For the first time at the Education Show, organisations offering educational resources and information with a global dimension exhibit together. As well as representatives from ActionAid, the British Council, Oxfam, Save the Children and VSO, information from 200 organisations with a global perspective will be on the stand.

“The organisations recognise that they need to get together to share their common and individual messages. There has to be less competition and more collaboration,” says Doug Bourn, director of the Development Education Association (DEA), a national umbrella body for development education.

He believes that global insecurity and the advent of citizenship in the curriculum, which has provided a unique opportunity to develop skills of inquiry and an understanding of how to make a difference, mean teachers need more information and resources on global issues.

Curriculum guidance materials, classroom resources, website materials and materials for assembly, training and advisory services, information on Inset, continuing professional development and initial teacher education and other resources will all be on display.

Prominent will be Get Global!, the first collaborative education project from ActionAid, CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save the Children. Aimed at key stages 3 and 4, it will include a teacher’s guide and video.

A skills-based approach to teaching and assessing active global citizenship, it takes pupils from thinking about issues important to them, through planning and participating in action, to reflecting on their performance and assessing their work. The pack will be launched at the end of March, but pre-publication samples and information will be on show.

Also available is the DEA-produced Citizenship Education: the Global Dimension, a guidance booklet for key stages 3 and 4.

From Save the Children’s education unit comes Partners for Rights, a pack exploring rights and citizenship issues with seven to14-year-olds, drawing on pupils’ experiences in Latin America, the Caribbean and the UK.

The unit will also be unveiling Creative Force, a pack of arts-based exercises for working with young children around issues of violence, and Participation - Spice it up! described as a fun approach to engaging children in serious issues.

The DEA, however, is consciously producing materials in other areas, “because we don’t want to reduce the entire global dimension to citizenship,” says Doug Bourn. Among these are two booklets: Science: The Global Dimension, and Geography: the Global Dimension. The DEA is also producing case studies on global perspectives for use in the initial training of teachers.

Organisations aiming to alert teachers to overseas opportunities include VSO, which will be illustrating what teachers can do to assist the developing countries.

Also promoting international opportunities for mobility, linking and partnerships and vocational and in-service training is the British Council.

Schemes include the Teachers’ International Professional Development programme which gives 2,500 teachers a year the chance to experience excellent educational practice in different countries, and the North-South School Linking scheme ,which promotes partnerships between schools in the UK and those in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

* Two keynote lectures organised by the DEA are to be held at the Institute of Education in London. They are “Citizenship and the Challenge of Global Education” by Professor Audrey Osler on March 11 and “Ask not what your country will do for you but what you will do for the world” by Professor Tim Brighouse on April 3. For free tickets and further information, contact Nikki Pierce at the Institute of Education.Tel: 020 7612 6783;e-mail: n.pierce@ioe.ac.uk

Stand PV192