One Class Goal

One class goal is about instituting the learning of Education for Sustainable Development with a STEAM-atic approach.

“By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development.”

This slogan narrates a clear picture of the motivation behind ESD. To enable the future generation with the necessary skillsets it is essential that the learnings of ESD are cultivated in them from an early age. 

Many public education systems, particularly in the developing world, are overstretched, under-funded, and dealing even with the most basic challenges of education, which has limited their capacity and willingness to implement and scale ESD. Furthermore, much of ESD curriculum being promoted, especially by international actors and institutions, has been (a) designed without taking into account the local socio-economic, political, linguistic and cultural setting, and without synchronisation to local curriculum objectives, laws, and standards; (b) taught through a single-discipline lens, and failing to explore the complex, interconnected and multidisciplinary nature of sustainable development; (c) delivered through traditional cognitive pedagogy, and failing to draw on other critical learning domains, such as socio-emotional or behavioral; (d) taught in small increments across a few subjects and grades only. 

ONE CLASS GOAL endeavours to solve this problem with STEAM-based ESD lessons. STEAM is a learning pedagogy where students learn through practical experience. It is required that the curriculum of ESD is contextualised in "learning by doing". STEAM education already has a holistic collaborative approach, which helps improve students' emotional intelligence and social skills. They learn how to work with others and be expressive, and become more socially adaptable. The interconnectedness of ESD and STEAM curriculum will be able to solve many futuristic problems such as the water crisis, plastic pollution, Global food security and others. 

With this purpose in mind, One Class Goal has introduced 17 sets of activity-based curriculums for grades 2-3, and implemented three lessons in two Bangladeshi government primary schools. Our motive is to spread the inspiration countrywide.

Tanha Tarannum has served two years as a global school advocate for the UN SDSN, where she worked to introduce and engage the local schools with the benefits of teaching ESD-based curriculums. Later, she joined the organization as a project officer for the content team and came up with the idea of ESD-STEAM blending idea.
Tanha is the chief curriculum developer in One class goal, and one of the facilitators. Apart from approaching students, she also trains teachers in ESD and STEAM. The organization is her brainchild. She is also a certified STEM educator. 

Our strength is engraved within our team of One class goal which currently consists of only four members. However, we are running our operations in a full capacity with limited resources. Everyone, including the founder, works here on a part-time and voluntary basis. She is a professional TEFL teacher and curriculum developer. Our consultant ms Fahmida Ankhi is a mental health specialist and our instructor Fatema-tuj Johora is an early childhood development professional from the world's largest NGO, BRAC. Our volunteer Mr Abrar Al Mahid is an environmental science student and also a graphic designer.
Engagement with the Leap project will broaden our organization's scope of research and international stakeholder communication. It will give us the necessary credibility to approach local schools with evidence-based curriculum designs and accelerate the ESD impact.

One Class Goal builds ESD curriculum in a STEAM-based module to cultivate SDG knowledge from early childhood.

Education is essential to sustainable development. The education of today is crucial to enhancing the ability of the leaders and citizens of tomorrow to create solutions and find new paths to a better, more sustainable future. Unfortunately, our current collective pool of human knowledge, skills,
and experience does not contain the solutions to all the contemporary global environmental, societal, and economic problems. Although humanity has faced crises in the past and successfully navigated them, the scale of current problems is greater and the size of the world population is larger than
ever before. While we can draw upon experiences of the past to solve the problems of today and tomorrow, the reality is that citizens of the world will have the task of learning their way towards sustainability. Education is therefore central to learning and a more sustainable future.
The United Nations declared 2005 – 2014 as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). Education for sustainable development (ESD), also called education for sustainability (EfS) in some parts of the world, is a key concept for education in the new millennium. ESD is a broad concept bringing a distinctive orientation to many important aspects
of education on the whole, including access, relevance, equity and inclusivity.
Thus, ESD is far more than teaching knowledge and
principles related to sustainability. ESD, in its broadest
sense, is education for social transformation to create more sustainable societies.
In today’s world, setting students up for future success means exposing them to certain disciplines holistically in order to develop their critical thinking skills. STEAM is an educational discipline that teach children relevant, in-demand skills that will prepare them to become innovators in an ever-evolving world, not only for the future of the students themselves but for the future of the country. STEAM also empowers teachers to employ project-based learning that crosses each of the STEAM disciplines and fosters an inclusive learning environment in which all students are able to engage and contribute.
An important part of this educational approach is that students who are taught under a STEAM framework are not just taught the subject matter but they are taught how to learn, how to ask questions, how to experiment and how to create.
In Bangladesh, the already fragile education system requires a boost with the terminology of after school programs, mostly in underprivileged schools. Children in government primary schools often come to have free breakfasts than with the zeal for education. The teaching is mundane and classes are like a ritual that both the students and teachers perform unceremoniously. To enhance their general interest towards education ESD-STEAM after school programs are the best possible approach.

Our STEAM-based ESD curriculum comprises 4/5 parts, each with different distinctions of Science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. We have an overall 17 curriculums for 17 SDG goals, and every 17 curriculums have this 4/5 lesson plans for different age groups. We interact with children according to their age group.
For example, we have our very first mathematical activity with students in grade 4 which is called, "Tell me where you live". In this activity, students in a class are divided into 4 groups each having a world map and a dart to throw at it. They take turns in throwing darts and after all groups are done, they take a look at where their darts had landed. Suppose a dart had landed in Sudan and another in Switzerland. We then provide the particular group with the total population and the total number of population living under the poverty line in their respective countries. The students are then given the task to calculate the proportion by division and wait.
And then the instructor repeats the same method on blackboard in front of the whole class taking the reference of Bangladesh. Students then can clearly see how their country is dwelling and dealing with poverty in respect to other countries.
Here, we used activity oriented STEAM method to teach the problems and discuss solutions to overcome SDG goal 1: No Poverty.

One Class Goal is a small organization and the research dependency is upon the founder and consultant. We have only conducted fundamental researches and till now rely heavily upon internet based resources. This is one of the core reasons why we wish to connect with experts of the evidence based learning subject matter experts. 

Our research has shown us that ESD, STEAM or STEM are taught individually either as after-school programs, or affiliate curriculums. However, STEAM-based ESD is a whole new prospect and hasn't been yet experimented.
Although we do not have perfect data to demonstrate our initiatives' impact but the feedback we have received from the schools and teachers, where our lessons have been operational is surely commendable.

We require an evidence-based approach to reduce errors in our judgement capacity. Rather than selecting an intervention or strategy based on gut feelings, personal experiences, or popular trends in the industry, we want to execute evidence-based research of our product by reviewing published literature on the subject, critically appraising the quality of the evidence and selecting a strategy that is supported by proper modality.
One class goal is now at a critical stage from where it can either limit its operations or advance ahead. By leveraging the resources and expert allies we can throttle our way forward.

1. How many students are able to build socio-emotional skills while exposed to One Class Goal learning modules.

2. How are they implementing the learning of ESD in their regular life. How is it helping to elevate the living standards of the student and his/her family?

3. What skills are students more prone to learning and what is the eminent threat they wish to eliminate from society.

All our concerns can be answered within the time frame with user interviews, case studies, and pre-post measure studies in One Class Goal affiliated schools. We intent to perform these studies on 300 students from 3 different schools.

With the outcome of these research questions we can radicalize our
curriculum to fit in the local context even more appropriately. We can reach out to stakeholders in a broader scale and negotiate with the policy makers to integrate the ESD-STEAM standardized curriculum more profusely by the help of data.

Short term outcome: Engaging 10 more schools by the period of 12 months and initiating after school programs with the support of evidence based data.

Long term Outcome: Engaging stakeholders in public and private sector to make this agenda a nation wide initiative.