School of Education and Social Work

The themes of Education and Social work are relevant to several SDGs, especially SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing and SDG 4 Quality Education.

At present, the Education department also has modules looking specifically at reducing inequalities by increasing access to and diversity in education, as well as the role of education in international development and shaping society. Meanwhile, the Social Work department has modules that focus explicitly on health inequality, migrants and refugee wellbeing, and the effect of gender, ethnicity, culture and class on mental health.

The school currently runs two elective pathways, the International Education and Development Pathway and the Wellbeing Pathway, which most students across the university can choose to take after registration. This pathway runs alongside their core undergraduate modules to develop a specialisation in a particular area and tailor their course to be more targeted to their interests. Pathways can change each year; registered students can find out the current menu of pathways when they join the university.

Each of these pathways link to various SDGs including, but not limited to, SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing, SDG 4 Quality Education, SDG 5 Gender Equality, and SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities.

Current sustainability related undergraduate modules in Education and Social Work include:

• Education for development: Aid, policy, and the global agenda (elective)
• Decolonising education: Knowledge, power, and society (elective)
• Access, equity, and gender (elective)
• Education, peacebuilding, and conflict (elective)
• Migrant and refugee wellbeing: Theory and practice (elective)
• Mental health and madness: Exploring socio-cultural approaches (elective)
• Discovering role models: Peer-led mentoring in schools
• Health inequalities: What’s social justice got to do with it? (elective)

The availability of the above modules depends on your chosen course of study. Please follow the module links to see which degree courses offer this module and and look at your course prospectus to see whether modules are core or optional.

Case study: Forest food garden elective modules

The elective modules Understanding Forest Food Gardens and Creating a Forest Food Garden are available to Second Year students across the university at present. A forest food garden is a food production system based on woodland, where edible plants are planted to mimic ecosystems and patterns found in nature. The practice recently gained attention as a solution to climate change and biodiversity loss.

Forest Food Gardens are often built cooperatively in a community, with people working together to plant the garden, providing social and community benefits as well as environmental benefits.

Students on the Forest Food Garden electives learn about the practices of food and medicine production in a woodland ecosystem, food preservation, and biodiversity. They also work together to develop ideas and plans for the development of the Forest Food Garden.

As the work needed in the garden will develop and change over time, each year’s students create work that will be passed onto the next year’s cohort to continue developing. This will create a Forest Food Garden community at Sussex over many years.