Sustainable Learning Partnership

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What is in this Section?

The Clean Energy from the Sea learning resource for schools was conceived and developed by the Sustainable Learning Partnership. This section provides an introduction to the Partnership,  its aims and its services.

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Index to the ‘Sustainable Learning Partnership’ Page

1. Who we are
2. What we advocate
3. What we do

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Who We Are

The following are the founder-members of the The Sustainable Learning Partnership; authors of the Learning for Sustainability Programme for Schools and the Clean Energy from the Sea Project:

Keir Bloomer is an independent education consultant.  He is Chair of the Court of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, Chair of the Tapestry Partnership, Vice-convenor of Children in Scotland and Chair of the Dunblane Development Trust.

From the time of the reorganisation of Scottish local government in 1996 until November 2000, he was Executive Director of Education and Community Services with Clackmannanshire Council and was President of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland for the year 1999/2000.  Subsequently he became Chief Executive of the Council, a post from which he retired in May 2007.

He was a member of the review group which wrote A Curriculum for Excellence, Scotland’s national curriculum policy statement, having previously been one of the advisers to the Education, Culture and Sport Committee of the Scottish Parliament in connection with its Inquiry into the purposes of education. He recently chaired the Higher Order Skills Excellence Group.

He has served as Vice-Chair of Learning and Teaching Scotland, Depute General Secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland and as a member of the General Teaching Council.

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Jim Goodall  is an independent education consultant.  He was a member of Inspiring Scotland’s 14-19 Fund Advisory Group and he is an Associate Tutor for the Tapestry Partnership.

From the time of the reorganisation of Scottish local government in 1996 until May 2010, he was Head of Education Services with Clackmannanshire Council. For two years during that time he led a national development programme while on secondment to Learning & Teaching (Scotland).

Previously he has been a teacher and Principal Teacher of Biology, a staff tutor and advisor in a number of major curriculum and professional development programmes and one of Strathclyde Regional Council’s Chief Education Advisers.

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Dr Roger Talbot is Principal of Roger Talbot Associates, an independent consultancy specialising in helping clients across all sectors become “low carbon ready” by aligning their aspirations and actions with the goals and operating principles of the low carbon economy and with the wider strategic objectives of sustainability.

Prior to launching RTAL, Roger was founder and Managing Director of strategic sustainability consultants, Thirdwave, a position he held from 1998 to the end of 2004.

He was formerly a Senior Lecturer and Founder-Director of the Edinburgh Sustainable Architecture Unit at the University of Edinburgh. He served as Sustainability Policy Adviser to the University of Edinburgh and co-authored the University’s first Sustainability Policy. He was for eight years a member of the Scottish Executive’s Building Standards Advisory Committee (BSAC) and Chair of BSAC’s Research Sub-Committee.

He was a member of the Lord Provost’s Commission on Sustainable Development for the City of Edinburgh and author of the City of Edinburgh’s inaugural Sustainability Charter.

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What We Advocate

1. That meeting the great 21^st Century challenges explicit in the idea of “sustainability” demands an absolute focus on high level thinking,  learning and leadership skills.  We call this Learning for Sustainability.
2. That the 21^st Century learning objectives built into the Curriculum for Excellence can be effectively achieved by integrated,  interdisciplinary studies developed around key sustainability ideas.  We call this Learning through Sustainability.
3. That sustainable development education is an ideal vehicle for interdisciplinary learning and can be used to bring relevance, depth, challenge and breadth to 21^st Century learning generally. Developing young learners as global citizens through sustainable development education is a key context for learning within Curriculum for Excellence but appropriate projects remain at a premium.

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What We Do

The Sustainable Learning Partnership specialises in developing exemplar interdisciplinary projects for schools – based on substantive,  real world problems of both local and global significance – which present rich and demanding challenges to young learners at the interface between sustainability and 21st Century Learning skills.

Each project is designed to provide a context that directly supports Learning for Sustainability, in line with General Teaching Council for Scotland‘s new professional standards whilst recognising the exceptional value of real world sustainability issues and challenges as vehicles for identifying, acquiring and applying those higher order skills which are at the heart of 21^st century learning. Our projects bring real-world relevance, wider contexts and interdisciplinary thinking to learning, teaching and assessment not only in traditional science disciplines but right across the curriculum, as well as in cross-disciplinary settings.

The Sustainable Learning Partnership has been commissioned to develop its Learning for Sustainability programme specifically for application within the Curriculum for Excellence in Scottish Schools but is able to offer quality services across all jurisdictions and across all education and training sectors.

Our capabilities and expertise include:

• Developing and hosting on-line services to support and enhance the education and training sector
• Producing and publishing curriculum and educational resources incorporating major elements of 21st Century Learning and Learning for Sustainability.
• Providing teacher professional development services.
• Developing materials that illustrate where and how higher order skills can be integrated into effective curriculum building and lesson delivery
• Creating performances and assessments that can evaluate these skills and that create incentives for these abilities to be more widely taught as a regular part of the curriculum
• Helping teachers and school leadership develop an understanding of how these capacities may develop over time.

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