characteristics which constitute good youth work.
Page published 09 June
2000;
Page last modified
20 August, 2002