Engaging the Disengaged through Development Education'

From the autumn term 2008 onwards the Engaging the Disengaged project has been working with pupils with challenging behaviours/backgrounds/additional learning needs, and their teachers, at a primary and a secondary mainstream school, a primary pupil referral unit and a secondary pupil referral unit within Lancashire County Council and Blackburn with Darwen. The project's aims were to engage these pupils in education, using participatory activities that incorporate global dimension concepts into their learning, allowing pupils to learn about and discuss global issues such as poverty, diversity and climate change so as to widen their perspectives and their world.

Work has been done with pupils and teachers in Y5 and on into and through Y6 at Stoneyholme Community Primary School (LCC), Y9 pupils and teachers at City of Preston High School (LCC), Y5 and Y6 pupils and teachers at The Sunnyhurst Centre (Primary PRU in BwD), KS3 pupils and their teacher at Shaftesbury House Short Stay School (Secondary PRU in LCC). Darwen Vale High School (BwD) and Cherryfold Community Primary School (LCC) have aided in the project's evaluation and benefited along with the project's key schools from global awareness/attitudinal assessments with their pupils as well as global dimension and participatory methods based training for their teachers (incl. Introductions to Philosophy for Children, Forum Theatre and global dimension resources and toolkits).

Participatory methods Philosophy for Children and Get Global: A skill-based approach to active global citizenship (Actionaid) were used to learn more about, decide upon and discuss global issues such as; human rights, conflict - war - bullying and conflict resolution, climate change, sustainability, interdependence, diversity and drugs. This has meant that pupils have had greater engagement through participation in learning about these issues and have been able to begin to understand that there are differing values and perceptions to be reasoned with in accordance with these issues. These methods have given pupils with different learning styles, and those who may usually not speak up, the opportunity to be fully engaged and heard. Teachers have commented that pupils have improved their skills of critical thinking, speaking and listening, and empathy after using these methods.

School linking took place in the summer term of 2009. The primary mainstream school and the primary PRU pupils sent each other personal and school profiles and met up to partake in team building activities at Blackburn Rovers Trust. They then met again to practice and perform two global issues based plays, ('Love Food Hate Waste' and 'One World') scripted and facilitated by Konflux Theatre-in-Education, to other pupils, staff and parents. 13 Y9 mainstream pupils linked with 6 KS3 PRU pupils at a day out at Blackpool Zoo followed by a 'Get Global Conference' - a fully participatory day as the local-global issues for discussion on the day were decided by the pupils in advance.

The project is finishing at the end of July 2010. The evaluation of the project is in partnership with Edge Hill University's Department of Social and Psychological Sciences (Prof Helen Whiteley and colleagues) and has consisted of pupils twice yearly undertaking questionnaires, partaking in focus groups, school staff giving interviews and pupils partaking in global awareness/attitudinal activities taken from RISC's How do we know it's working? A toolkit for measuring attitudinal change in global citizenship from early years to KS5. Outcomes so far have shown that teachers have needed to see some of the global dimension activities in action before they believed they would engage their pupils and in order for them to deliver them themselves; according to a number of teachers, using P4C with their primary children improved their confidence and skills in speaking, listening and empathy; pupils are more concerned with local issues; they hold stereotypes that need challenging, and have little awareness of poverty issues and life in Africa.

The projects methods and outcomes are already beginning to inform future schemes of work at the schools to engage their pupils in global learning and shall also be celebrated and shared at an end of project conference, Switching on to the World: Engaging Pupils in their Learning, to be held on the 27th May 2010 at The Global Conference Centre, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, BB5 3HH. This conference would be useful to anyone working in education looking for new approaches to engage pupils in their learning of personal, local and global issues.