Shenzhen is a city of immigrants, setting up a prime example of urbanization and rapid economic growth in China. It is one of the Special Economic Zones situated in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) Region under the Reform and Openness programs which have operated since 1978, concentrating on local political economic investment and growth (Lin, 2017). Read more
In this blog post, I aim to explore the issue of equity in higher education in mainland China from the perspective of sustainable development. The reason why I want to discuss this topic is that equity has become a worldwide concern in higher education system. Recent years, China has made stable progress in higher education conforming to the trend of the world. Read more
Education for sustainability has developing into an important theme which gets increasing attention from all over the world in recent years. Generally speaking, education for sustainability aims to enable each citizen to acquire the attitudes and skills to build a sustainable future together. That means when practising education for sustainability, people should not only include core issues of sustainable development such as climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty eradication and sustainable consumption into teaching content, but also try to promote learners’ competencies like critical thinking, imagining future scenarios and making decisions in a collaborative way in order to let them live responsible lives and address complex global challenges (http://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development). Read more
In May 2014 community of practice participants met to discuss the UoM Sustainable World Grand Challenge pilot event. The event was piloted in order to gain insights into how to approach future ‘grand challenge’ signature events. The Sustainable World event is one of three potential ‘grand challenge’ events being considered as an offer to all UG students at the University. The first year event will address sustainability issues, and in the successive two years the topics will be ‘social justice’ and ‘work place ethics’. Read more
I am an English teacher teaching young learners (under 12) English in an educational institution in Taiwan. Before I studied the MA course, Educating for Sustainability, in the University of Manchester, I had never paid attention to sustainability issues in my daily life. Moreover, I had no idea about the importance of EFS (Educating for Sustainability). Teaching sustainability was totally new for me as the curriculum we had in Taiwan did not focus on this area. Thus, I did not understand why language teachers should teach sustainability and what and how it might influence the young learners in my context. Read more