Issue Analysis
Pupils practise taking a local issue apart.
How long
Two periods of about 45 minutes to an hour, with at least a day between them so pupils can do the writing at home.
Who it is for
Upper secondary.
How it is taught
Issue analysis, class discussion.
What you need
(1) Newspaper cuttings, pamphlets and notices about one local sustainability issue. (2) The list of thirteen analysis questions below.
What it is for
To give pupils practice analysing a real sustainability issue in their own area.
The words
Spatial distribution, longevity, risk, unintended consequences.
The manual states these. What it does not state is not here.
The manual leaves this session untitled. The name is ours, taken from what the session says it is for; everything below is the manual's.
How it runs
The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
-
01
Pick an issue the town is actually arguing about, and collect what has been written on it — newspaper cuttings, municipal notices, pamphlets from either side. -
02
Set the assignment. -
03
The assignment: you work for the municipality. This issue comes up for decision in the next few months. From the thirteen questions below, choose the five that matter most to it, and write a two-page brief your supervisor can take into the meeting. -
04
Pupils read the material and pick their five questions. -
05
Lead a discussion on which five they chose, and why. The disagreement is the useful part. -
06
Pupils write the brief at home. -
07
Read the briefs, then prepare a class discussion on two or three of the thirteen questions — for example, what is wrong with the solutions being proposed?
Safety
- Not applicable.
Talking about it
Discussion points, worked examples and the handouts the manual prints with this session.
Alternative assignment
If no local issue will serve, give the class an invented scenario instead — and say plainly that it is invented. Pupils will have to reason from it, or go and find data elsewhere, rather than work from facts they can check on the way home.
Scenario one. A waste dealer from a rich country offers the city 2,000 crore rupees to take shiploads of electronic waste, to be dumped on empty land beside the existing dump.
Scenario two. The city wants to build a water treatment plant. At present the supply is untreated and people fall ill from it, especially infants, small children and the old.
Scenario three. A builder asks the municipality to sell him an empty plot inside the city for an office block. The neighbours object: it is the only open ground near them, and they use it. The municipality needs the money.
More from the manual
The thirteen issue analysis questions
1. What caused this, historically and now — physical, social or economic?
2. How big an area does it cover, how is it spread, and how long has it been going on? 3. What are the risks to the natural environment? 4. What are the risks to people? 5. What does it cost, and who bears the cost? 6. What solutions are already running or being proposed? 7. What is standing in their way? 8. What values are in play or being overridden — economic, ecological, political, aesthetic? 9. Which group would be worse off, or would pay, if these solutions went ahead? 10. Where does it stand politically? 11. What other issues is it tied to? 12. What could you change in your own day-to-day life that would make it smaller? 13. And beyond your own life, what is the next thing you could actually do?
Ending it
How the manual closes this session, and where it can go next.
How to end it
What did you learn about how to take a local issue apart?
How you know it worked
Write the scoring guide or rubric first, and mark the briefs against it. (See the brief on assessing pupil learning with rubrics in this series.)
If it goes well
Invite someone who works at the municipality to come and talk about the issue — and to listen to what the class thinks.
Where this comes from
Bridge the Gap is a compilation. This is what the manual records for this session.
McKeown-Ice, R. and Dendinger, R. 2008. Teaching, learning, and assessing environmental issues. Journal of Geography, Vol. 107, pp. 161 – 166.
Before you start sets out where the compendium as a whole comes from.
Next
Where to go from here.
Next session
Issue Analysis: the JigsawSustainable Development, 4 of 11The theme
Sustainable Development11 sessions and the background readingAll eight themes
Teach43 sessions across 8 themesUnderstand the data
- How to read environmental dataSeven questions that catch most of the ways a true number becomes a false claim.
- Measured or modelled?The first question to ask of any environmental number, and the one most often skipped.
- What is a reporting floor?When an instrument returns its own lowest value, that is not a measurement of nothing.