Exploration of the Causes and Consequences of Greening the Curriculum: a global, cross-national perspective

• In Event: "Navigating the Complexities of Environmental and Sustainability Education: Contradictions, Overlaps, and the Role of Data"

Proposal

The notion of “greening education” is meant to communicate an array of interrelated education interventions and reforms that would: a) prioritize “green” content related to environment, sustainability, climate change and biodiversity; b) update and upgrade school infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions; c) prepare teachers with appropriate knowledge and skills to teach green content in a holistic and inter-disciplinary manner; d) develop and revise existing learning assessments to valorize green skills, knowledge and competences and agency to take action; and e) improve relations between schools, communities and Indigenous groups to help address future sustainability challenges and solutions.
The Greening Education Partnership (GEP), established in 2022 during the UN Transforming Education Summit and hosted by UNESCO, constitutes the institutional home of the movement to make education systems greener. "Greening curriculum" is one of the four work areas of the GEP and aligns well with country commitments to SDG 4.7 (2015), the UNFCCC Action for Climate Empowerment initiative (2015) and 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.
To assess progress in efforts to integrate and prioritize green content in the official curriculum, the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) project and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report team have developed a Greening Education Indicator (GEI), which was recently proposed to the Education Data Commission (July 2024) as a possible indicator for SDG targets 13.3.1 and 4.7.3.
The GEI is a composite index that combines information on the extent to which “green” content is prioritized in national curriculum policy frameworks, on the one hand, and in science and social science curricula (syllabi) for grades 3, 6, and 9, on the other. The ‘greener’ the content referenced in curricular policies and subject curricula, the higher the country’s score on the GEI. This metric highlights the extent to which countries convert their commitments to greening education into concrete references to environment, sustainability, climate change and biodiversity in curricular policies and content in primary and secondary education.

After a brief overview of the origins, development and institutionalization of “greening education”, we will present up-to-date data on the GEI for more than 100 countries and briefly describe the intercorrelations of the four GEI components. We will then explore the types of country characteristics (i.e., demographic, economic, social, political and environmental) most associated with higher or lower GEI scores. Finally, we will consider hypotheses of the possible consequences of the greening curriculum and explore associations between higher GEI scores and desired outcomes like reduced GHG emissions, increased climate action, or improved environmental policies.

Authors

• Aaron Redman, Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education MECCE Project

• Aaron Benavot, University at Albany-State University of New York

• Marcia McKenzie, University of Melbourne