In January 2021 GTC Scotland launched a refreshed suite of Professional Standards for implementation from August 2021. This refresh gives much greater emphasis to Learning for Sustainability across all of the Professional Standards.
The introduction to each of the standards highlights three underpinning and interdependent themes; professional values, learning for sustainability and leadership.
The refreshed Professional Standards are presented in a more accessible language, they offer professional illustrations, and they provide more structure and coherence as well as a common structure running from the Standard for Provisional Registration through to the Standard for Headship. Each has a brief introduction followed by three main sections. One of these, ‘Being a teacher in Scotland’, is new and this is followed by the two, more familiar but refreshed, sections covering ‘Professional knowledge and understanding’ and ‘Professional skills and abilities’.
The introduction to each of the standards highlights three underpinning and interdependent themes; professional values, learning for sustainability and leadership. In relation to Learning for Sustainability the introduction states;
“Scotland’s Professional Standards actively support, embrace and promote the principles and practices of sustainability across all aspects. This means understanding and valuing environment, culture and heritage, developing a sense of place and belonging to the local, national and global community. It also means having a deep connection to the natural world and understanding the significance of the choices we make - now and in the future.”
Values and Commitment
This increased emphasis on learning for sustainability is more fully developed the new Section 1 ‘Being a teacher in Scotland’. This section explores professional values and professional commitment. Professional values make extensive reference to social justice, children’s rights, equality, diversity and ethical use of authority. Professional commitment speaks of “an approach to learning and learners that is compatible with the aspiration of achieving a sustainable and equitable world” and references additional support, children’s rights, equality and diversity, bias and improved outcomes for all.
Professional values make extensive reference to social justice, children’s rights, equality, diversity and ethical use of authority.
Section 2 (Professional knowledge and understanding) and Section 3 (Professional skills and abilities) present the standard along with professional illustrations. The example below from the standard for middle leadership is one example where the professional illustration explicitly references Learning for Sustainability: 2.1.3 Have an enhanced and critically informed understanding of Curriculum Professional Illustrations – as a middle leader you:
- engage critically with research and developments in curriculum and work collaboratively with others to ensure this learning is creatively applied to improve outcomes for every learner in the learning community where appropriate taking account of Gaelic medium;
- promote and support learning beyond curricular areas/ subject boundaries and of cross curricular subjects, e.g. literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, Learning for Sustainability, interdisciplinary learning and digital literacy;
- enable digital literacy and the use of digital technologies to enhance teaching and learning; and
- ensure effective learning experiences for learners with additional support needs.
As there is coherence across the suite of standards you will see learning for sustainability referenced in part 2.3 of each standard. This is really important as it means that the theme features through all phases of a teacher’s career. There is a Side by Side view of sections 2 and 3 on the GTCS site and this can be helpful to pick out themes such as; sustainability UNCRC, equality and diversity, global citizenship etc. across the Professional Standards
Professional Guides
Alongside the refreshed Professional Standards GTCS has published a number of Professional Guides and include guides on:
- Learning for sustainability
- Equality and diversity
- Rights based approaches
- Additional support; autism, dyslexia and neurodiversity
The refreshed professional standards along with the professional learning guides place; learning for sustainability, children’s rights and global citizenship education, at the heart of what it means to become, to be and to grow as a teacher in Scotland.
Scotland’s five Development Education Centres are vastly experienced in this field and are uniquely placed to provide this professional learning for teachers during their initial teacher education and throughout their careers.
Support from Scotland’s DECs
They reflect the importance of helping young people to make sense of their world, to make ethical decisions and positive life choices, to get on with each other and to consider their impact and interaction with others locally and globally. They encourage teachers to promote critical thinking, to explore values and ethical issues with their pupils and work with them to make sense of complex and contentious issues. As a result teachers will need access to high quality, relevant and well informed professional learning which supports Learning for Sustainability and Global Citizenship Education. Scotland’s five Development Education Centres are vastly experienced in this field and are uniquely placed to provide this professional learning for teachers during their initial teacher education and throughout their careers.
