To support collaboration between educational authorities and civil society organisations, our project conducted participative, desk-based research examining the integration of GCE and the four global challenges of the GET project (climate change, gender inequalities, global inequalities and migration) in national curricula. Led by two researchers, La Salete Coelho and Mella Cusack, and carried out by national research teams, the work produced eight national curriculum study reports, and a curriculum studies international synthesis report.
Each national research team selected three curriculum case studies, typically Civic/Citizenship Education, Geography and History, and analysed these using an agreed curriculum mapping tool to assess how well their chosen curriculum documents integrate the four global challenges of the GET project.
While the findings of the national curriculum studies must be interpreted within each country’s context, interesting findings have emerged across the eight countries. For example, of the four GET global challenges,climate change is the most visible in the curriculum documents, followed by global inequalities, migration and lastly gender equality. Across all countries, the GET project learning outcomes relating to root causes are most evident, while those linked to governance, values, skills for active engagement and collective action appear less frequently in the case study national curriculum documents.
The research stresses that whileintegrating GCE into curriculum documents is vitally important; successful GCE implementation also requires teacher capacity building and context-specific resources. A further key conclusion is the value of CSOs developing strong familiarity with curriculum documents. This curriculum knowledge can strengthen their credibility and support meaningful collaboration with educational authorities, particularly during periods of curriculum reform.
Visit the Studies page to access and download the studies published so far, and check back soon for new reports that will be released in the coming months.
