Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope have joined a UNESCO working group reviewing innovative learning resources addressing Education for Sustainable Development. Its first series of meetings was held July 16-20 at the Georg Eckert Institute (GEI), Leibniz-Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany. From the brief for the meeting:

In school education around the world, although increasingly complemented by other forms of learning resources, textbooks still carry an indisputable significance. In many countries, national governments use textbooks to define which knowledge, skills, values and attitudes (combined often referred to as “competencies”) to foster in the next generation of workers and citizens. Textbooks often become a political issue because they reflect and shape a society’s educational canon. At a time of growing violent extremism, changing notions of national identity, increasingly globalised and diverse communities, and ecological crisis, textbooks and other educational media can contribute significantly to SDG 4.7 through the content they cover – and how they frame the content – and the pedagogy they allow teachers to implement.

How can textbooks contribute to empowering learners to engage critically, creatively and responsibly with the world? In discussing the curricular treatment of UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 (SDG 4.7), it has become customary to treat Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED) as relevant only to subjects considered a part of social studies, including civics and citizenship education. However, to the extent that it requires a reconceptualization of the overall purpose of education, rather than just minor technical adjustments, SDG 4.7 entails a thorough curricular overhaul. It is especially critical to look at ‘core subjects’ (Mathematics, Science, Social Science and Languages), given the privileged position these subjects occupy in school curricula in terms of instructional hours, their mandatory and examinable status, and the role they play in forming enduring dispositions of children and adolescents.

UNESCO MGIEP’s (Mahatma Ghandi Institute of Education for for Peace and Sustainable Development) Embedding project represents an innovative contribution to increasing the quality of education by producing a new generation of textbooks. Working closely with a national or sub-national government undergoing curriculum and/or textbook review and revision as well as strategic partners committed to the embedding approach, UNESCO MGIEP carries out concrete and systematic interventions to develop capacities of the stakeholders of textbook development. Furthermore, by conducting a global literature review of digital textbooks and developing sample “tech-books” which allow interactive and immersive learning, MGIEP will contribute to enabling a shift from “transmission pedagogies” which focus on learning as information absorption to “transformative pedagogies” which views learning as active knowledge co-creation. The Embedding project aim to change the way textbook authors, publishers and educators see the potential of educational media in reorienting education towards peace and sustainable development.

UNESCO's Yoko Mochizuki introduces key themes

Three members of the working group had taken our "e-Learning Ecologies" MOOC: Yoko Mochizuki and Akash Saini from UNESCO, and Carles Vidal from Vicens Vives, Barcelona