We report on one strand of our work in the EU funded Comenius project SUSTAIN which is developing pedagogic materials aiming to combine the strengths of Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE) with an inquiry-based approach to Education for Sustainable Development. The underlying rationale for this project is the potential of IBSE not only to support the learning of scientific content relevant to ESD, but also to develop the critical inquiry skills necessary to engage with the complexity of decisions about sustainability (Vare and Scott, 2007). In the development of materials, designed for use by teachers and teacher educators, we are using Design-based Research (Cobb et al., 2003) in the iterative devlopment of a sequence of CPD workshops, following which we encourage teachers to develop and apply ideas within their own school settings.

Our focus is on Inquiry, and particularly on the use of data in evidence-based arguments. The new National Curriculum for Primary Schools in England does not make specific reference to ESD, which presents us with challenges in terms of teacher engagement in the project. However the curriculum does highlight inquiry skills in a specific programme of study called ‘Working Scientifically’. We have therefore structured our CPD workshops to foreground inquiry using a sequence of activities which move from starting points in science to consider wider environmental, economic and social issues. By starting from an area which is relatively familiar, we thus aim to support teachers to tackle an area in which they feel much less confident.

The sequence of activities we have developed are built around ‘everyday objects’, such as cups and shopping bags. Initial discussion raises awareness of the choices we make about the objects we own and use, which may be driven by fashion, price, functionality, size, availability etc. The activity sequence is in three stages.

Activity 1 involves scientific inquiry into an aspect of the functionality of the object (e.g. which shopping bag is the strongest?)

Activity 2 involves inquiry into the life story of the object considering how and where it was made, what resources were used, what descisions may have been made about its design, and what will happen to it after it has been used (re-use, re-cycling, disposal).

Activity 3 is based on a scenario, which might be presented as a role-play, in which a choice must be made. For example, this might involve the owners of a new shop choosing whether to use plastic or paper carrier bags, or indeed whether to provide any free bags to its customers. The central aim is to create opportunities to draw on inquiry skills to develop, present and evaluate evidence-based arguments.

A central element of the design of this activity sequence is the similarity in the skills of critical inquiry between science and ESD. We recognise that, even for teachers who are familiar with promoting inquiry skills through IBSE, there will be challenges in extending their practice to ESD. We are therefore concerned to explore how teachers can best be supported to make these connections.

To inform the development of our written materials we are therefore including both observations of the reactions of teachers in CPD sessions, and of the ways in which they adapt and use activities in their own classrooms within the Design-research cycle.

Cobb, P., Confrey,J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., and Schauble, L. (2003). Design Experiments in Educational Research, Educational Researcher, 32(5), 9 – 13. Vare, P. & Scott, W. (2007) Learning for a Change: Exploring the relationship between Education and Sustainable Development. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 1 (2), 191-198. Watson, R., Goldsworthy, A. and Wood-Robinson, V. (1999) What Is Not Fair with Investigations. School Science Review, 80 (292) 101-06