The IDEAS network offers Scottish teachers a huge range of practical resources to support active and participatory learning on local and global issues. However, at its heart, GCE aims to give everyone the knowledge, skills and values they need to be responsible and active global citizens. Its purpose is to support all learners to participate fully in an interdependent and unpredictable world and ny play a key role in creating a more just, secure and sustainable future. Here in Scotland, GCE is embedded within the Curriculum for Excellence, as part of the ‘Learning for Sustainability’ framework. This framework encompasses a wide range of interconnected themes and approaches across sustainable development education, outdoor learning, global citizenship and social welfare. It will help young people become more aware of the world around them in their own community and globally.
We believe that the aim of Global Citizenship Education is to support learners to develop the knowledge, skills and values they need to be responsible and active citizens. Our members support educators at all levels to bring global citizenship into the classroom, schools and communities. It can be incorporated across the curriculum, reaching beyond school to the wider community. It draws on a wide and evolving variety of participatory teaching and learning methodologies. Many of these are now established as good practice in education, and are not unique to global citizenship.
Advocating for GCE in Scotland
These groups are part of the Oxfam Student Activist Network, a growing network of students across the UK who are campaigning with Oxfam for a better world. Oxfam Aberdeen and Oxfam Edinburgh were formed after two student campaigners from these universities met at an Oxfam training day and used the skills they developed through the training to build their own groups. Good GCE has meant students at Aberdeen and Edinburgh universities have come together to collaborate and campaign on issues such as climate justice, the rights of refugees and the crisis in Yemen. Good GCE has meant learners have been able to share hear a range of voices with unique lived experiences of the issues they are learning about and ask their own questions.
Climate Change is not something which will wait around to be learned about so including it in the curriculum at an early stage will be life changing for many. It is very important to take care of young people’s mental health when learning about the climate crisis. IDEAS members support educators at all levels across Scotland to embed GCE within their setting. Explore some inspiring examples of how schools and communities are learning and taking action as active Global Citizens. GCE is about encouraging learners to explore, develop and express their own values and opinions, as well as respect other people’s points of view.
The role of the educator is to help learners to find out about their world for themselves and to support them as they learn to assess evidence, negotiate and work with others, solve problems and make informed decisions. By its very nature, there are different perspectives, approaches and outcomes. It also needs to continually evolve in response to ever-changing local, national and global contexts.
