Engaging the Disengaged through Development Education

From 2008-2010, the 'Engaging the Disengaged' project worked 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 in Lancashire. The project's aims were to engage these pupils in education, using participatory activities that incorporated global dimension concepts. This allowed pupils to learn about and discuss global issues such as poverty, diversity and climate change so as to widen their perspectives and their world.

Participating schools included Stoneyholme Community Primary School, City of Preston High School, The Sunnyhurst Centre (Primary PRU in Blackburn with Darwen), and Shaftesbury House Short Stay School (Secondary PRU). Darwen Vale High School and Cherryfold Community Primary School 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 teachers (e.g. Philosophy for Children, Forum Theatre and global dimension resources and toolkits).

Participatory methods 'Philosophy for Children' and 'Get Global' (Actionaid) were used to learn more about, decide upon and discuss global issues such as human rights, conflict and war, bullying and conflict resolution, climate change, sustainability, interdependence, diversity, and drugs. The participatory methods gave pupils with different learning styles, and those who may usually not speak up, the opportunity to be fully engaged and heard. Teachers observed that pupils improved their skills of critical thinking, speaking, listening and empathy as a result.

School linking activities took place in the summer term 2009. The primary mainstream school and the primary PRU pupils sent one another 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. Additionally, 13 year 9 mainstream pupils linked with six KS3 PRU pupils for a day out at Blackpool Zoo followed by a 'Get Global Conference', a fully participatory day as the local-global issues for discussion were decided by the pupils in advance.

The project's outcomes were evaluated in partnership with Edge Hill University's Department of Social and Psychological Sciences (Professor Helen Whiteley and colleagues). Evaluation activities consisted of pupils twice yearly undertaking questionnaires, partaking in focus groups, and pupils partaking in global awareness/attitudinal activities taken from RISC's 'How do we know it's working?' toolkit. School staff were also interviewed as part of the evaluation. Outcomes showed that teachers needed to see some of the global dimension activities in action before they believed they would be effective in engaging their pupils and in order for them to deliver them themselves. Teachers also reported that using Philosophy for Children with their primary children improved 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 project's methods and outcomes were celebrated and shared at an end-of-project conference, 'Switching on to the World: Engaging Pupils in their Learning', held on 27th May 2010.

'Engaging the Disengaged' was funded by the Department for International Development and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.