Global Education Resources
The resources on this page are meant to inform and inspire educators and school communities as they embark on their global education journeys. We provide them here with the clear understanding that adaptation to your local context is essential. While these are only a small sample of the countless, wonderful resources out there, they are some of our favorites, and we hope they will be helpful in the experience of educating your learners to become global citizens.
Winner of ACEI’s 2017 Distinguished Education Article Award
How can teachers integrate the UN Sustainable Development Goals into their classrooms? A teacher and teacher educator duo provide a wonderfully detailed account of how they designed and implemented a curriculum focused on SDG Goal 12, Responsible Consumption and Production. Through their journey to empower children to be critical and compassionate consumers, they show that children are ready to take action and solve real-world problems. Click image at left to read.
“Looking Beyond the Classroom: Integrating Global Citizenship Education Into Your Whole School.”
There is no doubt that the individual efforts of globally conscious educators are vital for preparing learners with the competencies they need to be successful in our interconnected world. Yet if we are to truly educate a new generation of learners as global citizens, we must acknowledge that global citizenship education (GCE) is more than a pedagogical choice. If we are to harness the transformative potential of education to create a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world, we must look beyond our classrooms. Read the Full Article
Global Publications From UNESCO
UNESCO, a specialized UN agency committed to building peace through education, has identified global citizenship education (GCE) as one of its main objectives for 2014-2021. The resources below provide more information on UNESCO’s approach to GCE.
The ABCs of Global Citizenship. This handy reference guide from UNESCO includes the answers to 20 common questions about global citizenship education.
Global Citizenship Education: Preparing Learners for the Challenges of the 21st Century seeks to enhance understanding around GCE and its implications for educational content, pedagogy and practice. Furthermore, it provides guidance on how to translate GCE into practice, featuring examples of good practices and existing approaches to GCE in different settings.
Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives is the first pedagogical guidance from UNESCO on GCE, developed in response to the needs of Member States for overall guidance on integrating GCE in their education systems. It presents suggestions for translating GCE concepts into practical and age-specific topics and learning objectives in a way that allows for adaptation to local contexts. It is intended as a resource for educators, curriculum developers, trainers as well as policy-makers, but it may also be useful for other education stakeholders working in non-formal and informal settings.
Learning to Live Together attempts to answer a critical question: is it possible to devise a form of education which might make it possible to avoid conflicts or resolve them peacefully by developing respect for other people, their cultures and their spiritual values? Targeted predominantly at education policy makers, researchers, academics as well as education practitioners of the Asia-Pacific region but also highly relevant to anyone involved in initiatives around global citizenship, sustainability, and peace education, this report examines how peace, tolerance, and equity and are reflected in the education systems of ten selected countries.
UNESCO Clearinghouse on Global Citizenship Education, hosted by the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding (APCEIU), is an open-access global database that facilitates information sharing and enhances knowledge and understanding of global citizenship education.
“Before you finish eating breakfast this morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured . . . we aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Websites of Interest
Teaching Tolerance: www.tolerance.org
Kids on Earth: www.kidsonearth.org
Smithsonian Science for Global Goals: https://ssec.si.edu/global-goals
Lesson Plans, Curricula, and Teaching Resources
Global Citizenship Education: Reflections and Practical Guidance from UNESCO: Within the global education community the current understanding of quality education includes developing knowledge and skills for global citizenship and sustainable development. What exactly does global citizenship education entail? UNESCO has released curriculum guidance and a background report to answer this question.
Human-Rights Friendly School Toolkit: This program provides guidelines and resources to help school personnel, students, parents/guardians and community members develop a school culture and related programs that support the implementation of human rights education.
The Global Oneness Project is a free, award-winning collection of multicultural stories, in film, photo essay, and written formats, and accompanying lesson plans that explore cultural, social, and environmental issues with a humanistic lens.
The Cultivating Peace initiative offers lesson plans and other classroom-ready resources in English and French that will assist teachers and community leaders to educate for change. Divided into two parts (Cultivating Peace in the 21st Century and Cultivating Peace — Taking Action), the initiative encourages youth to respect diversity, think globally, value human rights, recognize injustice, and respond to conflict with methods other than violence, and engages them in the search for a culture of peace in their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, and their global community.
The Earth Charter is an ethical framework for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. The Earth Charter Guidebook for Teachers, available in 14 languages, is an educational tool aimed at helping students to become more aware of the world around them and take responsibility for the role they play in its future.
From the Blogosphere
World Education Blog is hosted by the team working on the Global Education Monitoring Report published by UNESCO. The blog is an extension of the effort to monitor progress toward the education targets in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework and is intended to be a discussion forum for anyone interested in promoting the right to quality learning.
The Global Learning Blog on Education Week is a group blog for educators from around the world to discuss best practices in global education.