The greening of education systems: where, how much and with what implications

• In Event: Decolonial Perspectives on Environmental and Sustainability Education

Proposal

The notions of greening education and greening curriculum have gained increased traction in international policy circles – notably, the Transforming Education Pre-Summit (June 2022) and then UN Transforming Education Summit (TES) (September 2022). The terms have an important organizational anchor—the Greening Education Partnership—which is hosted by UNESCO and includes four pillars: greening schools, greening teacher training and education systems’ capacities, greening communities, and greening curriculum. The fact that the gerund form (‘greening’) is used rather than the adjective form (‘green’) conveys a sense that greening education is an unfolding process and not an existing (or end) state.

In concrete terms, the global vision for greening curriculum has been defined as a curriculum that “embraces a life-long learning approach that integrates climate action into school curricula, technical and vocational education and training, workplace skills development, teaching materials, pedagogy and assessment” (UNESCO, 2023). Greening curriculum should be part of a coordinated and comprehensive set of actions undertaken by governments and civil society that enable learners to acquire the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to tackle the effects of climate change and to promote sustainable development. UNESCO has also delineated a concrete global target in this area: to double the proportion of countries (currently at 45%) that include climate change in their school curricula at all levels by 2030 (UNESCO, 2023).
The SDG4 High-Level Steering Committee, when it met in December 2022, following the TES, decided “to add indicators for…greening education…and request[ed] that its Data and Monitoring Technical Committee...develop a methodology for these indicators that is realistic, builds on the existing SDG4 monitoring framework and supports the development of country capacity” (Decision 23, p. 45). The Steering Committee also called on all Member States “to set national targets for 2025 and 2030 on the SDG 4 benchmark indicators and the new indicators (p. 45).”

This presentation focuses on the construction of a new greening education indicator (GEI) developed by the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) project and the Global Education Monitoring Report team. The GEI combines information on the “green” content in two types of official curriculum documents: first, science and social science subject curricula, collected at three grade levels (grades 3, 6 and 9); and second, National Curriculum Frameworks (NCFs), a policy document providing an overview of national (and sometimes subnational) curriculum directions. Green content refers to the inclusion and prioritization of environment, sustainability, climate change and biodiversity in official curricular policies and subject syllabi. The presentation discusses the distribution of countries on the GEI and explores variation in the GEI by select country characteristics – for example, region, income level, climate vulnerability, population size. The presentation concludes by discussing the policy implications of the GEI for countries and how it can be utilized to track progress on SDG targets 13.3 and 4.7.

Author

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