Exploring sustainable development through poetry and moving image

摘要

This article is the result of a cross-curricular collaboration between geography and English trainee teachers which encouraged them to explore the ways that school students' understandings of sustainability could be developed using poetry and moving image. Matthewman and Morgan (2006) explore the links between geography and English with a particular focus on environmental issues, arguing that interdisciplinary collaboration could facilitate better exploration and interpretation of a range of different views of environmental issues in the classroom. In English, there has recently been a growth of eco-criticism, the 'study of the relationship between literature and physical environment' (e.g. Matthewman, 2011); perhaps geographers might use this as a lens through which to explore issues of sustainability with their students, for example using a variety of texts that represent the environment, such as travel writing. This is something that has been considered by Rawling (2010) and Jones and Fitzgerald (2010) who both argue the case more specifically for the use of poetry in geography. They suggest that poetry enables geography teachers to help young people reflect on the way their own lives are intertwined with the places and landscapes they inhabit. The project described in this article develops this idea: the geography trainee teachers were not only exploring the use of poetry to develop students' understandings of sustainability, but working with their English colleagues to do so.