Background

By the 1970s it was becoming clear that the world would have to face up to a global crisis of resource utilisation, of which the decline of the North Sea and Atlantic fishing industries was just one sign, and some educationalists were becoming dissatisfied with the inadequacies of single subject syllabuses to tackle the problems of world development as a multidisciplinary system. It was in this vein that Jack Walmsley, Headmaster of Kirkley High School, launched an initiative in the 1980s to involve his teachers in the evaluation of a new multidisciplinary subject dealing with world development entitled Natural Economy. The syllabus had been devised by the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate for their International GCSE. Subsequently this was assembled as the on-line educational framework of cultural ecology (http://www.culturalecology.info) by Denis Bellamy, Professor Emeritus of the University of Wales. The evaluation process incorporated teaching materials on the social history of twin communities of Kirkley and Loweststoft provided by David Butcher of Kirkley High School, David Peachey, education officer of the Lowestoft government fisheries research institute, Trevor Westgate, a Lowestoft journalist, and Ruth Downing a Suffolk local historian working closely with staff of the staff of the Suffolk Record Office.

This project was part of a wider network of schools situated in other coastal communities which are, or have been, dominated by the 19th century development of the fishing industry.

The following is a selection of the educational resources produced by teams of teachers in this network.

http://changingtimes.wikispaces.com/

http://flegg.wikispaces.com/

http://time-memory-place.wikispaces.com/

http://communityfishingheritageuk.wikispaces.com/

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