Abstract
Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ – is increasingly the focus of education reform efforts as well as critical debate. With this special call we intend to bring this debate of the linkages between education for sustainable development (ESD) and global citizenship (GCE) to our Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) research community. By exploring the political, social and ecological dimension of these educational approaches for education we might enliven the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from an often somewhat technical debate of monitoring progress towards a critically, politically and passionate debate about opportunities for and obstacles to learning.
Description
The global SDGs have become a shared referent for educational reform agendas across the globe and have, in turn, stimulated efforts for international and national monitoring of progress towards those goals and targets that address education (see UNESCO, 2017). In particular Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (hereafter referred to as SDG4-Education 2030; see UNESCO, 2015) is increasingly the focus of education reform efforts as well as critical public and scholarly debate. Further, with the affiliated target 4.7, which calling for that by 2030 all learners must acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development through both education for sustainable development (ESD) and global citizenship (GCE), we are being challenged to think about what these two fields with their respective histories and approaches mean for each other.
With this special call we intend to bring this debate of the linkages between ESD and GCE to our ESE research community at ECER. We invite authors to provide contributions that address among others the following issues:
- Exploring the linkages among and between ESD /ESE, GCE, Climate Change Education (CCE) or Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME)
- Reflecting on the relationship between ESD, GCE and the SDGs
- Interrogating education related to the SDGs from a postcolonial perspective (e.g. What does postcolonial theory offer as a means for critiquing the SDGs? How does the way the SDGs were created, respond to this critique?)
- Can/should the conceptualisation of education as relating to civic education as in GCE underline the political aspects of ESE? That is can the linkage to GCE allow for a return to the discussion of the role of ESD in relation to political imaginaries such as democracy? What do different political imaginaries imply for ESE and GCE and vice versa?
- What research foci and approaches are taken and can be envisaged to enhance our understanding of implementation processes of global policies such as these in diverse contexts and on different levels in an education system?
- Overall, by bringing together public debate and research exploring the political, social and ecological dimension of these educational approaches and principles for education we might enliven the SDGs from an often somewhat technical debate of monitoring progress towards a critically, politically and passionate debate about opportunities for and obstacles to learning as process in which a lot is at stake.
Contact person(s)
Jutta Nikel, Link Convenor NW 30 (<link window for sending>Jutta.Nikel@ph-freiburg.de)
References
UNESCO (2015) Education 2030. Incheon Declaration and Framework for action for implementation of SDG 4. Paris: UNESCO
UNESCO (2017): Education for Sustainable Development Goals. Learning Objectives. Paris: UNESCO. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002474/247444e.pdf