SCAN's methods
of neighbourhood appraisal were initially directed at the curriculum targets in
science and geography, which deal with local indicators of economic development and
biodiversity. By concentrating on the UTILITARIAN and ACADEMIC features of the
neighbourhood providea knowledge about the environment for making plans for improvements.
They provide first hand experience of active citizenship by using value-forming, and value-
exploring activities to reinforce plans for sustainable development.
Educational windows
into 'neighbourhood'.
Environmental appraisal
of the material aspects of neighbourhood deals objectively with our
day to day experiences of large and small universes by analysis and experiment, but does not
engage emotionally or personally with them. In a purely materialistic sense, economic
development is driven by scientific discovery, and proceeds on the basis that we all have short
lives of heroic effort, set in a purposeless and indifferent universe. Our material symbols are
scientific ones; the "solar system" model of the atom, the double helix of DNA, and the image
of our blue planet set precariously on the rim of the relatively vast galaxy of the Milky Way.
Increasingly, we see ourselves as part of a changing universe, a vast cosmic development from
its origins in the 'Big Bang'; hugely improbable by-products of an unconscious material system
which will inevitably engulf us.
