Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies ... - Unicef

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Section 4.
Approaches to Integrating Disaster Risk
Reduction in the Curriculum
Advantages
It is a relatively easy matter to embed further strands within
existing cross-curricular dimensions and in associated
professional development
Those dimensions can themselves lend additional depth,
width and substructure to understandings of the purposes
and scope of disaster risk reduction education
Disadvantages
There is some danger that by being combined with other
cross-curricular dimensions, the intrinsic purposes and
imperatives of DRR may become dispersed or lost.
For example, the notions of ‘risk’ or ‘safety’ could become
so all-inclusive that they would begin to lose focus and meaning.
An example of Life Skills becoming the primary carrier for
disaster-related curriculum can be found in Myanmar (case
study 10). In countries in which there is a strong tradition of
cross-cutting environmental education, DRR has been taken
on within that tradition, for example in Madagascar, Costa Rica,
Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru and Benin (case studies 14, 21, 22, 23,
24, 29). In Latin America there has been a growing recognition
that ‘risk management education is a specific application of
environmental education’ (UNISDR/ECHO/CECC/UNICEF,
undated, 64) as schools are encouraged to adopt bioregional
leadership as ‘promoters of territorial safety’ (Ibid. 75). DRR is
thus identified as the offspring of place-based environmental
education. In France (case study 16) DRR is carried within
the well-entrenched provision of citizenship education and by
the more recent, but equally well-entrenched emergence of
education for sustainable development within the curriculum.
Climate change and DRR are becoming increasingly conflated
in Africa; for instance, in Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Benin
and Nigeria (case studies 13, 14, 15, 29, 30).
The ‘special event’ approach
Recalling the cautionary note concerning the co-curricular
approaches given in the previous section (pp.18,19), special
DRR events can have a catalytic and galvanizing influence
on formal curriculum development.
Advantages
Special events can showcase DRR and therefore bring added
momentum to curriculum, pedagogical and whole-school
developments and to school/community partnerships.
Special events offer a pragmatic solution when ‘overloaded
teachers’ feel they cannot introduce disaster-related learning
into an ‘overcrowded curriculum’.
Such events offer additional spaces in which students can
apply DRR learning in practice.
Disadvantages
If they stand alone and detached from the curriculum, teaching
and learning developments, special events can be diversionary
affairs cloaking lack of substantive progress.
An example of the ‘special event’ approach is provided by Fiji
(case study 7) in which a National Disaster Awareness Week
for schools feeds from and into classroom learning. In Turkey
(case study 5) a primary school National Disaster Education
Week takes place. In Bangladesh, there are some examples
of using special events for awareness raising and skills-oriented
DRR learning by non-governmental organizations (case study 26).
Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies from Thirty Countries