AI and the Future of Curriculum Monitoring: Rethinking How We Assess Sustainability Content

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The Global State of Climate Education: Tracking Policies, Knowledge, and Progress

Proposal

Traditional keyword-based methods for assessing the integration of green content in curricula, while foundational in assessing the prevalence and prioritization of particular content in the curriculum, face limitations in capturing semantic nuance, contextual variation, and ensuring multilingual consistency (MECCE, 2024). The MECCE (2024) report highlights the potential of natural language processing (NLP) approaches to carefully analyze the interconnections, distribution, and types of green content across subjects and grade levels.

This study explores how artificial intelligence tools can provide supplemental depictions of the integration of environment/climate/sustainability (‘green’) content in curriculum and policy documents, as compared to keyword-based methods. It focuses on UNESCO’s 2024 analysis of Grade 9 science and social science curricula in 85 countries, which assessed green content integration through keyword searches and identified good practices in 12 countries using a complex coding scheme.

This paper expands those methodologies by applying NLP and machine learning algorithms to Grade 9 syllabi from over 30 countries in more than 20 languages. It explores AI tools to identify latent themes and prevalence of different learning aims (e.g., cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral) across a large number of documents in an efficient manner. Keeping in mind the potential limitations and inaccuracies of AI tools, preliminary findings suggest that AI-enhanced analyses provide additional insights into the qualitative integration of green content in secondary curriculum. The study engages with the broader question of how educational systems can support global agendas for peace, equity, and sustainability amid social and ecological fragmentation. By deepening our understanding of how sustainability education is articulated in policy and curricula, this exploratory research considers how the curriculum can be a basis not only for knowledge transmission but also for fostering the competencies and dispositions necessary for peacebuilding and global solidarity in an increasingly divided world.

Authors

• Cecilia Bibbo, State University of New York, University at Albany

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