Background of GENE

GENE is the network of Ministries and Agencies with national responsibility for Global Education in European countries. GENE brings together Ministries, Agencies and other bodies that develop national policy and provide funding for Global Education in European countries. Staring in 2001 with 6 national members, GENE has expanded to include over 60 Ministries and Agencies (of Foreign Affairs, Education, Development Cooperation, etc.) working with also the European Commission as an observer, and in close cooperation with the OECD, UNESCO and other international organisations.

GENE works to increase and improve Global Education in Europe through networking of policymakers, peer review and policy learning, coordination of policy perspectives, policy research and work with international partners.

In the field of policy research GENE compiles the annual State of Global Education in Europe report. GENE works in partnership with a number of European universities active in Global Education, through the ANGEL network. GENE also commissions policy research based on issues identified by policymakers.

In late 2020, in partnership with EERA – the European Educational Research Association – a new initiative is being launched to support educational researchers to pursue policy-focused research in issues of Global Education that are relevant to policymakers.         

GENE uses the term Global Education derived from the Maastricht declaration, and known as the Maastricht definition.    

“Global Education is education that opens people’s eyes and minds to the realities of the world, and awakens them to bring about a world of greater justice, equity and human rights for all.

In essence Global Education is education that includes a social justice, human rights and sustainability focus, a local/global perspective or frame of analysis, and uses participatory, inclusive pedagogical processes that are in keeping with the focus and perspective.

The challenge for policymakers and researchers alike, in the 1990s as now, is that these types of education have grown up from differing sources and inspirations nationally, and so a plethora of competing terms (and acronyms), whether it be ESD or GCE or HRE or Dev Ed. GENE, while respecting and celebrating differing national and international traditions, has always used the umbrella term of Global Education to cut through the silo-isation and bring together differing strands of similar educational practices and policies. The Maastricht definition goes on to capture this umbrella function, using concepts abounding at the time:     

Global Education is understood to encompass Development Education, Human Rights Education, Education for Sustainability, Education for Peace and Conflict Prevention and Intercultural Education; being the global dimensions of Education for Citizenship.”

- Definition of Global Education taken from the Maastricht Declaration on Global Education in Europe (2002).

For more on issues of definition and conception see GENE policy-briefing-Concepts-Definitions.pdf

GENE facilitates Multilateral Roundtables of policymakers in the field of Global Education from relevant Ministries and Agencies twice a year. Through voluntary national reports, policymakers identify key issues of concern at national level. While these reports are confidential to the GENE Roundtable, the issues arising, analysed further by the GENE secretariat, are anonymised, and form the basis for the annual State of Global Education in Europe report. These reports, along with information gleaned from the European Peer Review process, and the recently published Multilingual Digest on Global Education Research, form the basis for the list of areas of policy research that GENE wishes to encourage.