Embedding environment,sustainability and place into education through teacher-researcher collaborations: The Morecambe Bay Curriculum’s innovative co-design project

Abstract

Embedding sustainability, environment and place into education has been recognised as a key strategy for addressing the climate crisis and providing constructive hope for the future. This paper reports on a project to co-design curriculum resources which brought together the expertise of teachers and academics to achieve this aim. By combining creative pedagogical skills with cutting edge research knowledge, sixteen place-based resource packs were developed. These go beyond the teaching of factual knowledge and embed environmental issues within a range of curriculum subjects, developing pupils’ relationships with their locality. The scope covered sciences, humanities, creative arts and vocational subject areas across all phases of education. By exploring the experiences and reflections of teachers and academics involved, this paper demonstrates the importance of developing positive relationships, built on trust and empathy, which enabled a horizontal rather than hierarchical way of working. Participants recognised and valued each other’s expertise and used this to co-produce materials which could have real-life social value in our locality. This process has the potential to be transferable to other settings and the paper concludes with key reflections which could support the development of similar projects in the future.

Introduction

Embedding sustainability, environment and place into education has been recognised as a key strategy for addressing the climate crisis and providing hope for the future (UNESCO, 2024a). For education to hold the power of change, it needs to connect with localised issues, which are relevant to the community. This involves embedding not just knowledge but developing emotional connections to place (Adams et al., 2024).

Hope is a complex construct and there are concerns around its relationship to positive environmental futures. On the one hand, hope can be a crucial step to achieving agency and avoiding the pessimism prevalent when studying the climate crisis (Lueck, 2007). However, hope may be present in those with little regard for environmental issues who are either unaware of, or in denial about, the crisis (Ojala, 2008). The concept of hope we seek to develop is therefore ‘constructive hope’, as defined by Ojala (2012), whose work builds on the seminal theories of Snyder (2000). Hope in this sense can be activated when individuals and groups are able to set shared goals for the future, plan actions to address current issues and have the motivation to put these into practice. Constructive hope, developed through a joint focus on knowledge, values and actions, is therefore a crucial aim for our project and can hold the key to encouraging both optimism and action in this time of crisis.

In Morecambe Bay, a biodiverse, coastal region in the North-west of England, an innovative movement is exploring how place-based education and sustainability can be embedded into curriculum teaching. The Morecambe Bay Curriculum (MBC) is an educator-led movement, which supports teachers to weave sustainability, environment, place and hope through their day-to-day practice (Garrett & Nelkon, 2024). Since, 2019, educators have collaborated to explore how environmental issues, linked to social, cultural, historical and geographical features of the Bay, can be prioritised within their delivery of the curriculum. Local teachers recognise that environmental education should build pupils’ connections to their locality and encourage care, with the ambition that ‘every young person can feel empowered as a change-maker’ (MBC, 2024, p. 4).

In 2024, educators and academics collaborated to co-design curriculum resources, which embed themes of sustainability, environment and place into specific subjects and phases of education, with a view to supporting constructive hope (MBC, 2024). Sixteen resource packs were created, drawing on problem-based learning, debate, outdoor experiences and arts-based methods to deliver curriculum objectives in innovative, locally-relevant ways. These followed a head, heart and hands pedagogy (Tan et al., 2022), where pupils explore local issues and consider potential solutions with the aim of developing their agency to act.

This paper will explore how participants experienced their involvement in the co-design process. The project had a positive impact on both teachers and academics, improving their motivation and providing the space to think creatively about education. Our story is important to share because of its transfer potential:

The MBC project is an incredible, important and ambitious project that could act as a trailblazer across both the country and world. (Academic)

This paper offers advice on how other such projects could be designed in the future, by drawing on first-hand experiences recounted by the participants.

Curricular Possibilities

Education has long been recognised as an essential part of the solution to the climate crisis (UNESCO, 2023). It has the power to change behaviours and attitudes on an individual level and to provide innovative solutions through new ways of thinking and working (Reid, 2019). However, whilst the potential power of education is generally accepted, progress has been slow, with debates between policy-makers preventing action and governments failing to make radical changes to outdated curricula (Perkins, 2024; Reid, 2019). Environmental education remains a low priority in national and international agendas (UNESCO, 2024b).

This is perhaps not surprising, given teachers themselves frequently feel unprepared to deliver the subject (Oversby, 2015). In England, 70% of teachers have not received sufficient training to confidently deliver the challenging topics of environmental education and 79% do not feel they are currently teaching about the ecological crisis in a relevant and meaningful way (Teach the Future, 2022).

In the English National Curriculum, there is some environmental knowledge siloed into secondary geography and science curricula (Department for Education, 2013). By restricting the scope to these subjects, we potentially miss the value that the arts, humanities and social sciences can offer (Moula et al., 2023; Sabra & Al-Moaz, 2022). UNESCO (2024a) claim that simply teaching factual knowledge is insufficient for changing behaviours and attitudes, a point supported by Huoponen’s (2023) research which failed to find a correlation between learning scientific facts and pro-environmental actions. Advocates for environmental education stress that values, attitudes, behaviours and ways of living need to be integrated (UNESCO, 2024a). Limiting environmental education to solely technical and instrumental learning ‘may perpetuate ecological issues by oversimplifying complex issues and neglecting broader systemic issues’ (Perkins, 2024, p. 511), thus reducing the capacity for radical change. Additionally, the learning of facts can reduce climate change to stark numerical data which could trigger feelings of helplessness and eco-anxiety, again leading to inaction (Hickman, 2019).

To address this challenge, alternative approaches to environmental education have emerged, many of which have influenced our work. Researchers in Scandinavia have suggested that participatory approaches and a rethinking of traditional didactic teaching is necessary, so that an understanding of environmental issues can emerge through the dialogic practice of the educational encounter (Öhman & Öhman, 2012). This aligns with calls for children to take more active roles in responding to the scientific, social, ethical and political complexity of the problem (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2019). Our co-design approach allowed for teachers and academics to democratically negotiate and co-construct their own understandings of this issue, using this as the starting point to design of activities which allow pupils to research, debate and identify locally relevant solutions to relevant challenges. This reflects the findings of previous studies, which have shown the value of using real-life problems to develop students’ knowledge and understanding of environmental issues (Rahman et al., 2020) and improve their attitudes towards the environment (Genc, 2015).

Our strategy to embed environmental education is to focus on place-based approaches, enabling students to recognise the complexity of environmental and social issues within their locality. This acknowledges that environmental knowledge is situated and seeks to engage young people with issues immediately relevant to them. Smith (2007) highlighted the potential of place-based approaches to support children in developing ‘a sense of their own agency and collective capacity to alter their […] communities for the better’ (Smith, 2007, p. 192). This connects with our aim of developing constructive hope through a solutions-driven approach, which is enacted in the co-designed resources by allowing pupils to explore issues such as energy poverty in their local area and research sustainable solutions to this (MBC, 2024).

Place-based education involves the immersion of learners in their locality, developing understandings of its geography, history, heritage and culture (Yemini et al., 2023). For environmental education, it offers a meaningful context for pupils to understand the impacts of climate change and develop personal relationships with place. By experiencing where they live and understanding its history, learners may be prompted to care and take positive action to protect it, triggering learning across cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural domains (Hernandez Gonzales, 2023). However, place-based approaches do not necessarily reflect National Curriculum aims, possibly compromising teacher autonomy (Adams et al., 2024).

This is a complex field to navigate. Within the neoliberal context, teachers are judged in relation to subject-specific outcomes within a culture of accountability and a focus on standardised assessments (De Lissavoy, 2017). Our curriculum co-design project approaches this pragmatically, recognising the need to address National Curriculum objectives but allowing the space and licence to imagine creative, alternative ways of delivering these.

Our work combines teachers’ and academics’ expertise, addressing two key issues from the literature: teachers’ lack of confidence in delivering environmental themes and the failure of policy makers to embed sustainability meaningfully across subject areas. By drawing upon research from university academics, teachers can feel confident that they are delivering cutting-edge environmental knowledge informed by experts. Together, teachers and academics are then empowered to design initiatives that ensure learning is relevant and engaging, key features of any successful intervention (Monroe et al., 2019). The project offered the reflective space to imagine and explore alternative educational approaches, which is often not possible within the constraints of day-to-day teaching.

The Co-design Process

The MBC’s curriculum co-design project matched 22 local teachers with 18 university academics, generating 16 place-based resources. The teachers brought skills of curriculum design, an understanding of age phases and subject-specific knowledge. This was combined with academics’ research in place-based and environmental topics to create evidence-informed resources. Most worked in teacher-academic pairs with a few collaborating in small groups.

Subject areas were selected by our steering group of lead educators and spanned the sciences, arts and humanities for Early Years (Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design), Primary (history, geography, science and art) and Secondary (history, geography, science, design technology and PSHE) contexts. In addition, four vocational Further Education subjects were chosen: construction, tourism, agriculture and sports turf management. A final resource for SEND was developed, addressing pupils’ needs when engaging with place-based learning experiences, focussing on visual story techniques and accessibility. Each resource contains:

• Specialist knowledge for teachers drawing on the academic’s research.

• A pedagogical commitment to Head (knowledge), Heart (socio-emotional values) and Hands (skills, action and critical thinking).

• National Curriculum links and expectations.

• Adaptations, for example, for cross-curricular work or alternative contexts.

• Lesson plans, schemes, sources and worksheets, hosted on a virtual learning environment.

Teachers and academics had 5 days to develop resources, funded by Lancaster University. Two days were facilitated by the MBC team whilst participants worked independently and flexibly across the remaining three. The facilitated days included inspiration from experts, tasks to build relationships and shape ideas, and space for discussion, reflection and developing a sense of community. The process is summarised in Figure 1 and specific aspects will be referred to when discussing participants’ experiences.

Figure 1.

Overview of co-design process.

Participatory Frameworks

Driven by participatory principles, the technical knowledge of academics combined with the community-situated knowledge of educators should result in more meaningful outcomes for all involved (Cook & Nation, 2016). However, both teachers and academics needed to be empowered to contribute on an equal footing, so that all participants could be part of a process of positive change (Jacobi et al., 2022). Irazabel et al. (2015, p. 29) suggest that ‘collaboration and reciprocity’ are key to successful cooperative research, and that ‘permanent spaces of dialogue’ must be facilitated. Our process enabled them to work together in both scaffolded and independent ways, providing spaces for open discussion.

Huybrechts et al. (2017) highlight the potential of co-design projects to challenge political norms and become sites of creativity and critique. Our project achieved this by extending national expectations into the themes of environment, sustainability, place and hope, which are largely absent from the current curriculum frameworks in England. We followed the advice that ‘community engagement should be actively linked to identifiable needs of both the university and the community’ and have ‘a clear benefit for both’ (Bidandi et al., 2021, p. 2). Educators in the community were able to access expert research knowledge that would give them the confidence to develop resources and academics could ensure their own place-based research had a tangible impact in their community.

Our research aims to understand the experiences of participants through the micro-level relationships played out between teachers and researchers. However, whilst participants bring their own personal understandings of place-based environmental education, these are inevitably shaped by the complexities of the educational systems in which they work and will be further evolved by their participation in a community of practice (Hundal et al.,2014). As such, this paper takes a framing perspective, in which individual and social influences, enablers and barriers are recognised. The analysis takes a ‘persons-in-context’ approach to understanding how participants negotiated competing demands, tensions and opportunities provided by their engagement with the project.

Methods

Qualitative data collection methods were employed to explore the perceptions of those involved in the process, prioritising the voices of teachers and academics. Wood (2017, p. 695) highlights ‘the need for a dynamic and flexible research methodology, based on relationship, reflection and recognition’. Reflections within the 6-month project involved:

• Focus groups and individual interviews (N = 12).

• Written reflections completed after the two facilitated days and at the end of the project (N = 36).

• Short video reflections captured during the facilitated days (N = 8).

As the aim was to discover lessons from the experiences, key themes were identified across accounts that could provide insights for those attempting similar projects. This data-driven, inductive process allowed us to be open to the diversity of experiences and recognise contrasting perceptions in a challenging, time-pressured process. Whilst the themes identified were common across participants, it was also important to acknowledge and explore outliers. This paper therefore aims to present a sincere account of what occurred without making naïve assumptions about the ease of building and developing partnerships over short time periods.

Findings and Discussion

The findings from the research span three levels, reminiscent of the inner circles of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems model: the motivational benefits which individuals gained from involvement, reflecting their interests and the desire to contribute to educational innovation; interpersonal relationships and how the process valued their reciprocal contributions, helping to develop empathy between them; and the wider community of practice which was created and how this enabled individuals to feel part of a like-minded group (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Curricular co-design project: participant involvement across themes.

Although these ‘levels’ are presented separately, it should be noted that the ecological systems theory stresses the interconnected and overlapping nature of these divides. Additionally, institutional constraints necessarily provide a backdrop to the personal and social factors and are referred to as appropriate.

Individual Level: Enhancing Motivation Through Autonomy and Freedom

The project offered a chance to design educational resources which reflected the MBC’s values and which crucially aligned with participants’ personal interests and aims for education. One teacher, recognising the importance of the MBC themes of sustainability and place, explained:

I wanted to link curriculum learning to place and sustainability. But most importantly for me was to increase opportunities for my class to enjoy our local beaches, learn about them and care about them. (Teacher)

Another teacher highlighted how the aims aligned with her vision of sustainability as interdisciplinary, reflecting findings from the literature.

It’s this beautiful opportunity to highlight the interdisciplinarity of sustainability - it’s not something that just sits in the premise of science and geography classrooms but it can sit across all subjects so it’s this beautiful theme owned by everybody. (Teacher)

Involvement in the project therefore gave scope for participants to pursue their own personal goals and put their visions into practice.

For academics, the project offered a chance to see their research used in new, meaningful ways. One spoke about ‘the desire to make a tangible impact on real world education by bringing my academic expertise to the table’ whilst another reflected on their personal belief in ‘the purpose of universities to make social good’. The project enabled them to demonstrate the impact of their research creatively whilst providing a worthwhile and meaningful outcome.

Situating my broader academic knowledge in local landscapes was a benefit and I loved trying out the teaching ideas in outdoor settings and being creative with designing lesson plans. (Academic)

As those involved had volunteered, they saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to educational change. When reflecting on the decision to participate, one academic stated:

It was the chance to try something new, be part of creating a valuable resource and process for pupils and teachers in our area and - hopefully! - develop a culture of education that feels more fit for current and future challenges than the one we have at present. (Academic)

This quote echoes Huybrechts et al.’s (2017) assertion that co-design projects can be sites to challenge existing norms and work towards a better future. This manifested itself through greater autonomy over curriculum design and a facilitated reflective space. For some participants, these aspects were what they craved in their daily roles and the project helped reignite their personal motivation. Comments such as ‘this is what I went into teaching for’ demonstrated how they felt free from some of their usual constraints:

I think sometimes… I’m wary… you kind of put some of your ideals under a bit of a shade because you don’t want to be overly optimistic or overly idealist and this was an opportunity where you could just go for it – and that was wonderful! (Teacher)

The task itself contributed to this sense of freedom, as ‘creating a resource’ was sufficiently broad that participants could interpret it ways that were personally meaningful and relevant. As a first iteration, it gave licence for creative thinking, and although the overviews follow a common structure, the resources which sit behind them on the Virtual Learning Environment took different many forms.

The open-ended nature of this task, whilst freeing, did pose challenges. Some participants reflected on the difficulty of narrowing ideas down and expressed the desire to know ‘what a good one looks like’. Now that an initial set of resources exists, sharing examples will be possible. However, retaining autonomy over their outputs was a key motivator for participants and future replications should not limit creative freedom.

From across the data, the opportunity to think creatively, take control of the project and fulfil long-term goals related to educational practice shone through. However, for one teacher, when asked about their motivation, they explained that they were ‘told to take part’ by someone in their institution. It is perhaps unsurprising that their experience was less positive. This person joined the project late so missed the initial facilitated day where relationships were built (see below). This, coupled with a lack of communication in their team, led the experience to feel ‘overwhelming and confusing’. Contrasting this with the experiences of others, where their involvement aligned with their values, the process had been carefully scaffolded and time had been spent building relationships, reiterates the importance of planning to support the engagement and sense of autonomy of participants.

Interpersonal Level: Complementarity of Knowledge, Skills and Expertise

Listen carefully to each other, be guided strongly by what the teacher knows about what is appropriate for the age group and in relation to the practicality of in-class or out-of-class activities. (Academic)

Bringing teachers and academics together was key to the co-design process and pairings needed to be balanced. The MBC’s steering group of leading local teachers played an integral role in identifying and pairing teachers and researchers with shared interests, where the expertise of both could be valued. As the above quote demonstrates, it was crucial that academics recognised the importance of the teacher in this partnership, despite previous research suggesting there could be a potential hierarchical (mis)conception that academic knowledge was more important (Irazabel et al., 2015).

In most cases this process of pairing teachers and academics proved successful and participants reflected on the positive nature of their partnerships:

Whoever did the match-making did a grand job. We had sufficient common ground to get established quickly, and yet we had sufficient complementarity to add value in very different ways. (Academic)

Our initial assumption behind the pairings was that each partner would combine their expertise and knowledge so that together, the collaboration would result in something better than could be achieved individually. Recognising this balance of skills and knowledge was crucial to a successful partnership. From the teachers’ perspective, they were appreciative of the academic expertise of their partner, viewing this as an excellent source of knowledge to enhance the content of their resources:

I like the fact that she had the greater knowledge of art, so when we were talking about sculpture, she’d go ‘oh well this artist does that’ – having that academic knowledge to draw on, not just the primary teaching knowledge, was fantastic. (Teacher)

It’s been fantastic to have [my academic’s] input into this because I could literally go ‘wouldn’t it be great if we had a source that told us what people thought about train travel at the time or how long it took to cross the Bay’ and within moments he would go, ‘well do you know what? There was a diarist who used to love going on the trains, who was like the Portillo of the time and he’s got this diary entry of what it’s like to go on the train for the first time across Morecambe Bay’. And that’s amazing! (Teacher)

Teachers also saw the process as a learning experience, acknowledging the personal benefit they gained from being involved.

It has been good to stretch my own personal understanding of what sits within our subject. Working with an academic definitely adds knowledge and pushes my own thinking and ideas. (Teacher)

Complementing this recognition, academics also reflected on the value teachers brought to the project in terms of their understanding of curriculum and how to pitch their subject. They appreciated teachers’ expertise in pedagogy, age-related expectations and the ability to intuitively know what would work in their own context.

I was tending to do the background work and finding research and resources. And then [she] focused on how do we put this into a framework or lesson plan and connect it to the national curriculum and all these sorts of things that are far beyond the sort of stuff that I have to hand. (Academic)

The academic here was recognising and valuing the teacher’s curriculum knowledge with which they themselves were unfamiliar, in the same way as the teachers perceived the academic knowledge. Rather than academic knowledge being prized above all else, the university staff understood that since the resource was being developed for the schools to use, they should defer to and ‘be guided by’ the teacher when making decisions:

I must say I relied very much on [my teacher], who knew her group; she immediately thought about what could work or can’t work with that age. And that’s really helpful because I really would not know that. But I was surprised, actually, at how much those students can do. It was definitely learning for me. (Academic)

In contrast to previous research with universities and communities (Wood, 2017), both partners were able to recognise and value what the other brought to the collaboration. This was facilitated from the start, with tasks that allowed them to share their expertise and interests. A key element to the project’s success was to prioritise the teacher’s expertise so that what was created would have the greatest chance to work in practice:

We could see how she could meaningfully integrate this into what she was doing, so it did feel like something real and usable, rather than just going through a sort of hypothetical [task]. That’s the danger with these things, you come up with some great ideas that could be built into a classroom activity, but how practical and realizable they might be given all the pressures and everything, but it did feel that what we were doing, could actually really happen. (Academic)

Another academic added to this, reflecting that this process was part of becoming ‘academically and intellectually humble’, acknowledging that simply publishing research papers was not the sole way to see genuine impact. She recognised the value of ‘hands-on practical experiences and the wealth of knowledge that [my teacher] brought to the project’, stressing the ‘synthesis between practitioners and academic researchers that is so important’ (Academic). Academic knowledge could be passed to the teachers, so that they could apply it, thus the relationship was horizontal rather than hierarchical.

It isn’t always easy to know how to share knowledge in co-creative and collaborative fashions and working with [my teacher] was a great insight into how to share knowledge with an educator co-creatively, let them take possession of it and put it to use and feel engaged with it. (Academic)

Interpersonal Level: Understanding Each Other’s Contexts to Develop Empathy

When reflecting on their experiences with the project, the most substantial theme which emerged was the positive relationships developed between the academic and teacher participants, despite coming from different personal and professional backgrounds. Collaborations between universities and community partners can be challenging to manage and there were issues to negotiate, including overcoming misconceptions and developing shared language. However, the relationships built between participants helped to break down some of these potential power dynamics and enabled the partnerships to be collaborative, building on empathy, trust and shared values.

In their review of research into teacher-researcher collaborations, Jowett et al. (2024) highlighted the importance of appropriate resourcing to support the project and the buy-out of 5 full days was crucial to its success. Additionally, the process was designed to allow participants control over how they worked together, rather than dictating this to them. A key strategy which supported these relationships was to visit each other’s place of work and develop a deeper understanding of the context in which they were working:

[My academic] came and spent an afternoon doing activities with my class. And I came over to the university and […] saw all the stuff that they’re doing up there. So it was a case of putting it in context. She was able to put in context what I do in my life and what I do in my classroom and I could see what it’s like in the university. (Teacher)

This was particularly important for the academics, who were able to understand the context of who they would be designing resources for and gained an insight into what the pupils might be able to achieve.

Going into the primary school level has been tremendously rewarding for me, to get that sense of how people engage with this subject from the very early years, and the kinds of experiences that they have. (Academic)

For some, it was the visit to the school which enabled some of the barriers to be broken down. One such barrier was the challenge of translating complex, higher-level concepts for young children. From the position of the academics, working with those in Early Years and Primary was a big leap and did cause some anxiety at times. As one academic reflected in the early stages of the project:

Translating my experience and ideas into this context, without really knowing what is taught in schools at that age, was very difficult. (Academic)

However, once they could understand each other’s context more fully, they were able to envisage how the research knowledge could combine with practical, pedagogical knowledge to create something useable. By the end of the project, the same academic stressed the importance of understanding the context through first-hand experience:

The highlight was overcoming a huge perceived barrier, applying quite complex ideas and concepts to early years contexts. We prepared the ground for this through open discussion and sharing, but it was the site visit and practical exploration that allowed it to happen. (Academic)

On an interpersonal level, the visits also allowed empathy to develop between the pairs as they started to understand the pressures the other was under and recognise the constraints in which they work (Wood, 2017). This links to their institutional context but led to the development of mutual respect on an interpersonal level too:

I went to the school, which was really helpful just to understand the setting they were in. Being in the school environment suddenly made me orient towards, ‘Blimey, yes, there’s all these things that she’s trying to do, all these plates she’s trying to spin’. And while we were talking she was saying, ‘Oh I’m really worried about what’s going on in the class because they’re really lively today and there’s a classroom assistant, they’re trying to cope and I don’t know what I’m going come back to’ so it opened my eyes. (Academic)

Social Level: Sense of Belonging Through Feeling Part of a Community

It has been absolutely inspiring and uplifting to be part of this group and to be working with my partner and I hope this will be inspiring and uplifting to be doing the work. (Academic)

When exploring how the participants experienced the project, the passion of the teams manifested itself in shared goals that went beyond the scope of the individual pairs. The emphasis in the reflections was very much on the value of ‘being part of the group’, which engendered a sense of belonging to the whole project. This facilitated the ability to collaborate as a pair, but also as part of this wider community of like-minded individuals.

I think it’s just been a real privilege to work in sort of a group that’s got so much knowledge and so much passion and all working towards similar goals. (Teacher)

However, this mutual respect did not occur by accident. The first facilitated session provided the opportunity for each person to share their interests and areas of expertise, so that these could be recognised and valued by others. Starting the process by explicitly emphasising the strengths of everyone involved engendered trust across the participants.

Bringing all the participants together partway through the process was also crucial in supporting this sense of shared community. On the second facilitated day (see Figure 1), all pairs presented their ideas, creating a poster which summarised their thinking so far and delivering a short verbal presentation to the full group. This helped to see how they fit into a wider project and provided inspiration in terms of progressing their own ideas to the next stage.

Knowing that there are lots of other individuals/groups all aiming to do a similar thing helped us in feeling part of a bigger ‘design’. (Teacher)Seeing the wide array of inspirational and imaginative partnerships gave a sense of being part of a community. (Teacher)It was amazing how many ideas had natural links and similar ways of thinking behind them. (Academic)

The second facilitated day also helped to overcome any anxiety which participants might feel about the task ahead. The ambitious scope of the project was recognised from the start, but because each participant was contributing just a small section to the larger whole, the sense of responsibility was distributed and felt more manageable.

We are all working towards a common goal yet not having to carry everything ourselves. (Academic)

In particular, there was huge value in seeing ideas in progress. This helped to solidify the understanding of those who may have felt unsure about what they were aiming towards.

It was when we started to see all the contributions from each pair that it started to feel real. We really got a sense of what could be achieved and it was great to be part of this. (Academic)

It was great to collaborate with all the different groups and explore others’ ideas […] and then discuss ways that we could potentially benefit each other’s projects mutually. (Teacher)

Those who were part of this project therefore held similar beliefs about the importance of shared values and how this supported their involvement.

I feel like from the time when I walked into the very first [session], I feel it was like coming home to be around a group of people who are similarly minded so just that collective energy is what I’m going to take away. (Teacher)

Conclusions

Knowledge is never spent and is an inexhaustible resource – it’s also the kind of resource that isn’t depleted or diminished when it’s shared, but rather it increased. (Academic)

This project has demonstrated how teachers and academics, by developing understandings of each other’s roles and expertise, can build collaborative relationships based on complementary skills and knowledge. These relationships proved crucial in co-creating educational resources which demonstrate localised possibilities for embedding the themes of sustainability and place into everyday teaching in creative ways. The outputs demonstrate the role that university research expertise can play in enhancing educational materials, but the process allowed this knowledge to be transformed into something meaningful for and by teachers.

Whilst the outputs are place-specific, the model and process can potentially be transferrable. From the experiences of the participants involved in this project, we would suggest the following advice to anyone considering this:

1. Ensure that both partners can share their own interests and expertise through supported tasks at the start of the project. This helped teams get to know and value each other and laid the foundation for collaboration.

2. Provide support throughout the process but also allow space for pairs to autonomously decide how best to work together and manage their time.

3. The knowledge which both parties bring should be equally valued in a horizontal relationship. Academics need to recognise the teachers’ skills and allow them to lead where necessary.

4. There was significant benefit to be gained from visiting each other’s places of work and understanding each other’s contexts. This helped to break down potential and perceived barriers.

5. Having shared values and visions and working in a group of like-minded people who pursue the same aims is crucial for building a community of practice.

Of these aspects, the final one might present the most significant challenge for a new project. The MBC has been driven by the voices of teachers for 6 years and we have a well-developed set of shared aims and principles about how best to embed place and sustainability in education. Whilst MBC members are now able to clearly articulate these and feel ownership of them, there were several years of work which preceded this and laid the foundations for the current project, which should not be underestimated.

The resources created by the project have been sent to schools all around the Bay but perhaps the biggest challenge is still to come as we attempt to embed these on a wider scale. Indeed, a key ambition of the participants was that these resources should not be prescriptive but could be adapted, shaped and refined by others to suit their own contexts.

The takeaway is I hope that it doesn’t stop here and it’s actually only just starting here. Because in universities you often talk about impact and what I’m really interested in now, is handing over the materials to everyone out there to see what’s been done with it and what impact it has - so I think for me it’s only really just begun. (Academic)

As a facilitator of the project, I share this hope and reflect on the experience as one of joy that has provided clear pathways for action. Whilst it was inevitably a challenge to coordinate the delivery of diverse resources, the passion and drive of everyone involved was overwhelming and reflects the spirit of the MBC. As one participant reflected, ‘I feel energised by the hope and optimism that this project brings.’ At a time where teachers and academics are both under such pressures, their involvement provided the space to recapture their own motivation for education.

I see great value in the meeting of minds, pooling of resources and coming together of motivated participants towards the common goal of improving the lives of our learners. (Academic)