Promoting Education for Sustainable Development in Schools and Colleges through HE action
Final report to ESCALATE
August 2009
Introduction
This final report presents key activities, achievements and learning points from the ESCALATE funded ESD project in fulfillment of the key aim of the project, namely: to assess the role and potential effectiveness of HE student volunteering practices and the HE curriculum in influencing pro-sustainability changes within local schools and colleges via student action.
The project objectives were as follows:
To develop an informal curriculum to support student action and learning around ESD;
To measure the effectiveness of the informal curriculum model on students values, attitudes, beliefs and impacts on the local community
Create a vertical ESD network between local schools, colleges and University to support discussion, knowledge exchange and facilitate ESD developments;
Identify and build on best practice within each sector within the network to act as a catalyst for wider educational developments around ESD within the Bradford district.
This paper is structured into two main sections. The first describes the background and approach, the second reports against the specific objectives.
Background
Project development had the following key stages:
Recruitment and training of students expressing an interest to work with schools;
Recruitment of schools interested in working with the University and students around ESD;
Development of individual projects between schools and students;
Evaluating the ‘student experience’ that arose from this work with schools;
Recruitment and training of students
There were three separate phases to the recruitment of students:
Phase 1: Oct 2007- Dec 2008
The first phase proved that recruiting students was more of a challenge than we had first envisaged. This was in line with what our student volunteering bureau
was experiencing generally i.e. a marked decline in student volunteers. We therefore switched our recruitment strategy to recruit via the academic schools.
Phase 2: February 08 to July 08
Phase 2 was more successful and we attracted interest from 20 students.
Phase 3: September 09-April 09
Phase 3 saw the carrying over of 7 students from phase 2 into the new school year with three more students expressing interest in participation.
Training and induction
Phase 1 induction and training was led by our student volunteering bureau with input from the grant holder for the ESCALATE project. During Phase 2 this was carried out by a combination of the student volunteering bureau with the support of the newly appointed Ecoversity student engagement co-ordinator. In Phase 3 a sustainable schools regional co-ordinator who had established links with schools in Bradford was brought in to provide bespoke training around food and carbon issues relevant to schools.
Recruitment of schools
In order to establish a clear understanding of existing ESD related activity within Bradford schools, a survey of all Bradford primary and secondary schools was conducted between July 07 and October 08 to identify levels of engagement with sustainability. 50% of these 208 schools responded with information. A summary of these findings can be found in Appendix 1.
An initial meeting with 30 teachers plus local organizations with an interest in Education for Sustainable development (ESD) was held at the University in Sept 2007. An onsite ESD conference involving 8 schools (12 teaching staff and 75 pupils) was also held to discuss ideas around sustainable development and University/schools linkages in January 2008.
From these initial activities we approached 5 schools (3 primary and 2 secondary to develop ESD related projects with students recruited in Phase 1 and 2. A review of Phase 1 and 2 led us to approach and recruit 3 further schools in the third phase.
Project development
Each project was progressed via school-site meetings with each of the lead teachers to identify areas of interest, followed by a subsequent meeting between the school and student. These meetings were led by the head of the student volunteering bureau building on his experience and expertise of setting up previous school based student volunteering opportunities. This stage was more drawn out and complex than had been envisaged. Simply getting through to a school by telephone was not always easy and getting to speak directly to the teacher contact could take several days or weeks in some instances. Teachers often had to cancel meetings at short notice and getting a new date meant further delays and waning student interest. Some students also missed meetings- which was very frustrating given the time taken to set up the meetings. In some cases the teacher had unrealistic expectations of what a student could achieve or was expected to undertake – meaning that either the student got cold feet or the teacher lost some interest and enthusiasm when they appreciated how much support a student might require.
Following phase 1 and phase 2 the grant holder, head of student volunteering and the student engagement co-ordinator reflected on the lessons learnt. We decided that where a student had got established in a school that these projects would continue in the new academic session (08) subject to the school and student being in agreement. We then decided to try and identify schools which had established sustainability projects where a student could step into the project much more easily than having to start up a project from scratch. We therefore approached 3 further schools in Bradford who were working on sustainable food growing activities to identify potential student involvement. 2 of these schools agreed and 3 new students were recruited and inducted around sustainable food and carbon footprinting in preparation for work with those schools.
Evaluation
From the outset there was an expectation that students would be reflective in their work with schools and that they would be evidence based to the extent of capturing their experiences in the form of an informal learning journal, diary or reflective log. Students were offered a briefing on how to maintain a simple reflective log, not all chose to attend. Many of the students were new to the idea of self-capture and found it hard to manage on top of day to day project activity. To that end, in Phase 3 a post-project exit interview was carried out with students and schools as the means of capturing experiences.
Achievements
10 students ( in a variety of combinations) were placed with 6 schools to help run specific sustainability projects of varying duration and complexity. Projects include gardening clubs; eco-warriors/schools council/wind turbine; sustainable food and renewable energy and recycling, see Table 1 below.
We developed a clearer understanding of existing levels of engagement with ESD across the Bradford schools sector and a range of emerging needs, thereby helping to us to scope what projects would be most suitable for students’ ongoing work with schools.
The foundation for a long-term network and knowledge exchange between the University and Bradford schools was established via the launch of a University-Bradford District sustainable schools network. A good practice guide comprising 12 case studies showcasing Bradford schools was published and packs were sent out to all Bradford schools (208). The launch event March 2009 attracted 50 delegates including representatives from 30 Bradford schools.
In terms of the different ESD providers, greater clarification of (a) interest in ESD (b) areas of potential duplication and (c) priorities thereby enabling the network to start on a firm footing by avoiding replication and possible conflict with other groups in Bradford, who were providing support for schools around environmental activities.
Findings
The recruitment and retention of students was more difficult throughout the project than we expected. Of the 40 students that attended the initial Phase 1 meeting, around half did not continue to engage when they found that they could not manage the time commitment required, or that the project might not meet ambitious expectations on their part or that they had no real interest in sustainable development - many wanted to go into schools to help with literacy work.
Our examination of why recruitment and retention throughout the project was hard concluded that:
There is a small and possibly diminishing pool of student volunteers at the University of Bradford. Reasons may be various:
- more than 50% of our students live at home and hence may have other, existing commitments based in those communities. Their life on campus may be very different to that of the traditional student type living away from home;
- many of our students are on vocational programmes of study that include substantial elements of work based learning. This means that some students are away from the University for long periods of time;
- 70% of our students are on bursaries and many work considerable hours in paid employment, hence the time available to do volunteer work is reduced.
Timings are crucial. We held our first recruitment drive in Week 3 of the semester and had a very poor response. By the time we were able to make a response to this it was late in the term and students were beginning to find increasing demands on their time. We made the decision to try to recruit at the start of the second semester (late Jan/Early Feb) and again the response was very limited (see above). We then decided to change tactics in terms of recruitment and attempted to do this via contacts within academic staff community. This led to a significant increase in expressions of interest which suggested that there could be an untapped student interest in volunteering via their academic home. We ran the training with this new set of students but again as time moved on, by end of March a lot of students started to withdraw as they came under pressure of course work deadlines. April and early May are exam revision times when most of the students stated they didn’t want to expend time on volunteering. The lessons here are:
- there are relatively narrow windows of opportunity to recruit, train and engage students in volunteering activities;
- Several different modes of putting the invitation out there might need to be done in tandem;
- One recruited, volunteers need to have something to go into straight away, otherwise a delay might cause cooling off and lessening of interest
Timings for schools are equally crucial. We realized early on that the type of projects we were trying to set up with schools were more involved and complex than other types of school/volunteer projects that we had existing experience of (e.g mentoring). Therefore the time required to set up with the school/teacher in the initial phase should not be under-estimated.
One of the difficulties we experienced was maintaining contact and communication with students after initial meetings. Some students failed to turn up for meetings set up with schools, others were erratic and others just disappeared. We attempted to overcome this by employing a student for a few hours a week specifically to maintain contact and communication and to offer encouragement and support. This worked well up until the point that the student co-ordinator had to leave the post after 6 weeks due to coursework commitments. We would definitely recommend that this role be factored into future projects.
From the original pool of 40 students expressing an initial interest we found that only around 10 were in a position to offer the level of commitment and enthusiasm necessary. Many of these remaining 10 students had little or no experience of working in schools or working independently on projects: this means that very careful thinking needs to be in place in terms of what sort of projects are genuinely suitable.
Schools response
From the survey of schools that we carried out in 2007 we discovered that there are many different ‘sustainability’ related initiatives within Bradford schools. ‘Eco-schools’, ‘forest schools’, ‘sustainable schools’, ‘healthy schools’ are some of the initiatives in which schools are involved. These initiatives are not joined up at the strategic level and therefore schools can find it all a bit confusing especially as there are numerous external bodies working with schools on these initiatives which creates a crowded arena.
From this initial scoping we identified a number of schools who we felt could offer suitable project for our students. The volunteer bureau UCAN led the identification and project planning with schools, which comprised initial meeting and follow up meetings between the schools and students.
The setting up phrase of the project proved time consuming and was, at times, frustrating. Once lead teachers had been identified within each school, remaining in contact with that teacher and arranging times to meet proved to be challenging given that teachers are seldom free to receive and make phone calls.
Setting up a single meeting frequently necessitated an exchange of several phone calls.
During meetings teachers were highly enthusiastic about the possibility of students coming in school to work on projects. What most teachers wanted was help in making things happen that they hadn’t been able to achieve previously, often based on a long-standing ambition such as a wind turbine or setting up a club. Students, therefore, have appeal as a useful resource. Often the initial project proposed by the school was too open-ended, ill-defined and ambitious to be suitable for a student with little or no experience of working in a school or in project manager.