Dr Brian Hoepper - Qld University of Technology

I am very pleased to lend my support to the Brink Adventures Education Project.

I have been deeply involved in the development of the Studies of Society and the Environment[SOSE] curriculum in Queensland, and I appreciate how Brink Adventures will make a very valuable contribution to that field.

The intrepid journey's undertaken by the Brink Adventures team members offer teachers and students a fresh and valuable way to learn about our increasingly globalised world. The teams extraordinary expeditions across time, space and cultures are mirrored in many classrooms, providing a vivid real-life framework for the curriculum in Studies of Society and Environment.

I commend Brink Adventures for their commitment to developing web based materials for use by teachers and students. The current expedition will visit nine world 'hot spots', each a dramatic example of a social and environmental issue. On the Brink Adventures web site, nine SOSE modules will invite primary and secondary students to probe those issues - to analyse the situations, to discern causes, to weigh up possibilities, to propose action.

Those nine investigations will be stitched together by the unfolding tale of the teams fascinating journey. Students will use maps and timelines to follow the expedition, and will keep in touch with the team members through e-mail discussions, satellite phone link ups and vivid on-line journals.

SOSE in schools is framed by values - democratic process, social justice, ecological and economic sustainability and peace. So too Brink Adventures is motivated by those values, pursuing the vision of a fairer and more sustain able future for the people of all nations.

The Brink Adventures expedition team provide admirable role models of ethical, committed young people. They reflect the best traditions of active and informed citizenship. I believe that students will be inspired by their example. As students come to appreciate the energies the expedition members display in their journey's, they will be encouraged to ask how their own energies might help shape a better future for all people.

In these ways, the expeditions conducted by Brink Adventures are a fine demonstration of the spirit of SOSE. As someone involved in the SOSE development as an academic, as a writer of SOSE syllabus drafts, research papers, curriculum modules and textbooks, and as a provider of teacher professional development, I applaud this project and commend it as most worthy of support.

Dr Brian Hoepper
Visiting Fellow
School of Cultural & Language Studies in Education
Queensland University of Technology

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