| dc.description.abstract | THE INTERCONNECTED environmental, economic,
social and political challenges facing humanity call
for education that enables young people to engage
creatively and responsibly with the world. We need
education for sustainable development – education
that ‘empowers learners to take informed decisions
and responsible actions for environmental integrity,
economic viability and a just society, for present and
future generations, while respecting cultural diversity’
(UNESCO, 2014a, p. 12).
This guidebook aims to support textbook authors
and publishing houses to produce a new generation
of textbooks that integrate education for sustainable
development (ESD). By doing so, it aspires to make
learning relevant and eff ective. It also contributes
to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015),
adopted by 193 UN Member States in 2015. At the core
of the 2030 Agenda are 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) – the shared global ambition and
intergovernmental commitment up to 2030 (see
Box 1). Although this guidebook focuses on school
textbooks, its approach should be seen as part of a
wider process of transforming a variety of educational
media – including images, audio and video materials –
to engage students in immersive learning.
The guidebook builds on existing work in ESD and
related areas such as global citizenship education, peace
education, human rights education, environmental
education, development education, global education,
global learning and others. It is intended for the
stakeholders in textbook development: education
ministries, national curriculum authorities, textbook
writers and publishers. It can also be useful for
international and non-governmental organizations
that have a mandate for improving the quality of
education; teacher educators; teachers; principals
and head teachers; school boards; researchers and
practitioners of ESD and related education. It is aimed
at an international audience and recognizes that the
understanding of ESD and the practice of it is contextual
and the priority of sustainable development issues may
vary across education systems. Textbook authors and
educators are encouraged to use this guidebook as a
source of ideas, tools and methods that can help to
enrich content and pedagogy and complement their
own individual and institutional strategies.
What this guidebook off ers is concrete guidance for
textbook authors on how to reorient the existing
curriculum content towards peace, sustainable
development and global citizenship. It primarily
addresses authors of textbooks for primary and
secondary education in four subjects: mathematics,
science, geography and language (English). The
selection of these subjects was a pragmatic and
strategic decision rather than a refl ection of their
importance in relation to others. Time constraints
prevented other subjects from being included and
those selected are ones that will optimize eff orts to
mainstream ESD. Three of the subjects – mathematics,
science and language – are usually core compulsory
subjects in national curricula. Geography is a subject
that naturally lends itself to ESD and provides rich
insights into embedding that could be useful for other
subject areas as well. | en_US |
