Tag: Futures of Education

Fritsch, W., Werkstetter Caravaca, A., Berger, T., & Waldow, F. (2024). Why and how they listen: on the (im) possibility of inclusion in the global governance of education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1-13. (open access)

Abstract: “International Organisations in the field of education face increasing demands for greater inclusivity by and of those affected by their work. IOs respond by carrying out various forms of consultations in order to maintain their legitimacy, which leads to tensions with the largely expert-driven, ‘technocratic’ mode of operation of most IOs and potentially disrupts their organisational coherence and identity. This paper examines how UNESCO and OECD navigate this tension in two recent landmark initiatives: UNESCO’s Futures of Education (2019–2022) and OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030 (2015-present). We argue that IOs favour ‘additive’ over ‘disruptive’ inclusion to maintain organisational coherence, raising questions about the possibility of ‘disruptive’ inclusion within global governance.”

For the purposes of this paper, we distinguish between two kinds of inclusion, which we call ‘additive’ and ‘disruptive’ inclusion, respectively . . . In processes
of additive inclusion, previously excluded actors are brought into the central narrative (as disseminated e.g. through landmark reports), yet their substantive position(s) do not substantially alter the vision of the future of education promoted by the report. . .

In contrast, disruptive forms of inclusion link the inclusion of previously excluded actors to substantial
revisions of dominant understandings of education. . .

In the cases we studied here, additive inclusion proceeded without the realisation of a disruptive agenda.

NOTE: The Center for Intercultural Dialogue held focus groups as part of the information gathering stage of the Futures of Education project, preparing what we learned as a report for UNESCO, in 2021.

 

Negotiating the Future of Education: The UNESCO’s Futures of Education-initiative and the OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030-initiative, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Researchers at Humboldt University (Germany) are studying the entire process of the UNESCO Futures of Education initiative, and they contacted CID to learn more about our involvement in that project. They were interested in our participation for 2 reasons: our focus group was uncommonly diverse, and we proposed a 10th point of action, rather than just discussing the 9 points that the draft proposal outlined. We suggested that

Learning to live together requires intercultural dialogue

and produced a poster showing the relationship between their 9 ideas and our 10th.

Here are further details about the research project:

“In the project “Negotiating the Futures of Education”, we want to analyse how visions of the future of education are negotiated and contested, looking at how narratives about the future of education are constructed by UNESCO and OECD in two currently running projects, Futures of education (UNESCO) and Future of education and skills 2030 (OECD). Our main focus is on understanding the micropolitical “backstage” processes involved in constructing these narratives. We are particularly interested in whether and how formerly marginalized voices and groups are integrated in the process and whether and in which ways these challenge reigning “orthodoxies” in the liberal education script. The project employs a qualitative approach, relying particularly on ethnographic methods, narrative and discourse analysis.”

When the report appears, this post will be updated to include a link.

NOTE: The Center for Intercultural Dialogue held three focus groups as part of the information gathering stage of the Futures of Education project, preparing what we learned as a report for UNESCO, in 2021. A few months later they requested concrete examples from around the world, and we prepared an addendum.

Sobe, Noah W. (2022). The future and the past are unevenly distributed: COVID’s educational disruptions and UNESCO’s global reports on education. Paedagogica Historica, DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2022.2112244

“the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed”

Willian Gibson

“For half a century the UN’s principal agency on education, UNESCO, has sought to shape the world’s educational landscape through a once-every-generation global report (e.g. the Faure report of 1972 and the Delors report of 1996). The latest of these reports – the Sahle-Work Commission’s “Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education” – was developed and released amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This article considers the ways the pandemic entered into the production of educational futures – and pasts – in this tradition of UNESCO global reports. It argues that the uneven distribution of pasts and futures is one of the key, already- existing systems of difference that set the stage for a disruptive event like the COVID-19 pandemic.” (Sobe, 2022, p. 1)

“The core of the proposed transformation agenda is the call for building “a new social contract for education” that consists of agreed-upon core principles, a redesign of education on multiple dimensions, and a rethinking of the actions and actors that implement and manage educational institutions, programmes and processes.” (Sobe, 2022, p. 8)

As more than one of the Sahle-Work Commission members has noted, the word “together” is the most important word in the report’s title. (Some, 2022, p. 10)

NOTE: The Center for Intercultural Dialogue held focus groups as part of the information gathering stage of the Futures of Education project, preparing what we learned as a report for UNESCO, in 2021.