I attended the conference as a guest of the British GUAG group led by Liverpool World Centre. I am a teacher educator working at Liverpool John Moore’s University in Liverpool and have been involved in teaching and teacher education for over 30 years. I was interested in the conference focus as I am a geographer and the goals all link directly to my subject areas and topics that are taught in out secondary schools.
The speakers on the first day were very informative and interesting, listening on headphones made me realise what it is like for pupils in our classrooms who have limited skills in the language being spoken and made me reconsider how I integrate these children into my teaching.
The session on the textbook was enlightening, the idea is exemplary to give all European schools a shared understanding of our history. There will certainly be sections of the book that I will use in my teaching especially the excellent maps and diagrams. I felt that as a complete text there was a huge amount of factual knowledge so would not envisage it being used as a core text but something to dip in and out of during the course of teaching certain aspects of European history.
The workshops were the most interesting part of the conference. They showed how the different goals had been interpreted by different countries and supplied the teachers attending with lots of practical examples of how to achieve the different goals. It was excellent to be able to talk to colleagues from different countries and share good practice. I made lots of excellent contacts during the 3 days who I will continue to work with now I have returned home.
I will be working with my student teachers across the humanities subjects to deliver some of the teaching programmes and they will help with the evaluation of the resources using the assessment framework discussed at the conference. I am also arranging for a couple of history colleagues to review the textbook for use in British schools.
I found the conference inspiring and was very pleased I got the chance to take part in the project which I think will have a positive impact on teaching sustainable goals in our classrooms.
Helen Gadsby, Senior Geography Lecturer on the PGCE Course at Liverpool John Moore’s University