goals of global education

Global Education

By Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Natasha Ahuja, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

A good education offers individuals the opportunity to lead richer, more interesting lives. At a societal level, it creates opportunities for humanity to solve its pressing problems.

The world has gone through a dramatic transition over the last few centuries, from one where very few had any basic education to one where most people do. This is not only reflected in the inputs to education – enrollment and attendance – but also in outcomes, where literacy rates have greatly improved.

Getting children into school is also not enough. What they learn matters. There are large differences in educational outcomes : in low-income countries, most children cannot read by the end of primary school. These inequalities in education exacerbate poverty and existing inequalities in global incomes .

On this page, you can find all of our writing and data on global education.

Key insights on Global Education

The world has made substantial progress in increasing basic levels of education.

Access to education is now seen as a fundamental right – in many cases, it’s the government’s duty to provide it.

But formal education is a very recent phenomenon. In the chart, we see the share of the adult population – those older than 15 – that has received some basic education and those who haven’t.

In the early 1800s, fewer than 1 in 5 adults had some basic education. Education was a luxury; in all places, it was only available to a small elite.

But you can see that this share has grown dramatically, such that this ratio is now reversed. Less than 1 in 5 adults has not received any formal education.

This is reflected in literacy data , too: 200 years ago, very few could read and write. Now most adults have basic literacy skills.

What you should know about this data

• Basic education is defined as receiving some kind of formal primary, secondary, or tertiary (post-secondary) education.
• This indicator does not tell us how long a person received formal education. They could have received a full program of schooling, or may only have been in attendance for a short period. To account for such differences, researchers measure the mean years of schooling or the expected years of schooling .

Despite being in school, many children learn very little

International statistics often focus on attendance as the marker of educational progress.

However, being in school does not guarantee that a child receives high-quality education. In fact, in many countries, the data shows that children learn very little.

Just half – 48% – of the world’s children can read with comprehension by the end of primary school. It’s based on data collected over a 9-year period, with 2016 as the average year of collection.

This is shown in the chart, where we plot averages across countries with different income levels. 1

The situation in low-income countries is incredibly worrying, with 90% of children unable to read by that age.

This can be improved – even among high-income countries. The best-performing countries have rates as low as 2%. That’s more than four times lower than the average across high-income countries.

Making sure that every child gets to go to school is essential. But the world also needs to focus on what children learn once they’re in the classroom.

Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?

• This data does not capture total literacy over someone’s lifetime. Many children will learn to read eventually, even if they cannot read by the end of primary school. However, this means they are in a constant state of “catching up” and will leave formal education far behind where they could be.

Children across the world receive very different amounts of quality learning

There are still significant inequalities in the amount of education children get across the world.

This can be measured as the total number of years that children spend in school. However, researchers can also adjust for the quality of education to estimate how many years of quality learning they receive. This is done using an indicator called “learning-adjusted years of schooling”.

On the map, you see vast differences across the world.

In many of the world’s poorest countries, children receive less than three years of learning-adjusted schooling. In most rich countries, this is more than 10 years.

Across most countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – where the largest share of children live – the average years of quality schooling are less than 7.

• Learning-adjusted years of schooling merge the quantity and quality of education into one metric, accounting for the fact that similar durations of schooling can yield different learning outcomes.
• Learning-adjusted years is computed by adjusting the expected years of school based on the quality of learning, as measured by the harmonized test scores from various international student achievement testing programs. The adjustment involves multiplying the expected years of school by the ratio of the most recent harmonized test score to 625. Here, 625 signifies advanced attainment on the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test, with 300 representing minimal attainment. These scores are measured in TIMSS-equivalent units.

Hundreds of millions of children worldwide do not go to school

While most children worldwide get the opportunity to go to school, hundreds of millions still don’t.

In the chart, we see the number of children who aren’t in school across primary and secondary education.

This number was around 260 million in 2019.

Many children who attend primary school drop out and do not attend secondary school. That means many more children or adolescents are missing from secondary school than primary education.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school

The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.

The gender gap in school attendance has closed across most of the world

Globally, until recently, boys were more likely to attend school than girls. The world has focused on closing this gap to ensure every child gets the opportunity to go to school.

Today, these gender gaps have largely disappeared. In the chart, we see the difference in the global enrollment rates for primary, secondary, and tertiary (post-secondary) education. The share of children who complete primary school is also shown.

We see these lines converging over time, and recently they met: rates between boys and girls are the same.

For tertiary education, young women are now more likely than young men to be enrolled.

While the differences are small globally, there are some countries where the differences are still large: girls in Afghanistan, for example, are much less likely to go to school than boys.

Research & Writing

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school, interactive charts on global education.

This data comes from a paper by João Pedro Azevedo et al.

João Pedro Azevedo, Diana Goldemberg, Silvia Montoya, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Jaime Saavedra, Brian William Stacy (2021) – “ Will Every Child Be Able to Read by 2030? Why Eliminating Learning Poverty Will Be Harder Than You Think, and What to Do About It .” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9588, March 2021.

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Global Education in Context: Four Models, Four Lessons

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Editor’s Intro: As part of a National Geographic Society -funded research project, a team of researchers is documenting how school systems are approaching global learning. Laura Engel , associate professor of international education and international affairs, George Washington University; Heidi Gibson, research assistant, George Washington University ; and Kayla Gatalica, manager, Global Programs , District of Columbia public schools, share the lessons they have learned.

The need to build the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for the 21 st -century globalized world is well-recognized by education policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. Yet too often, there is a lack of a coherent picture of what global education looks like in the United States. The decentralized nature of the U.S. education system means that in many districts and states global education is built from the ground up. Some laudable projects have aimed to share initiatives across states and to connect state leaders. One example is the States Network on International Education, created by the Asia Society and Longview Foundation, currently involving 25 member states committed to building capacity in global education. Interactive online tools like Mapping the Nation and Global Education Certificates allow researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to learn more about district- and state-level initiatives.

Four Models

To better understand global education in context, a team from George Washington University (GW) and the District of Columbia public schools (DCPS) made a series of virtual and in-person site visits to North Carolina, Virginia, and Illinois. During each of the site visits, our team had the opportunity to hear perspectives from global education leaders, teachers, administrators, students, organizations, and policymakers. We also developed an extended case study focused on the work of the DCPS Global Education team, providing a fourth context from which to better understand global education policy and practice.

Each of these four contexts reveals a different model of global education. In North Carolina, an example of a top-down approach, the state board of education adopted a framework for global learning and created a process to assess and recognize efforts by districts, schools, and educators. North Carolina’s extensive rubric for schools and districts awards “global-ready” designations and also allows schools and districts to see where they fall on a global-ready continuum ranging from “early” to “model.”

In Illinois, a group of Naperville Central High School teachers leveraged district support and successfully pushed for legislation establishing the Illinois Global Scholars Certificate . As part of this push, global-learning advocates across the state joined forces to build a statewide global education network.

Virginia’s initiatives are currently more localized, with individual districts championing globally-focused educational approaches, especially related to schools’ study abroad and exchange programs. Advocates have also leveraged state programs, such as the Governor’s World Language Academies, and new policies, like the Profile of a Graduate initiative, in support of a focus on developing students’ skills for a global future.

Lastly, within our team, we have perspectives on the robust global programming in DCPS, which reveals a multipronged approach to global education. The DCPS Global Education team manages districtwide programs like International Food Days and fully funded study abroad as well as school-specific programs such as world-language instruction and Global Studies Schools.

Four Lessons Learned

These four distinct cases provide insights into the diversity of global education practice within the United States. They also offer common lessons on how to make progress toward global education goals:

1) The Power of the Champion Behind every example of a successful global education program, policy, or practice were champions—often individuals with the power and capacity to leverage change—who sought to invest in global education for all schools and students. In each of the four contexts, this role varied. For example, in the case of Illinois, two highly respected teachers have spurred a grassroots statewide movement, whereas, in North Carolina, global education leadership came from a state-level champion, providing district supports such as resources and training.

2) Leveraging Partnerships Movements in global education in each of the four contexts had much to do with the leveraging of partnerships. These partnerships involved a range of different stakeholders, including the business community, fellow schools and districts, nonprofit organizations, and the higher education community. The function of partnerships varied as well. In the District of Columbia and Virginia, for instance, partners provided global education opportunities, such as working with local embassies to give students access to experiential learning. In North Carolina, partners helped facilitate teacher exchange by sourcing educators who brought global perspectives to the classroom.

3) Developing and Telling the Story Experienced global education advocates know that generating support for global-learning initiatives often involves pitching these programs to the right person at the right time in the right way. Policymakers who have had transformative international experiences, such as DCPS’ former Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s time spent studying abroad, are more likely to see the value of global education. Strategic use of existing policies, such as tying new global education initiatives to Virginia’s Portrait of a Graduate requirements, can help convince district leadership. In other cases, strategic thinking is needed about the best level of governance to leverage change. In Illinois, after considering a district-level approach, advocates realized they would get better traction at the state level. Building support requires a canny assessment of how to leverage existing policies and attitudes, as well as understanding how to best explain the importance of global education.

4) Building a Network In each of the four contexts, we learned the value of cohesive networks in creating opportunities and spaces for global education policy, practice, and programs. These are cross-curricular, as well as across geographical boundaries. In Virginia, international approaches have often been confined to world-language classrooms, but advocates are beginning to reach out to other curricular areas for a more interdisciplinary approach. District and state leaders frequently remarked on the power of sharing their approaches and practices with others. By building strong networks across the state, such as the one in Illinois, advocates were able to push for change.

Across the four contexts and our lessons learned, there is a clear value added when district and state leaders connect and share practices, policies, and research about global education in K-12 U.S. settings. To further develop such cross-cutting conversations, we launched the K12 Global Forum, which hosted an inaugural convening last year at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. We look forward to future convenings to continue to share information and advice with each other.

Connect with the authors and Heather on Twitter.

Image created on Pablo .

The opinions expressed in Global Learning are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Educating Students to Improve the World pp 25–29 Cite as

What Is Global Education and Why Does It Matter?

• Fernando M. Reimers 2  
• Open Access
• First Online: 08 April 2020

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Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Education ((BRIEFSEDUCAT))

Global education are both practices guided by a set of purposes and approaches intentionally created to provide opportunities for students to develop global competencies, and the theories that explain and inform those practices and their effects. Global competencies encompass the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that help students develop, understand, and function in communities which are increasingly interdependent with other communities around the world, and that provide a foundation for lifelong learning of what they need to participate, at high levels of functioning, in environments in continuous flux because of increasing global change.

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A competence encompasses more than knowledge and skills “It involves the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context. For example, the ability to communicate effectively is a competency that may draw on an individual’s knowledge of language, practical IT skills, and attitudes towards those with whom he or she is communicating” (OECD 2005 , p. 4).

A quintessentially global topic is climate change. Global competency should enable people to understand climate change, to adapt to mitigate its impact, and hopefully to revert it. Climate Change Education, a subdomain of Education for Sustainable Development, is a modality of Global Education focused on preparing people to achieve more sustainable ways to relate to our habitat. It encompasses preparation to adopt practices that are known to be sustainable, for example slowing down population growth, consuming a diet with a smaller carbon footprint, or using renewable energies. These practices may be individual in the choices we make about our own consumption and lifestyle, or they may be collective, the result of choices we make as citizens when we participate in the democratic process in various levels of government or when we influence the behavior of corporations. Government policies are essential to slowing global warming, and they are subject to influence and preferences by citizens, educated to understand the scientific consensus on climate change and with the capacity to exercise influence as citizens.

But Climate Change Education encompasses also the development of the innovation skills necessary to slow down climate change, which requires advancing knowledge and inventing technologies that can help us transform our interactions with the environment, in a way reinvent our way of life. As a result, educating to mitigate climate change and for sustainability involves equipping people with the necessary skills for such advancement of knowledge and invention.

An example from the field of sanitation will illustrate the role of inventive skills in addressing climate change. In his efforts to improve sanitation in the developing world, Bill Gates concluded that the toilets and water treatment systems developed and in use in the early industrialized world were poor fits to developing countries because they were resource-intensive and generated excessive waste. This caused him to undertake projects to stimulate innovation in the design of next-generation toilets that could operate without sewer systems (Brueck 2019 ; D’Agostino 2018 ).

The competencies gained from global education should help students understand how the communities in which they live relate to other communities around the world, how they are affected from that interaction and affect others, how their lives are shaped by topics which are global in nature, such as climate change, or trade, or scientific cooperation, and to participate in forms of global action and cooperation within their spheres of influence in ways which contribute effectively to the various communities they are a part of, and in this way improving the world.

There are different intellectual traditions that influence how global education is defined and conceptualized. These perspectives draw on various intellectual traditions: globalism, nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, and indigeneity. They are anchored in diverse core concepts: justice, equity, diversity, identity and belonging, and sustainable development. They include perspectives that accept the existing international social and economic order, along with others that are more critical (Davies et al. 2018 ).

Following a cosmopolitanist and critical perspective, in my own work developing global citizenship curriculum, I have adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a guiding framework because they articulate a capacious vision of sustainability and because they tie global education as a theoretical field and practice to a set of concepts that are widely shared across many fields of human endeavor, including education, but extending also into public health, work and industry, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, poverty reduction. These seventeen goals are deeply rooted in multiple disciplines focused on human and social development. The Sustainable Development Goals pose also a challenge to the very notions of development and social progress, emphasizing the interdependence of inclusion, social justice, peace and environmental sustainability (Reimers et al. 2016 , 2017 ).

Global education encompasses the traditional disciplines in service of helping students understand the world in which they live: sciences, social sciences, and humanities. For example, to understand climate change it is necessary to understand the processes that explain how climate works, a subject of scientific study. A global education includes also opportunities for students to imagine and enact strategies to advance human well-being, which draws on the capacities of invention and ethical reasoning. This might include helping students to develop the curiosity to advance scientific understanding in a particular domain, or the desire to create products or services that advance well-being or solve problems, as with the previous example of reinventing toilets to address sanitation and advancing health.

Global education is not necessarily an additional curriculum domain, rather, it is a set of clear purposes which can help align the entire curriculum with real world questions, challenges, and opportunities. As such, global education is a way to help teachers as well as students understand the relationship between what is learned in school and the world outside the school. Global education encompasses also a series of approaches, pedagogies, curricula, and structures to support such instruction that is explicitly designed to help build the breadth of skills that can help students function in a deeply interdependent and increasingly globally integrated world. The Australian Curriculum Corporation defines it as follows:

Global education is defined as an approach to education which seeks to enable young people to participate in shaping a better shared future for the world through: Emphasising the unity and interdependence of human society, Developing a sense of self an appreciation of cultural diversity, Affirming social justice and human rights, peace building and actions for a sustainable future, Emphasising developing relationships with our global neighbours, Promoting open-mindedness and a predisposition to take action for change. (Curriculum Corporation 2008 , p. 2)

Global education includes multiple specific domains, such as environmental education and education for sustainability, understanding global affairs, understanding the process of globalization and of global interdependence, developing intercultural competency, fostering civic engagement, human rights, and peace education. Sciences and humanities are the disciplinary foundations of global education, for there is no way to understand the world without the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that result from learning to think as scientists do or reason as humanists can do.

For example, in order to understand climate change, students need to know not just the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change, but the underlying processes that are the major drivers of climate change producing significant release of carbon dioxide and other bases into the atmosphere which trap heat. Scientists have identified boundaries for ten systems within which humans and other species can live: freshwater use, land use, phosphorous pollution, ocean acidification, climate change, ozone depletion, nitrogen pollution, biodiversity loss, aerosol air, and chemical pollution. These systems are: ocean acidification, climate change, ozone depletion, nitrogen pollution, and biodiversity loss. Only after they understand those systems will students be able to comprehend the metrics which demonstrate the nature and causes of climate change. For eight of those system metrics for which we have data to compare pre-industrial revolution levels to current levels, five of them exceed the boundaries representing high risk that life is not sustainable. Furthermore, the remaining three metrics: freshwater use, land use, and phosphorous pollution, have changed significantly, in the direction of the increasing risk boundary. Only two of the eight metrics (ocean acidification and ozone depletion) have current values that are lower than the values before the industrial revolution (UNESCO 2017 , p. 20). Only once they can understand those systems and metrics, will students be able to understand the scientific consensus which is that the main causes of those changes are human–environmental interactions, resulting from overpopulation, modern lifestyles and individual behavior (NASA 2020 ). But, as explained earlier, in order to contribute to the mitigation of climate change, students will need more than the scientific understanding of how climate works. They will need the capacity for systemic thinking, and the capacity to identify various criteria, value-based systems, to choose among alternatives and weigh tradeoffs among alternatives, so they can evaluate the costs and benefits involved in reducing population growth, or consumption, or in building circular economies with industries located closer to cities as a way to reduce transportation costs.

An effective program of global education is not the additive result of a series of isolated experiences in various curriculum silos, but the result of coherent and integrated learning opportunities that can help students understand the relationship between what they learn in various grades and subjects in service of understanding the world and of being able to act to improve it. As such, a global education helps students think about complexity and understand the systems which undergird global issues and global interdependence.

The Asia Society and the OECD define global competence as follows:

Both OECD and the Center for Global Education have identified four key aspects of global competence. Globally competent youth: (1) investigate the world beyond their immediate environment by examining issues of local, global, and cultural significance; (2) recognize, understand, and appreciate the perspectives and world views of others; (3) communicate ideas effectively with diverse audiences by engaging in open, appropriate, and effective interactions across cultures; and (4) take action for collective well-being and sustainable development both locally and globally. (OECD and Asia Society 2018 , p. 12)

A global education, in short, helps prepare students to live so that “nothing human is foreign to them” to quote the playwright Terence who expressed this cosmopolitan aspiration two thousand years ago, a quote that so captivated the sixteenth-century philosopher and humanist Michel de Montaigne that he engraved it in one of the beams of his study. Montaigne’s focus on understanding human nature influenced many subsequent philosophers and scientists, including Rousseau, Bacon, Pascal, Descartes, and Emerson. He translated his humanist and cosmopolitan vision into ideas about how children should be educated. He argued that the goal of education was to prepare students for life and that this required experiential learning and personalization (Montaigne 1575 ).

In the chapters that follow, I explain each of these five perspectives in greater detail, illustrating how they can help approach the design and implementation of a program of global education.

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Reimers, F.M. (2020). What Is Global Education and Why Does It Matter?. In: Educating Students to Improve the World. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3887-2_2

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Global education trends and research to follow in 2022

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily gustafsson-wright , emily gustafsson-wright senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @egwbrookings helen shwe hadani , helen shwe hadani former brookings expert @helenshadani kathy hirsh-pasek , kathy hirsh-pasek senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @kathyandro1 maysa jalbout , maysa jalbout nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @maysajalbout elizabeth m. king , elizabeth m. king nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education jennifer l. o’donoghue , jennifer l. o’donoghue deputy director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @jennodjod brad olsen , brad olsen senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @bradolsen_dc jordan shapiro , jordan shapiro nonresident fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @jordosh emiliana vegas , and emiliana vegas former co-director - center for universal education , former senior fellow - global economy and development @emivegasv rebecca winthrop rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development @rebeccawinthrop.

January 24, 2022

• 12 min read

As the third calendar year of the pandemic begins, 2022 promises to be an important one—especially for education. Around the world, education systems have had to contend with sporadic closures, inequitable access to education technology and other distance learning tools, and deep challenges in maintaining both students’ and teachers’ physical and emotional health. At the same time, not all of the sudden changes precipitated by the pandemic have been bad—with some promising new innovations, allies, and increased attention on the field of global education emerging over the past three years. The key question is whether 2022 and the years ahead will lead to education transformation or will students, teachers, and families suffer long-lasting setbacks?

In the Center for Universal Education, our scholars take stock of the trends, policies, practices, and research that they’ll be closely keeping an eye on this year and likely in the many to come.

More than ever, in 2022 it will be critical to focus on strengthening the fabric of our global education system in order to achieve positive outcomes—particularly through an increased focus on data-informed decisionmaking. We have seen a renewed focus on different forms of data that are critical to enhanced education outcomes, such as real-time performance data, which allow teachers and other decisionmakers to course-adjust to the needs of learners to better support their educational journeys. Additionally, high-quality program cost data are needed for decisionmakers to plan, budget, and choose the most cost-effective interventions.

One way we are seeing these areas strengthened is through innovative financing for education, such as impact bonds , which require data to operate at full potential. This year, pooled funding through outcomes funds—a scaled version of impact bonds—should make a particularly big splash. The Education Outcomes Fund organization is slated to launch programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and we also expect to see the launch of country-specific outcomes funds for education such as OFFER (Outcome Fund For Education Results) in Colombia, the Back-to-School Outcomes Fund in India, and another fund in Chile. At the Center for Universal Education, we will be following these innovations closely and look forward to the insights that they will bring to the education sector.

As we look ahead to 2022, one continued challenge for many families is navigating the uncharted territory of supporting children’s learning with a growing number of school closures . But while the pandemic forced an abrupt slowdown in modern life, it also provided an opportunity to reexamine how we can prioritize learning and healthy development both in and out of school. Moreover, the cascading effects of the pandemic are disproportionally affecting families living in communities challenged by decades of discrimination and disinvestment—and are very likely to widen already existing educational inequities in worrisome ways.

One innovative approach to providing enriching learning opportunities beyond school walls that address the inequities in our current systems is Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL) —installations and programming that promote children and families’ learning through play in the public realm. A current focus for PLL at Brookings is measuring the impact of these spaces to show that PLL works and to garner greater investment in them. To that end, Brookings and its partners developed a framework and an initial set of indicators from both the learning science and placemaking perspectives to help assess the positive effects of PLL on learning outcomes , as well as its potential to enhance social interaction and public life in revitalized spaces. The framework will continue to evolve as we learn from communities that are testing the expansion and adaptation of PLL—this important work is just beginning.

The pandemic highlighted several trends in education that promise to be the focus of future policy and practice in 2022 and beyond: the importance of skills that supplement the learning of content, systemic inequities in education systems, and the role of digital technology in the education of the future. It has become increasingly clear that the memorization of content alone will not prepare children for the jobs and society of the future. As noted in a Brookings report “ A new path for education reform, ” in an automated world, manufacturing jobs and even preliminary medical diagnoses or legal contracts can be performed by computers and robots. Students who can work collaboratively—with strong communication skills, critical thinking, and creative innovation—will be highly valued. Mission statements from around the globe are starting to promote a “whole child” approach to education that will encourage the learning of a breadth of skills better aligning the education sector with needs from the business sector.

The past year also demonstrated weaknesses and inequalities inherent in remote learning that I’ll be closely tracking in the years to come. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtual learning presents risks to social-emotional learning . Further, research suggests that academic progress during the pandemic slowed such that students demonstrated only 35 to 50 percent of the gains they normally achieve in mathematics and 60 to 68 percent in reading. The losses are not experienced uniformly , with children from underresourced environments falling behind their more resourced peers.

The failure of remote learning also raises questions about the place of digital learning in the classroom. Learning will become more and more hybrid over time, and keeping an eye on advances in technology—especially regarding augmented reality and the metaverse—will be particularly important, as both have real consequences for the classrooms.

In 2022, I’ll be focusing on one group of children in particular–refugees–who are among those children who have historically had the least access to preprimary education. The pandemic has affected them disproportionally , as it pushed them and their families into poverty and deprived them from most forms of education during the school closures.

While much more investment in early childhood education research and evaluation is needed to improve evidence and channel scarce resources effectively, there are a few important efforts to watch. A report commissioned by Theirworld last year provided an overview of the sector and focused on a critical gap and opportunity to address the inequity of access to early childhood education in refugee settings by better supporting teachers and community workers. This year, Theirworld and partners will pursue two of the report’s recommendations–making the science of early childhood brain development widely accessible in refugee communities and building the evidence base on what works in supporting early childhood education teachers and the young refugee children they teach.

The report was informed by existing initiatives including Ahlan Simsim, which in 2017 received the largest known grant to early education in a humanitarian context. While the evaluation of Ahlan Simsim will not be complete until two more years, the Global Ties for Children research center, Sesame Workshop, and the International Rescue Committee will share critical insights into their learning to date in a forthcoming episode of the podcast the Impact Room .

This coming year I’ll be focused on how education systems can prepare for future disruptions, whatever the cause, with more deliberateness. The past two years of the COVID pandemic have seen education systems throughout the globe struggle to find ways to continue schooling. Additionally, there have been other public health crises, natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and severe storms, and wars and terrorism in different parts of the world that have gravely tested school systems’ ability to minimize the cost of catastrophes on students and teachers. Finding safer temporary learning places outside the school and using technologies such as radio, TV broadcasts, and online learning tools have helped, but quick fixes with little preparation are not effective approaches for sustaining and advancing learning gains.

In the age of broadcast and digital technologies, there are many more ways to meet the challenges of future emergency situations, but life- and education-saving solutions must be part of the way school systems operate—built into their structures, their staffing, their budgets, and their curricula. By preparing for the emergencies that are likely to happen, we can persevere to reach learning goals for all children.

By the close of 2021, a number of studies began to document the impact of COVID-19 on girls’ educational trajectories across the Global South. These studies point to promising trends –lower than expected dropout rates and reenrollment rates similar to (if not greater than) those of boys–while still highlighting the particular challenges faced by adolescent girls and girls living in poverty , conflict, and crisis .

In 2022, it will be critical to continue to generate more nuanced evidence—carefully considering questions such as “for which girls,” “where,” “when,” and “why.” And then we must put this knowledge to use to protect and promote girls’ and young women’s rights not just to education, but to participate and thrive in the world around them. Ensuring that marginalized girls and young women become transformative agents in improving their lives and livelihoods—as well as those of their families and communities—requires us to develop new strategies for learning and acting together.

At the Center for Universal Education, this means strengthening our work with local leaders in girls’ education: promoting gender-transformative research through the Echidna Global Scholars Program ; expanding the collective impact of our 33 Echidna alumni; and co-constructing a learning and action community to explore together how to improve beliefs, practices, programs, and policies so that marginalized adolescent girls’ can develop and exercise agency in pursuing their own pathways.

Going into year three of COVID-19, in 2022 I’m interested to see whether countries will transform their education systems or largely leave them the way they are. Will leaders of education systems tinker around the edges of change but mostly attempt a return to a prepandemic “normal,” or will they take advantage of this global rupture in the status quo to replace antiquated educational institutions and approaches with significant structural improvement?

In relation to this, one topic I’ll be watching in particular is how countries treat their teachers. How will policymakers, the media, parent councils, and others frame teachers’ work in 2022? In which locations will teachers be diminished versus where will they be defended as invaluable assets? How will countries learn from implications of out-of-school children (including social isolation and child care needs)? Will teachers remain appreciated in their communities but treated poorly in the material and political conditions of their work? Or will countries hold them dear—demanding accountability while supporting and rewarding them for quality work?

I’m interested in learning more about how pandemic lockdowns have impacted students. So far, we’ve only gotten very general data dealing with questions that are, in my opinion, too simple to be worthwhile. It’s all been about good and bad, positive and negative, learning loss and achievement. But I’ll be watching for more nuanced studies, which ask about specific ways increased time away from school has impacted social-emotional development. How do those results differ between gender, race, socioeconomic status, and geographic location? I suspect we’re going to learn some things about the relationship between home environment and school environment that will challenge a lot of our taken-for-granted assumptions.

In 2022, I’ll be tracking emerging evidence on the impact of the COVID-19 school closures on children and youth. Several researchers, including my co-authors and me , have provided estimates of the school closures’ impact on student learning losses, unemployment, future earnings, and productivity globally. But only recently are researchers analyzing actual evidence of learning losses , and an early systematic review finds that “Although robust and empirical research on COVID-19-related student learning loss is limited, learning loss itself may not be.”

Likewise, there is little rigorous reviews of remote learning tools’ and platforms’ impact on student learning during the school closures. After the pandemic, it is almost certain that remote and hybrid learning will continue—at a minimum occasionally and often periodically—in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. It is urgent that we build the evidence base to help education decisionmakers and practitioners provide effective, tailored learning experiences for all students.

Finally, a key issue for education is how to redesign curricula so that this generation (and future generations) of students gain a key set of skills and competencies required for technologically-advancing labor markets and societies. While foundational literacy and numeracy skills continue to be essential for learning, a strong foundational knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is ever more important in the 21st century, and I look forward to contributing research this year to help make the case for curricula redesign efforts.

I will be interested to see how parent-teacher relationships progress after the pandemic has (hopefully) faded into the background. COVID-19 has had an inescapable impact on the way we deliver education globally, but none more so than on how education leaders and teachers interact with students and their families.

For the past three years, I have been studying family-school collaboration. Together with my colleagues and partners, we have surveyed nearly 25,000 parents and 6,000 teachers in 10 countries around the world and found that the vast majority of teachers, parents, and caregivers want to work together more closely. Quality family-school collaboration has the potential to significantly improve educational outcomes, spur important discussions on the overall purpose of school, and smooth the path for schools and families to navigate change together. From community schools in New Mexico  to text message updates from teachers in India , new innovations are popping up every day—in every corner of the world. I’m excited to see what the future holds for family-school collaboration!

Education Technology Global Education

Global Economy and Development

Center for Universal Education

Modupe (Mo) Olateju, Grace Cannon

April 15, 2024

Brad Olsen, John McIntosh

April 3, 2024

Darcy Hutchins, Emily Markovich Morris, Laura Nora, Carolina Campos, Adelaida Gómez Vergara, Nancy G. Gordon, Esmeralda Macana, Karen Robertson

March 28, 2024

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What Is Global Education and Why Does It Matter?  

Teaching climate change.

Adapted from, Educating Students to Improve the World

Global education are both practices guided by a set of purposes and approaches intentionally created to provide opportunities for students to develop global competencies, and the theories that explain and inform those practices and their effects. Global competencies encompass the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that help students develop, understand, and function in communities which are increasingly interdependent with other communities around the world, and that provide a foundation for lifelong learning of what they need to participate, at high levels of functioning, in environments in continuous flux because of increasing global change. 

A competence encompasses more than knowledge and skills “It involves the ability to meet complex demands, by drawing on and mobilizing psychosocial resources (including skills and attitudes) in a particular context. For example, the ability to communicate effectively is a competency that may draw on an individual’s knowledge of language, practical IT skills, and attitudes towards those with whom he or she is communicating” (OECD 2005, p. 4). 

A quintessentially global topic is climate change. Global competency should enable people to understand climate change, to adapt to mitigate its impact, and hopefully to revert it. Climate Change Education, a subdomain of Education for Sustainable Development, is a modality of Global Education focused on preparing people to achieve more sustainable ways to relate to our habitat. It encompasses preparation to adopt practices that are known to be sustainable, for example slowing down population growth, consuming a diet with a smaller carbon footprint, or using renewable energies. These practices may be individual in the choices we make about our own consumption and lifestyle, or they may be collective, the result of choices we make as citizens when we participate in the democratic process in various levels of government or when we influence the behavior of corporations. Government policies are essential to slowing global warming, and they are subject to influence and preferences by citizens, educated to understand the scientific consensus on climate change and with the capacity to exercise influence as citizens. 

But Climate Change Education encompasses also the development of the innovation skills necessary to slow down climate change, which requires advancing knowledge and inventing technologies that can help us transform our interactions with the environment, in a way reinvent our way of life. As a result, educating to mitigate climate change and for sustainability involves equipping people with the necessary skills for such advancement of knowledge and invention. 

There are different intellectual traditions that influence how global education is defined and conceptualized. These perspectives draw on various intellectual traditions: globalism, nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, and indigeneity. They are anchored in diverse core concepts: justice, equity, diversity, identity and belonging, and sustainable development. They include perspectives that accept the existing international social and economic order, along with others that are more critical (Davies et al. 2018). 

Following a cosmopolitanist and critical perspective, in my own work developing global citizenship curriculum, I have adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a guiding framework because they articulate a capacious vision of sustainability and because they tie global education as a theoretical field and practice to a set of concepts that are widely shared across many fields of human endeavor, including education, but extending also into public health, work and industry, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, poverty reduction.

These seventeen goals are deeply rooted in multiple disciplines focused on human and social development. The Sustainable Development Goals pose also a challenge to the very notions of development and social progress, emphasizing the interdependence of inclusion, social justice, peace and environmental sustainability (Reimers et al. 2016, 2017). 

Global education encompasses the traditional disciplines in service of helping students understand the world in which they live: sciences, social sciences, and humanities. For example, to understand climate change it is necessary to understand the processes that explain how climate works, a subject of scientific study. A global education includes also opportunities for students to imagine and enact strategies to advance human well-being, which draws on the capacities of invention and ethical reasoning. This might include helping students to develop the curiosity to advance scientific understanding in a particular domain, or the desire to create products or services that advance well-being or solve problems, as with the previous example of reinventing toilets to address sanitation and advancing health. 

Global education is not necessarily an additional curriculum domain, rather, it is a set of clear purposes which can help align the entire curriculum with real world questions, challenges, and opportunities. As such, global education is a way to help teachers as well as students understand the relationship between what is learned in school and the world outside the school. Global education encompasses also a series of approaches, pedagogies, curricula, and structures to support such instruction that is explicitly designed to help build the breadth of skills that can help students function in a deeply interdependent and increasingly globally integrated world. The Australian Curriculum Corporation defines it as follows: 

Global education is defined as an approach to education which seeks to enable young people to participate in shaping a better shared future for the world through: Emphasizing the unity and interdependence of human society, Developing a sense of self an appreciation of cultural diversity, Affirming social justice and human rights, peace building and actions for a sustainable future, Emphasizing developing relationships with our global neighbors, Promoting open-mindedness and a predisposition to take action for change. (Curriculum Corporation 2008, p. 2) 

Global education includes multiple specific domains, such as environmental education and education for sustainability, understanding global affairs, understanding the process of globalization and of global interdependence, developing intercultural competency, fostering civic engagement, human rights, and peace education. Sciences and humanities are the disciplinary foundations of global education, for there is no way to understand the world without the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that result from learning to think as scientists do or reason as humanists can do. 

An effective program of global education is not the additive result of a series of isolated experiences in various curriculum silos, but the result of coherent and integrated learning opportunities that can help students understand the relationship between what they learn in various grades and subjects in service of understanding the world and of being able to act to improve it. As such, a global education helps students think about complexity and understand the systems which undergird global issues and global interdependence. 

References 

Brueck, H. (2019). A $350 toilet powered by worms may be the ingenious future of sanitation that Bill Gates has been dreaming about. Business Insider. Curriculum Corporation. (2008). Global perspectives: A framework for global education in Australian Schools. Carlton South, VC: Curriculum Corporation. 

D’Agostino, R. (2018). How does Bill Gates’s ingenious, waterless, life-saving toilet work? Popular Mechanics. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a24747871/bill-gates-lifesaving-toilet/ . 

Davies, I., Ho, L. C., Kiwan, D., Peck, C. L., Peterson, A., Sant, E., et al. (Eds.). (2018). The Palgrave handbook of global citizenship and education. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Montaigne, M. (1575). On the education of children. http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/ education_of_children/. NASA. (2020). 

Global climate change. Vital signs of the planet. Retrieved from January 14, 2020, from https://climate.nasa.gov/. OECD. (2005). Definition and selection of key competencies: Executive summary. Paris: OECD. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/35070367.pdf. OECD and Asia Society. (2018). 

Teaching for global competence in a rapidly changing world. Paris: OECD. https://asiasociety.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/teaching-for-global-competence-ina-rapidly-changing-world-edu.pdf. Reimers, F., Chopra, V., Chung, C., Higdon, J., & O’Donnell, E. B. (2016). 

Empowering global citizens. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. Reimers, F., et al. (2017). 

Empowering students to improve the world in sixty lessons. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. UNESCO. (2017). Education for people and planet (Global education monitoring report). Paris: UNESCO. 

The free e=book, Educating Students to Improve the World, can be downloaded here: file:///Users/fbi/Downloads/2020_Book_EducatingStudentsToImproveTheW.pdf

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 

About fernando m. reimers.

Fernando M. Reimers is Ford Foundation Professor of Practice in International Education Faculty Director,  International Education Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He studies and teaches about innovative education policies and programs that help students develop competencies necessary for civic participation, work and life in the 21st century. He also works in the area of global citizenship education and in how to align education policies with the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals  of the United Nations.

Reimers is a member of the  Massachusetts Board of Higher Education , and a fellow of the  International Academy of Education . He chairs the board of  World Teach , and serves on the boards of  Facing History and Ourselves ,  Teach for All , and other educational organizations.

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an emerging agenda in education, caring for the soul of humanity, a pocket full of stones, the most important thing, being and becoming in a field of resonance, an overcast morning, i sit down to write, almost bethlehem, the rebel’s silhouette, xiuhtezcatl martinez | break free, playing for change, the universal declaration of human rights, toward a global ethic, statement on the unique challenge of nuclear weapons, the earth charter, fall 2018   all consuming, the four nutriments, un-pick-apart-able, tending the wild, making politics sacred again, from the unreal to the real, the problem with “more”, the galileo project, eager: the surprising, secret life of beavers and why they matter, do we really want to be happy, the deschooling dialogues | plant medicine and the coming transition, eldering in the age of consumption, water and the rising feminine , a tale of two pipelines, unity and the power of love, between the inner and outer worlds, wind | a letter to my daughters, healing the hunger, the selling of the soul, nourishment, are we addicted to fear, what the wind taught, the prophecy, green medicine, the fairy begs for bacon, finals time, how love builds a home, may everything flower, healing sound with jesse paris smith, consumption as the path, books in brief, climate news.

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KOSMOS Summer Quarterly, 2018

Unlearning together, awake, awakened, woke, change the worldview, change the world, presence at the edge of our practice, dynamic governance, roots and evolution of mindfulness, indigenous worldview is a source we now urgently need, the wanderer’s preparation in the death lodge, the deschooling dialogues: grief, collapse, and mysticism, social breakdown and initiation, forgive: the new practice and mantra for black men, the migrant quilt, the connection, healing into consciousness, wealth and abundance, confessions of a recovering catholic, the habits of schooling, an uncommon song, purposeful memoir as a path to alignment, being human, the night i didn’t stand up, absence presence, yorkston/thorne/khan.

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Global Citizenship Education

The primary aim of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is nurturing respect for all, building a sense of belonging to a common humanity and helping learners become responsible and active global citizens. GCED aims to empower learners to assume active roles to face and resolve global challenges and to become proactive contributors to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure world. Education for global citizenship helps young people develop the core competencies which allow them to actively engage with the world, and help to make it a more just and sustainable place. It is a form of civic learning that involves students' active participation in projects that address global issues of a social, political, economic, or environmental nature.

The UN’s  Global Education First Initiative  notes, “It is not enough for education to produce individuals who can read, write and count.  Education must fully assume its central role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies.” According to the UN, global citizenship education provides the understanding, skills and values students need to cooperate in resolving the interconnected challenges of the 21st century, including climate change, conflict, poverty, hunger, and issues of equity and sustainability. These same educational outcomes prepare students to be successful in the workplace of the 21st century as well.

http://en.unesco.org/gced

UNESCO’s work in this field is guided by the  Education 2030 Agenda and Framework for Action , notably Target 4.7 of the  Sustainable Development Goals  (SDG 4 on Education), which calls on countries to “ensure that all learners are provided with the knowledge and skills 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”.

Connected within the Target 4.7, Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and  Education for Sustainable Development  (ESD) are recognized as mutually reinforcing approaches: both prioritize the relevance and content of education in order to ensure that education helps build a peaceful and sustainable world and both emphasize the need to foster the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviours that allow individuals to take informed decisions and assume active roles locally, nationally and globally.

UNESCO Publications:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/resources/publications/

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/resources/publications/unesdoc-database/

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002241/224115E.pdf

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002464/246429e.pdf

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002457/245752e.pdf

There are a number of institutions and organizations around the world that are advancing Global Citizenship Education, including Ana G. Mendez University, UNICEF and Oxfam.

Ana G. Mendez University

Ana G. Méndez University is a non-profit institution of higher education whose principal mission is to promote the cultural, social and economic development and well-being of Puerto Rican society, as well as of other Hispanic communities outside of Puerto Rico, by offering educational opportunities for the benefit of the communities it serves. The university is UNAI’s global resource hub to promote the sharing of knowledge and information regarding global citizenship. Its activities in that regard solidify its commitment to the development of global citizens, by ensuring that its graduates are thoroughly prepared to provide solutions to solve the problems faced by humanity today.

Oxfam believes that global citizenship education enables young people to develop the core competencies which allow them to actively engage with the world, and help to make it a more just and sustainable place. At Oxfam, the philosophy of global citizenship is implemented through a whole-school approach which involves everyone from learners themselves to the wider community. It is also promoted in the classroom through teaching the existing curriculum in a way that highlights aspects such as social justice, the appreciation of diversity and the importance of sustainable development. In this way, global citizenship education grounds learning in practical life situations, creates a culture of global knowledge about other societies thus instilling tolerance and challenging inequality, emphasizes the importance of individual and collective power and creates a sense of social responsibility. To achieve this, Oxfam has developed guides describing the why, what and how of global citizenship. They introduce the key elements of Oxfam's Curriculum for Global Citizenship , as well as providing case studies that outline best practices in the classroom, activities that can be adapted for use in many curriculum areas, and resources for further reading.

Association of Korean Universities in Support of UNAI Korea

The Association of Korean Universities in Support of UNAI Korea was established in 2012 and has been an active non-profit organization registered with the Republic of Korea Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2013. UNAI Korea adheres to the principles of UNAI, promoting higher education and global citizenship education through collaborations with institutions of higher education and research both in Korea and overseas.  UNAI Korea supports the pursuit of the three foundational goals of the United Nations Charter: peace, development and protection of human rights. Working with 68 universities and higher education institutions within Korea as well as undergraduate and graduate student groups through UNAI ASPIRE Korea, UNAI Korea promotes and implements the UN’s major education initiatives. UNAI Korea also supports Korean universities and institutions to build partnerships with the UN and other higher education institutions overseas to use education as an engine for addressing global challenges. To fulfill this mission, UNAI Korea is developing global citizenship education programs in higher education, enhancing research and exchange among higher education institutions around the globe, nurturing and building the capacities of youth and professionals, and establishing comprehensive partnerships among all stakeholders.

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The Global Education Innovation Initiative (GEII) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is a multi-country research-policy-practice collaborative examining relevant, powerful, and effective education in the 21st century for all students, including marginalized youth.

We support the development of global education leadership for 21st century education by conducting research on effective policy, practices, and programs; co-creating with education leaders and practitioners helpful learning opportunities, tools and protocols to advance engaging, effective, and empowering teaching and learning; and creating a dynamic learning network of global partners.

Our book, Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century: Educational Goals, Policies, and Curricula from Six Nations  (Harvard Education Press, 2016), is a study of goals of purposes in education as expressed in the national curriculum frameworks of six countries.

Our second research project, a rigorous analysis of programs that advance 21st century education in seven countries, is currently underway, as is our third research project, the identification and explication of 50 programs globally addressing 10 major topics pertinent to the 21st Century: Arts/Creativity, Civics/Ethics, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Finance, Gender, Global Citizenship, Health/Sports, Social Emotional Learning, and STEM.

At GEII, we focus on advancing the understanding of the way in which education leaders and practitioners in diverse education systems define and practice an education that is relevant to the 21st century.

Specifically, we are studying:

• How do educational policymakers and practitioners in various high performing and rapidly improving countries conceptualize and articulate their understanding of the goals and purposes of education for an increasingly interdependent world?
• How are these ideas expressed and put to practice in exemplary educational programs in these countries?
• What are the barriers and challenges as well as effective aids and supports to learning and teaching the 21st century competencies, in all contexts, and particularly for marginalized youth?

To answer these questions we have formed a research consortium with research partners in the following institutions: Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Educacion at the Universidad de Chile in Chile; National Institute of Education Research in China; Universidad de Externado in Colombia; Kaivala Education Foundation in India; Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economica in Mexico; and the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

At the Global Education Innovation Initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, our collaborators are researchers and practitioners who share the goals of advancing knowledge about what an education of quality is and how to support it, and who have the desire to find ways to impact education policy and practice in order to support the creation of high quality education at scale, in ways that can benefit all students, including marginalized youth. Our partners’ motivation to participate is to benefit from collaborative work with high quality institutions in various parts of the world.

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Global Education Learning Goals

Students pursuing global learning should develop the ability to:

• Understand and experience a place outside of their home country, using a complex set of skills and knowledge that represents the diversity of learning experiences at Grinnell College, including the study of languages. “Place” can be defined broadly as a city, region, ecosystem, or other geographic entity, and it includes the people who reside in that location.  
• Understand a global process or system (e.g. climate change and sustainability, migration, development, international trade, linguistic patterns, religious practices, literary or artistic traditions, colonialism) that connects different places in the world.  
• Identify a topic, issue, practice, custom, idea and/or historical debate on which people in different parts of the world have varying opinions or attitudes and ways of expressing them, and then be able to explain the reasons behind these differences.  
• Understand their home or home country in global terms. That is, students should understand the relationships between the home country and other places in the world, and students should recognize how particular characteristics of the home country are practiced differently in other places.  
• Navigate societies, work in cultures, and understand and speak languages other than their own. 

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SDG Digital Badges: Your Gateway to Global Impact

The sdgs on campus, earn an sdg digital badge with iu global.

IU Global offers students the opportunity to earn digital badges that demonstrate awareness of and experience with different UN SDGs. Through our SDG Explorer Badges, students gain a foundational understanding of different SDGs by completing short modules on Canvas.

Faculty Integration of SDGs in the Classroom

Faculty can integrate the digital badge opportunity into their courses in the following ways:

• Include the badge as a required assignment to give students background knowledge on a global challenge related to your course
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For more information or additional support on using the SDG Explorer Badges in your classroom, contact [email protected].

FAQs about the SDG Digital Badges

What is a digital badge.

Digital badges are a tool that can be used to acknowledge a learner's mastery of small, granular pieces of knowledge or demonstrated achievements or skills. Digital badges are a visual indicator of an earned microcredential and they are embedded with verified metadata, which makes them shareable across social media and the internet.

How do I start earning an SDG badge?

To start earning your SDG Explorer or Experience badge, visit this Canvas course . Select the SDG you would like to focus on and complete the badge.

How long will it take to complete the badge?

It should take about 2 hours to complete the SDG Explorer Badge.

What will students learn through the SDG Explorer Badge?

As students work through each Explorer badge, they will learn the following:

• Why that SDG matters around the world and the challenges to achieving that goal
• The targets of the SDG and how they work to address the goal
• Progress made towards that SDG around the world
• Examples of how the goal is addressed and experienced in different international contexts
• How you can take action towards that goal

What happens once a student finishes the Canvas courses?

Once a student completes the SDG Explorer course on Canvas, someone at IU Global will be notified. We will review your materials and issue you your digital badge. When that is complete, the student will receive notification by email. Once a student receives their digital badge, they can attach it to their email, resume, LinkedIn page, or other social media.

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The Future of Education — Challenges and Opportunities for Integrating the SDGs and Global Citizenship into High School Education

TOKYO: On 22 April 2024, UNU will host a conversation with Malcolm McKenzie, Head of School at United World Colleges ISAK Japan.

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On 22 April 2024, UNU will host “ The Future of Education — Challenges and Opportunities for Integrating the SDGs and Global Citizenship into High School Education ”, a conversation with Malcolm McKenzie , the Head of School at United World Colleges ISAK Japan. This event will start at 18:30 in the 2F Reception Hall at UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.   In an era where global challenges demand innovative and unified responses, education stands at the forefront of change, holding the key to a sustainable future. The integration of the Sustainable Development Goals and the concept of global citizenship into high school education represents a significant shift towards preparing students to tackle complex challenges in the future. This approach not only enriches the curriculum with new pedagogical methods and technologies, but also cultivates a generation of informed, empathetic and proactive global citizens.  UWC ISAK Japan, Japan’s first full-boarding international high school, embodies this transformative vision. Founded in 2014, ISAK became part of the United World Colleges movement in 2017. UWC ISAK Japan is dedicated to making education a means to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.  Mr. Malcolm McKenzie will join UNU Rector Tshilidzi Marwala for a conversation exploring the hurdles and prospects of embedding peace and sustainability in high school education by drawing on examples of UWC ISAK Japan's pioneering efforts to empower its students to be transformational future leaders. What role can high schools play in promoting peace and sustainability? What effect will emerging technologies like generative AI have on the future of education? How do we cultivate the next generation of leaders to have an empathetic and positive impact on the world?  The UNU Conversation Series aims to foster audience participation; you are encouraged to engage with the speakers during the conversation and at the reception that will follow, where all event attendees are invited to enjoy hors d’oeuvres and drinks while exchanging ideas and making new contacts.  Please note that this event will be in English. Advance registration (by 21 April) is required. Please click on the REGISTER button above to access the online registration page.  Please be prepared to present identification at check-in. 

About the speaker

Malcolm McKenzie has over 20 years of experience as an educational leader dedicated to fostering international understanding and peace through education. Mr. McKenzie, originally from South Africa, considers himself a citizen of many countries by inclination and through lived experience.   His career is marked by leading several boarding schools in Botswana, the US, the UK and China, where he has developed innovative programmes that emphasize inclusivity, global citizenship, and leadership skills. His educational philosophy focuses on the transformative power of education, aiming to prepare young students to navigate and address global challenges with empathy, innovation and cultural sensitivity.   Currently serving as the Head of School at UWC ISAK Japan, Mr. McKenzie leads the School with a vision that aligns closely with the United World Colleges' mission to unite people, nations and cultures for a sustainable future. Through his work, he has become a prominent figure in the international education community, advocating for critical thinking, social responsibility and the importance of understanding cultural differences. 

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Bridging the Trust Gap in AI: Ethical Design and Product Innovation to Revolutionize Classroom Experiences

• April 15, 2024

Written by Leah Dozier Walker Executive Vice President of Equity & Inclusion at Waterford.org

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds tremendous promise across the education ecosystem. It has the potential to revolutionize learning experiences, enhance family engagement , and drive academic achievement. Leveraging AI can power differentiated instruction, personalize learning pathways , develop racially and culturally inclusive content, and provide invaluable feedback to educators and administrators. But like other innovations in education, it cannot be excellent if it is not inclusive.

AI education tools must be designed with the goal of preparing learners for success in an increasingly diverse and global society. According to a recent 2023 UCLA study, by 2050, non-Hispanic White children are projected to compose just 42% of the school-aged population (ages 5-17), Hispanics will represent 29%, Blacks will represent 17%, Asians and Pacific Islanders will represent 7%, and children with multiracial or other identities will represent 4%.

These demographic shifts necessitate a conscious and deliberate effort from both solution providers and users to build inclusive and diverse teams to scrutinize the quality of data being utilized, including the acquisition of datasets, the application of their products, and the monitoring to avoid any inadvertent biases.

Nothing about us, without us, is for us

One of the most significant pitfalls would be to rush forward without considering diverse perspectives and involving non-traditional stakeholders as co-creators of these innovations. This can be mitigated by assembling diverse teams of developers, data scientists, and subject matter experts from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Utilizing diverse perspectives can help identify and address biases in the dataset collection process.

Mitigate bias through accountability

AI technologies, like any tool, are not neutral. They reflect the biases, both intentional and unintentional, of their creators. There’s a legitimate concern that without careful oversight, AI will only become “better” at reproducing bias, systemic racism, and discrimination.

To address this, decision-makers must demand evidence of culturally diverse and ethnically accurate datasets. These datasets are the foundation upon which AI resources are built, and they must be designed ethically and with equity in mind. Additionally, developers must incorporate continuous feedback loops from a diverse pool of stakeholders to iteratively improve the fairness and accuracy of AI systems.

The way we develop and implement AI in education holds immense significance for individuals in the most marginalized communities. The biases inherent in algorithmic tools and their underlying datasets stem from their human creators. Humans, influenced by societal norms, are conditioned to make judgments based on identity markers such as race, gender, class, immigration status, and religion. Failure to intentionally assemble racially and culturally diverse AI product development teams poses a considerable risk that these tools will perpetuate and even exacerbate societal inequalities.

At Waterford.org we will forge this new frontier with the same commitment to inclusive excellence that is foundational to our content development, product design, and program delivery. We are leveraging collaboration with national experts, including our National Advisory Council on Inclusive Practices , to ensure that diverse perspectives and communities inform our AI innovations. Finally, we are intentionally seeking out voices and perspectives from outside tech spaces to ensure that we are aware of bias in our data and the outcomes it generates.

In the pursuit of harnessing the potential of AI in education, we must not overlook the necessity of embracing diverse perspectives, demanding accountability, and prioritizing equitable and inclusive practices. We can and must ensure that AI serves as a force for positive change in our educational landscape. Together, let’s strive to build a future where AI enhances learning opportunities for all, without perpetuating the biases and systemic inequities impacting marginalized communities today.

She is the founder and serves as principal consultant at Modern Impact Solutions, a professional services practice providing an array of inclusive excellence, communications, and strategic advising consultation to corporate, non-profit, education, and public sector organizations and executives. Prior to this, she served as the first-ever Equity Director at the Virginia Department of Education where she spearheaded education policy development and professional learning programs to advance culturally responsive educator practices and disrupt disproportionate student outcomes.

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Provost IMPACT Award supports innovation in education, clinical care and research for dental students

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 16, 2024) — The Institutional Multidisciplinary Paradigm to Accelerate Collaboration and Transformation (IMPACT) Awards were launched in 2023 to champion the necessary and groundbreaking work done by  University of Kentucky  faculty and other campus community members.

The inaugural IMPACT Awards total more than $600,000 — with a particular emphasis on proposals that are transdisciplinary, innovative and aligned with some aspect of The UK-PURPOSE, the UK Strategic Plan.

In 2024, IMPACT will continue to fund projects similarly aimed at supporting the university to continue leading in teaching, research, service and care.

This spring, UKNow is highlighting the 2023 IMPACT Award projects and the faculty who are leading them. Today, we learn more about the College of Dentistry’s project titled “Dental Integrated Research Education and Clinical Training” (DIRECT).

Luciana Shaddox , D.D.S., Ph.D., the associate dean for research and director of the Center for Oral Health Research (COHR); Craig Miller , D.M.D., associate dean for faculty development; and Emily Winfrey , D.M.D., associate dean for academic affairs, are leading the project that focuses on innovation in education and integrated clinical care and research in the College of Dentistry.

The main goal of this project is to develop training and mentoring strategies in collaborative clinical translational research that engage both clinical faculty and dental and graduate students in opportunities that will enhance appreciation and knowledge of evidence-based practice and inspire future engagement in research and academia.

The objectives of this proposal are to:

• Develop and re-design the curriculum to increase exposure to research methodology, evidence-based practices, teaching skills and opportunities, and integrated patient care.
• Develop collaborative research mentoring and training opportunities in interdisciplinary care and clinical-translational research.
• Develop the necessary infrastructure to enable and engage participation of students and faculty in integrated clinical care and research initiatives via cross-college transdisciplinary collaborative projects.

UKNow caught up with the research team to learn more about the project. You can read more in the Q&A session below.

How has the IMPACT award inspired innovation at UK with your research?

The IMPACT proposal has been an excellent propeller for the College of Dentistry. Collaborative interdisciplinary care team interactions have increased which will lead to increased opportunities for interdisciplinary data collection and pilot projects.

Funds are also being utilized to promote a research development series for students and faculty. The series includes participation of faculty from Nursing and Public Health, as well as representatives of UK centers (CCTS, libraries and the Proposal Development Office (PDO) office). Upon completing the series, participants will be able to apply for pilot funding, helping encourage multidisciplinary teams of junior and senior faculty members, as well as a student mentee (undergraduate or professional) engagement in research.

What positive impact will your research have on Kentucky and beyond?

We believe our clinical interdisciplinary model of professional education and research during direct patient care will serve as a great educational tool to improve training of our students as well as a model for comprehensive and integrative care to other schools around the US. We intend to publish a manuscript on this model by the end of this semester and submit it to the journal of American Dental Education.

How did you decide on this particular topic or research area?

Integration of care is the future of our profession. The mouth is connected to the body. Funding is increasing in this area as the clinical impact, scientific basis, and significance of integrated care increases. With Epic, the electronic health record used by UK HealthCare, we already have an integrated care software and an integrated care clinic. Putting our faculty to work together in an integrated educational clinical care setting and encouraging them to think of proper questions in that setting and collect proper data is the logical first step to achieving the best care and generating new evidence to further enhance this care. What comes next for your research? 

The interdisciplinary teams will submit proposals for pilot studies next. This will hopefully spark greater collaborative work among the disciplines involved and also generate preliminary data for external proposal development and submissions.

As part of this initiative of integration of care, our Kentucky Oral Health Innovation Initiative group also submitted a couple of proposals Medicine (EXCEL initiative focused on diabetes and periodontal care integration and NIH R21 submission focused on periodontal disease and long COVID associations).

Most importantly, we intend to gather enough data and experience in this model to develop a school-based dental practice network proposal to the NIDCR under the same name: DIRECT (Dental Integrated Research Education and Clinical Training).

As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.   

In 2022, UK was ranked by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for New Grads” and named a “Diversity Champion” by INSIGHT into Diversity, a testament to our commitment to advance Kentucky and create a community of belonging for everyone. While our mission looks different in many ways than it did in 1865, the vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world remains the same. We are the University for Kentucky.   

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Global Education Coalition: Innovating to accelerate the transformation of learning

Worldwide, 250 million children and youth are out of school and there remains a global shortfall of 44 million teachers, including 15 million in sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, only 40% of primary schools and 50% of lower-secondary schools are connected to the internet. And, even after receiving training, only 45% of lower secondary school teachers feel prepared to use technology to teach.

Opening the event, Ms Stefania Giannini, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Education, reiterated that “Partnerships are the best way - indeed, the only way - to achieve SDG 4.” 

“Today, more than ever, we need to develop creative solutions and build sustainable partnerships to overcome [these global challenges],” said Ms Giannini. “Establishing trust and a mutual understanding of our diverse needs and approaches is crucial.”

Supporting digital transformation in education

During the event, the Coalition, which now has 222 members working across 112 countries, launched its 2024 annual report -  United for SDG4: the Global Education Coalition in action.  The  report highlights how the Coalition , through its Missions – Global Skills Academy, Global Learning House and Global Teachers Campus - and the Digital Transformation Collaborative (DTC) is facilitating multi-stakeholder collaboration to achieve education goals.

The DTC is a group of experts in education technology from the Global Education Coalition, representing multilateral organizations, the private sector, Telcos, NGOs, funds and foundations. Following a recent workshop in Egypt , hosted by the DTC in partnership with the country’s Minister of Education and Technical Education, Dr. Ahmed Daher, the Deputy Minister for Technology Development, joined the event online to share insights on digital education in Africa. He noted the importance of a mechanism, similar to the DTC, to help coordinate efforts around digital transformation in education between partners and government sectors.

“As a decision maker from the government perspective, we need a common language,” said Dr. Daher. An entity such as the DTC can provide this common language, he explained, as well as involve more partners from the private sector and help replicate the successes of other countries in areas such as financing technology.

Ms. Adeleh Mojtahed, Giga Programme Coordinator for the UNICEF-ITU global initiative to connect every school to the Internet, added that a “common vision” is important to unify collaboration. In some countries, government entities still work in silos, she cautioned, but “build[ing] a cross-communication collaboration between the ministers [and] also including the private sector in the discussion could have a major impact.” 

New challenges and opportunities

Throughout the day, sessions and workshops addressed various themes of education transformation, including sustainable transformation, innovative financing for education, an international alliance of EdTech coalition for SDG 4, and artificial intelligence in education. 

While AI-powered tools are increasingly being integrated into education services and digital learning platforms and applications, the digital divide restricts the transformative potential of AI in education. Globally, 2.6 billion people remain offline, while one in four primary schools still lack electricity.

Discussions centered on how the Coalition can support the establishment of guidance and principles for the use of AI in education, as well as build the capacities of governments in adopting these technologies while ensuring solutions are representative and affordable in all countries.

However, there remains a significant lack of research and evidence around education technology tools, noted Dina Ghobashy, Global Lead on Education Transformation at Microsoft. She called for greater dissemination of research and knowledge sharing of both the pitfalls and successes.

"We could collaborate together on some of these research initiatives to actually explore the impact of AI learning on our future education,” said Ms. Ghobashy, “[then] we can have [a greater] evidence base on the ways for us to leverage artificial intelligence in an effective way for education.”

The Coalition in 2024

Since 2020, the Coalition has helped over 850,000 youth develop skills for employment through the Global Skills Academy, while nearly 800,000 teachers have been trained through the Global Teacher Campus. Meanwhile, the Global Learning House has provided resources and support to more than one million learners, and over two million women and girls were reached through the Gender Mission. 

As the Coalition progresses with its 2024 work plan, the Missions aim to renew and scale upon successful initiatives, while forging new strategic partnerships. With the Summit of the Future coming up in September 2024, and the forthcoming Global Digital Compact, the Global Education Coalition will also work this year to align with these critical milestones for education, seeking out additional opportunities for collaboration and further solidifying its commitment to the transformation of education.

• More on UNESCO’s  Global Education Coalition  

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