This is the accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Globalisation,

Societies and Education on Feb. 8, 2021. Please cite the version of record available online
at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1882957

Stephanie Leite
Ph.D. student, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal,
Canada
[email protected]

Using the SDGs for global citizenship education: definitions, challenges,

and opportunities

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) employ a global

indicator framework to detail each Goal and monitor its implementation. This article
focuses on three targets from the indicator framework, which call for mainstreaming
education for global citizenship, sustainable development, and climate change into
national curricula. By investigating the practicalities of meeting these targets from an
educator’s perspective, this article proceeds with: arguing for a need to shift the central
purpose of education; examining what is meant by education “for” the three key areas
included in the global indicator framework; exploring curricular opportunities offered
by the SDGs; and presenting inquiry-based learning as a pedagogical approach for
critically interrogating the SDGs with learners. If the SDGs are used to drive a
pragmatic definition of global citizenship, then trends in education such as inquiry-
and problem-based learning come to life with a clear and urgent purpose.

Keywords: Global citizenship education; Education for sustainable development;

Climate change education; Inquiry-based learning; Sustainable Development Goals.

Introduction

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),

together with a series of targets to clarify the intended outcomes of each Goal. In 2017, the

UN General Assembly also adopted a global indicator framework, presented as a dynamic

review mechanism used to guide and monitor the implementation of each Goal (UNStats,

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2021). Included in the global indicator framework is a call for increased education in three

key areas: global citizenship, sustainable development, and climate change (I will frequently

refer to these terms as “three key areas” of education). The achievement of the SDGs will

thus in part be measured by the extent to which countries incorporate education on these three

key areas into national curricula by 2030 (see Table 1). In order to help accomplish the SDGs

within the given timeframe, educators need working definitions, so we have a shared

understanding of what we are tasked to do. However, as of 2019 there was “no common

agreement on the definitions of global citizenship education and education for sustainable

development” (TCG, 2019, p. 4), while recent research has highlighted the significant

differences in both engaging with and framing climate change within educational curricula

(e.g., Bieler et al., 2018; Holthuis et al., 2014). For the purposes of this article, I will draw

from definitions proposed in 2019 at the Sixth Meeting of the Technical Cooperation Group

(TCG) (see Table 2).

Table 1. SDG Goals, Targets and Indicators Related to Education

Goal Target Indicator

4: Ensure inclusive 4.7: By 2030, ensure that all learners 4.7.1: The extent to which (i)
and equitable acquire the knowledge and skills needed global citizenship education
quality education to promote sustainable development, and (ii) education for
and promote including, among others, through sustainable development,
lifelong learning education for sustainable development including gender equality
opportunities for all and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, and human rights, are
gender equality, promotion of a culture mainstreamed at all levels in
of peace and non‐ violence, global (a) national education
citizenship and appreciation of cultural policies; (b) curricula; (c)
diversity and of culture’s contribution to teacher education; and (d)
sustainable development student assessment

12: Ensure 12.8: By 2030, ensure that people 12.8.1: The extent to which
sustainable everywhere have the relevant (i) global citizenship
consumption and information and awareness for education and (ii) education
production patterns sustainable development and lifestyles for sustainable development
in harmony with nature (including climate change

2
 education) are mainstreamed
in (a) national education
policies; (b) curricula; (c)
teacher education and (d)
student assessment

13: Take urgent 13.3: Improve education, awareness- 13.3.1: Number of countries
action to combat raising and human and institutional that have integrated
climate change and capacity on climate change mitigation, mitigation, adaptation,
its impacts adaptation, impact reduction and early impact reduction and early
warning warning into primary,
secondary and tertiary
curricula

Table 2. Definitions for GCED, ESD and CCE based on the TCG6 Report (2019)

Term Definition

Global Citizenship Education which empowers learners of all ages to assume active roles,
Education (GCED) both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive
and secure societies. It can be summarised as ‘learning to live
together’. It is based on the three domains of learning – cognitive,
socio-emotional and behavioural.
● Cognitive: knowledge and thinking skills necessary to better
understand the world and its complexities.
● Socio-emotional: values, attitudes and social skills that enable
learners to develop emotionally, psychosocially, and
physically and to enable them to live
together with others respectfully and peacefully.
● Behavioural: conduct, performance, practical application and
engagement. It includes cultural diversity and intolerance,
gender equality and human rights and peace and non-violence.

Education for Education that empowers learners to take informed decisions and
Sustainable responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and
Development (ESD) a just society for present and future generations. It can be summarised
as ‘learning to live sustainably’. It covers sustainable lifestyles and
ways of life, climate change, biodiversity, environmental
sustainability, the greening of the economy and sustainable
consumption, caring for the planet and disaster risk reduction.

Climate Change Education to help people, in particular youth, understand, address,

Education (CCE) mitigate, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. It encourages
changes in attitudes and behaviours needed to put the world on a more
sustainable development path and build a new generation of climate
change-aware citizens. It covers various responses to climate change
including mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.

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 The three key areas are spread across three SDGs: Quality Education (Goal 4),

Responsible Consumption and Production (Goal 12), and Climate Action (Goal 13). This

separation has some utility in terms of developing learning objectives and assessments.

However, the use of signifiers, such as “education for… XYZ,” while indicating specific and

urgent purposes, also relegates those purposes to the fringes of education itself (Jickling &

Sterling, 2017a; MGIEP, 2017). Jickling raised this point in 1992: “education is concerned

with enabling people to think for themselves” and “education for anything else is inconsistent

with that criterion” (Jickling, 1992, p. 8, emphasis added). Jickling’s concern is still relevant

today, as students and educators alike question the purpose of education and how it might

address the turbulent social and environmental realities they confront daily.

Unless considered as a central purpose of education when incorporated into national

curricula, the three key areas will remain supplemental to (and seemingly less important than)

core academic subjects. Studying global citizenship as a unit of a Social Studies course or

exploring climate change solely in a Science class inevitably confine these issues to niches,

failing to present them as interrelated and interdependent (MGIEP, 2017). Instead of only

associating those issues with subject experts, the SDGs as a whole may be used to support an

integrated curriculum that combines environmental, social, and economic topics,

encouraging a truly interdisciplinary perspective—notwithstanding their limitations

(Sterling, 2016).

The organization of the 17 SDGs—which have assigned numbers but not explicit

rankings in terms of importance—presents an opportunity to see issues as mutually

dependent upon one another for their achievement.1 To offer an example, one cannot

1
Evans and Musvipwa (2017, p. 43) have presented valid criticism regarding implicit hierarchies in
the SDGs, which will be discussed later in this article.

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effectively address poverty (Goal 1) without also addressing access to clean energy (Goal 6)

and gender equality (Goal 5). Assigning the SDGs different numbers separates the Goals into

distinct issues that can be examined individually and in-depth; but when seen as a whole set,

the Goals invite a holistic, integrated perspective. This structure allows us to zoom in and

out, making the SDGs a dynamic pedagogical tool that can be used to define the three key

areas. This dynamic ability begs the question: What if the purpose of education were to

prepare students to address the issues identified in the SDGs? Instead of organizing school

curriculum by subject, what if, adopting an inquiry-based learning (IBL) model, courses were

oriented by themes, using the SDGs as a reference for defining localized learning objectives

and outcomes?

Drawing from my experience working in secondary classrooms and teacher training

programs in the United States, this article argues that the SDGs themselves may be employed

to redefine education for global citizenship, sustainable development, and climate change,

thus offering a purpose-driven framework for 21st-century learning. Using the 17 Goals as

such opens a pathway for shifting education systems away from their focus on workforce

preparation or uncritical economic growth—and towards the health and sustainability of our

people and planet. This shift requires a re-examination of the fundamental values dominating

formal schooling via a transformative learning theory; as Sterling argues: “education needs

a significant degree of transformation itself [if] it is to be transformative in effect, rather than

conformative” (Sterling, 2016, p. 211). Organizing curricula around the global issues

identified in the SDGs is a starting point for transitioning our schools to help solve the

greatest problems facing humanity.

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The Need for Transformation

Since the SDGs were adopted, a series of global crises have reached a tipping point and

stirred a new generation of activists demanding accountability. The outrage demonstrated by

youth is justified: global warming continues to threaten the Earth’s climate stability as

atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. The planet’s five warmest years on record

have all happened since 2015 (NOAA, 2020), and scientists predict that existing levels of

greenhouse gas emissions will already be felt for centuries to come (Mengel et al., 2018).

Between 2017–2019, the planet’s ability to absorb this carbon dioxide was further reduced

by unprecedented fires in US, Australia, and Brazil; in this period, just the Amazon forest

decreased in size by 4,500 square kilometers, an area almost twice the size of Luxembourg,

due to deforestation and burning (Cannon, 2019). The resulting loss of biodiversity and

animal habitat has also been linked to an increased vulnerability to pandemics such as SARS

& MERS (Plowright et al., 2008; Rizzo et al., 2017). In response to increased postcolonial

migration to Europe, a 2016 wave of populism began to spread around the globe, with a series

of nationalist parties gaining popularity and winning elections, threatening democratic

institutions, and stoking xenophobia (WPR, 2019).

Youth have been active players in bringing issues such as the climate emergency and

racial injustice to the attention of policy makers. The Global Climate Strike of 2019 saw at

least 6 million people (Taylor et al., 2019) take to the streets when students and workers

walked out in a coordinated demonstration that reached 125 countries (Milman, 2019). Eight

months later, tens of thousands of protesters rallied against racial inequality after the police

killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis (Cave et al., 2020; Haddad,

2020a). Individuals in nearly 50 countries organized protests in solidarity with the U.S.

6
(Haddad, 2020b), giving global prominence to the Black Lives Matter movement. Young

people are at the forefront of a global reckoning, realizing they must inherit and confront

centuries of social and environmental injustices.

So, what does it mean to be a global citizen today, and how do educators help students

make sense of the historical context that has brought us to this moment? The issues calling

protesters to the streets are not new, yet the convergence of so many makes it impossible to

dispute their pronounced interconnections—and solutions must respond in an appropriately

integrated manner (Rockström, 2015; Raworth, 2017). Anthropogenic climate change is

directly linked to centuries of burning fossil fuels, leading to social and environmental

consequences and revealing “the complexities of unequal distribution of impacts” (Cabello,

2009, p. 192). Priorities of a “colonial worldview with [a] capitalist mind-set” take nature for

granted as a resource for humans to control and exploit for the sole purpose of economic

growth (Meighan, 2020, p. 3). While technology may offer some solutions to issues such as

the climate crisis, it alone does not address the historical and structural foundations of

capitalism and our current challenges (Cabello, 2009; TWI2050, 2020). As we imagine and

design transformative solutions to our current predicament, they must aim for systematic

change—and not be limited to topical solutions such as carbon offsets and diversity quotas.

The SDGs offer one possible framework for analyzing the intersectionality among urgent

global issues and for providing a common language for educators to critically engage with

the Goals. In addition, they give a clear purpose to global citizenship education—or education

in general.

7
What Is Meant by Education for Global Citizenship, Sustainable Development, and
Climate Change

The SDG global indicator framework includes the 17 overarching Goals plus 169 targets and

247 indicators (UN, 2020). Three of the targets refer to education for sustainable

development (ESD), global citizenship education (GCED) and/or climate change education

(CCE) (see Table 1). The SDG indicators call for the integration of the three key areas into

national curricula, but the indicators are expansive, and in and of themselves offer no baseline

to measure progress for agencies and schools that are tasked with mainstreaming GCED,

ESD, and CCE into their curricula (MGIEP, 2017, p. xvi). In 2019, the Technical Cooperation

Group (TCG) on the Indicators for SDG 4 proposed definitions for monitoring the three key

education-related indicators (see Table 2).

The TCG definitions add to a long history of inconsistencies and controversies in the

attempt to define both global citizenship and sustainable development. As a relatively newer

area of focus, disagreement on definitions of CCE are less widely documented; however, its

political baggage also makes it a complicated issue that many schools avoid for fear of being

labeled as “activist” (Sauvé, in Jobert, 2016). Beyond this overall unease with broaching the

question of climate change in some constituencies, debates on CCE tend to focus more on

how climate change is framed and situated within the curriculum. The analysis here focuses

predominantly on GCED and ESD due to the long evolution of their conceptions and practical

implementations.

The definitions in Table 2 themselves are fraught with contradictions that summarize

the controversy surrounding ESD: how can ESD at the same time cover “environmental

sustainability,” “caring for the planet,” “greening the economy,” and “economic viability”?

8
For environmental educators, using words such as environment, economy, and development

together is immediately problematic. The contradictions found in the TCG’s definitions are

at the heart of the debate over ESD and its pressures to supplant environmental education

(EE). In his 1996 survey of definitions related to environmental sustainability and sustainable

development, Dobson identified over 300 definitions (p. 402). Environmental education acts

as a more established umbrella for other trends, with sustainable development being just one

of 15 “currents” in environmental education identified by Sauvé (2005) and recognized as

one theory of environmental sustainability by Dobson (1996). While EE and ESD are often

associated together and sometimes used interchangeably, it is important to understand the

evolution of the terminology and the implications of adding the word “development” to the

wider discourse on environmental education. With so many definitions and orientations,

educators must critically engage with what is meant by differing conceptions of “the

environment,” “sustainable development,” and even “education” itself (Sauvé, 1996, p. 9).

ESD is a more recent addition to the educational movements referred to as “education

in relation to people and planet” (Wals et al., 2017). Stemming from nature conservation

education and environmental education, ESD has also run parallel to a hybrid model of

environmental and sustainability education that aims for a more relational way of

understanding and being in the world (ibid.). While drawing in part on each of these

movements, ESD has gained dominance in the global development lexicon since the term

sustainable development was launched by the United Nations World Commission on

Environment and Development and its release of the Brundtland Report, Our Common

Future, in 1987 (Jickling & Sterling, 2017b). Sustainable development took center stage

again at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, when environmentalists had been hopeful that a true

transformation towards environmental sustainability would be embraced by capitalist

9
countries (Evans & Musvipwa, 2017). Nevertheless, the stated end-goal of development

leaves some environmental educators uneasy and cautious of promoting a neoliberalist

agenda in a direction that is predetermined, with researchers expressing concerns regarding

the “emergence of education for sustainable development in educational policies and the

pressure on the environmental educators around the world to re-frame their work as

contributions towards sustainable development” (Jickling & Wals, 2008, p. 4). Sauvé

cautions that sustainable development, while relevant for business, should be resisted as an

educational objective (in Jobert, 2016).

Classroom approaches to ESD vary depending on an individual’s or institution’s

orientation and intended purpose (whether those intentions are conscious or not). For

educators seeking to situate themselves in the ESD debate, the heuristic proposed in 2008 by

Jickling and Wals is useful in positioning one’s approach to and understanding of the

relationship between education and sustainable development. Set up as a four-quadrant grid,

the heuristic captures on one axis two conceptions of education (transmissive and

transformative) and on the other axis two corresponding views of an “educated person” and

their role in society (authoritative and participatory). Jickling and Wals (2008) questioned

whether the “globalizing forces” (p. 18) associated with ESD allow for transformative

approaches to education that enable students to develop environmental thought without a

predetermined outcome in mind.

The ESD conversation is enriched from a sociopolitical and socioeconomic

perspective by Rose and Cachelin (2018), who differentiate between noncritical and critical

sustainability practices; noncritical forms “maintain abusive power dynamics that remain in

place as far as these can be ‘sustained’” (Rose & Cachelin, 2018, p. 519). In contrast,

10
 Critical sustainability recognizes the material, ecological necessities that sustain all life
on the planet, while also acknowledging and seeking out sociopolitical orientations that
support dignity, equity, respect, and rights for all parties. Critical sustainability explicitly
refutes the commodification of “nature,” seeking instead a biopolitical organization of
social life that envisions human and nonhuman flourishing as fitting well within the
limits of ecological systems. And rather than thinking about the concept as a single,
unifying model, it is more appropriate to think about critical sustainabilities in the plural,
where local articulations are context-dependent, contingent on any number of political,
environmental, and/or cultural factors (Rose & Cachelin, 2018, p. 521; emphasis in the
original).

Educators can draw from the distinction between critical and noncritical sustainabilities to

position their own approach and orient their curricular decisions.

Like the debate over ESD, the discussion over GCED has been contentious, with no

shortage of associated purposes and terms. Often taught in civics and social studies classes,

the idea of GCED is also connected to initiatives such as human rights education, peace

education, and democratic education, among others (Oxley & Morris, 2013, p. 302). In

Western education systems, the inclusion of civics education in national curricula often plays

the role of promoting social cohesion and developing a shared identity and the obligations to

a specific community or nation (Mburu, 2012, p. 176). This attempt to establish a national or

collective identity has been controversial in many regions, especially those with high

multiculturalism or a history of colonialism, or where rights have been restricted or withheld

from specific populations (DeJaeghere, 2009; Deer, 2009). DeJaeghere (2009), for instance,

reminds us that by definition “citizenship” is exclusionary (p. 223); and Camicia and Franklin

(2011) contend that citizenship education “has been a tool for perpetuating national myths

that construct and maintain imagined consensus in, on the surface, the name of national unity”

(p. 311).

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 With such challenges at the national level, efforts to establish a global identity are

even more amorphous (Gaudelli & Fernekes, 2004). One widespread concept of global

citizenship, rooted in the ancient Greek idea of cosmopolitanism, grew after World War II,

out of the search for a common humanity and our ethical responsibilities to fellow humans

(Reimers et al., 2016). The creation of the United Nations and the ensuing Universal

Declaration of Human Rights have made the concept of global citizenship a central but

challenging endeavor in education (Gaudelli, 2004). In Western thought, global citizenship

has inherently been tied to humans and to inclusion in a larger, shared “species identity”

(Boulding 1988; Gaudelli & Fernekes, 2004, p. 17). The Euro-American definition of

citizenship, according to Anishinaabe legal scholar John Borrows, “is not consistent with

holistic notions of citizenship that must include the land, and all beings upon it” (Borrows,

2002, p. 141); that is to say, the dominant understanding of global citizenship is still human-

centered and, for the last four centuries, it has promoted relationship between nature and

society through an overwhelmingly anthropocentric—as opposed to ecocentric—lens

(Smith, 1998; Jelin, 2000).

As GCED continues to gain momentum, educators must, as with ESD, have a clear

understanding of the intents of such programs and curriculum. In 2006, Andreotti proposed

a distinction: soft GCED, motivated by charity and a sense of humanitarianism rooted in the

idea of a shared common humanity; and critical GCED, motivated by ethical responsibility

towards justice and by the recognition of alternative conceptualizations of development

(Andreotti 2006, 2014). Building upon Andreotti’s work, Camicia and Franklin (2011)

distinguish between two discourses for understanding global community: neoliberal

cosmopolitanism and critical democratic cosmopolitanism. The former stresses market

rationality, while the latter emphasizes social justice and deliberative democracy (p. 314).

12
Camicia and Franklin point out that these discourses are not binary, but “embedded in a

dynamic network of power relations” (ibid.).

Expanding on her own soft/critical GCED conceptualization, Andreotti maps three

configurations of “social engineering”—all rooted in European colonialism or the resistance

to it (2014, p. 42). She adds a fourth “Other” narrative to this cartography, represented simply

by a question mark, arguing that the majority of people who have participated in formal

schooling have been blinded “to other forms of seeing, knowing and being in the world that

do not fit what we can recognize through the frames of reference we have become used to”

(p. 45); thus our ability to imagine other possibilities has been restricted. Adapting a heuristic

developed by Andreotti et al. (2016), a typology by Pashby et al. (2020) maps GCED types

across a triadic organization of discursive orientations: neoliberal, liberal, and critical—and

the interplay among them (p. 145). Of the nine types included in the mapping, the greatest

confluence occurrs on the neoliberal orientation, with only two GCED types mapping directly

onto the critical orientation. This is consistent with Andreotti’s identification of our limited

ability to imagine outside the powerful “modern/colonial imaginary” (Pashby et al., 2020, p.

156). Awareness of these interwoven discourses and the ultimate objective of each should

inform educators building and delivering curriculum for global citizenship.

Curricular Opportunities in the Sustainable Development Goals

The SDGs bring with them all the controversies and contradictions surrounding ESD, GCED,

and CCE. When approached acritically, the SDGs “remain anchored in neo-liberal economic

policies that entrench the capitalist interests of the North” instead of serving as a “panacea to

global inequality and disintegration” (Evans & Musvipwa, 2017, p. 37). Critics further argue

that, with the United Nations leading the discourse on climate change and sustainable

13
development, the economic priorities of the North will subject both climate change mitigation

and poverty reduction “to the principles of profit-making, market forces, and market growth”

(idem, p. 38). If taken as technocratic economic indicators external to our daily actions and

education systems, the SDGs, like the Millennium Development Goals that preceded them,

may “serve mostly to legitimate an extremely unequal world system in which literally billions

of people are relegated to a marginalized existence—legitimating this world by promising

we are addressing its severe problems” (Klees, 2017, p. 436).

What is an educator to do? Our interwoven economic, social, and environmental

crises are “also a crisis of education,” which “continues to be restructured in most parts of

the world to better reproduce workers, consumers and citizens who meet the needs of

neoliberal capitalism” (Huckle & Wals, 2015, p. 493). There is a common assumption that

schooling is about preparing students to feed the global economy; yet “there’s something

deeply disturbing about regarding children mostly as future employees and reducing

education to an attempt to increase the profitability of corporations” (Strauss, 2013). How do

educators shift the purpose of education beyond workforce preparation while also adequately

recognizing the context and challenges students face upon graduation? As Sterling points

out:

The future seems to be regarded by the mainstream as some sort of constant, assured,
and stable, whilst the normal business of educating/training for jobs and any kind of
economic growth proceeds untrammelled and unbothered by notions of: resource
depletion and competition, poverty and growing inequity, marginalisation of minorities,
spreading fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism, the implications of the march of
bioscience and robotics, species loss and plummeting biodiversity, climate change, food
security, wars and civil unrest, the risk of global pandemics, and so on (Sterling, 2017,
p. 36).

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As an educator, disregarding the inevitability of these crises feels irresponsible. But

education systems are complex and slow to change. How do teachers in primary, secondary,

and post-secondary schools develop the tools, resources, and leadership to galvanize actual

change in a world desperately in need of facing its biggest problems?

Despite the critiques, the SDGs are a globally recognized “blueprint” that proclaim

to have “sustainability for all” as a primary aim (UN, 2015). Sterling (2019) acknowledges

the SDGs as “a necessary and timely response to the world problematique” (p. 61) while also

posing an important question: “What factors have led to planetary system conditions—here

in the early 21st century—such that a set of remedial UN SDGs are necessitated?” (p. 62). As

educators, how do we both appreciate the SDGs as a common reference for global priorities

and critique the systems that made them priorities in the first place? Instead of simply

disregarding the SDGs as a tool of the global neoliberalist agenda, we can take advantage of

the opportunity they present to reinvent curriculum around a shared set of urgent issues that

our global community must address. The controversy surrounding the SDGs—and the related

three key areas—is what makes the SDGs a valuable organizing framework for educators.

The 17 SDGs encompass a broad range of issues that can be examined and critiqued

on many different levels. The ability and responsibility to examine these issues on personal,

local, and global levels could be used to reorient the definition of GCED. And 21 st-century

education itself could be defined by prioritizing GCED, ESD, and CCE. As adults continue

to wrestle with definitions, we need to invite students into the intellectual debate instead of

waiting for a “nice neat ‘vision’ or plan” to guide action (Brennan, 2019, p. 2). It is our

students who will determine the post-2030 global agenda—so why not bring them into the

debate now?

15
 Concerns about the SDGs are justified and should be encouraged; if the SDGs are

taken by educators as prescriptive, they may perpetuate neoliberal interests as critics such as

Evans and Musvipwa warn us (2017). Likewise, to acritically include the SDGs in

curricula—simply as a list of issues to learn about—will perpetuate a transmissive form of

education whereby students become receptacles for a predetermined agenda (Jickling &

Wals, 2008); in this way, the SDGs become just one more subject to learn. On the other hand,

using a constructivist philosophy in which learners actively contribute to and shape the

learning, the SDGs can be an empowering resource to invite civic reflection, critical thinking,

debate, and innovation.

Inquiry-Based Learning as a Pedagogical Approach

The inclusion of ESD, GCED, and CCE in the SDGs is a recommendation of what should be

included in national curricula, but now how; the SDGs do not provide a recommended

pedagogical approach. However, UNESCO, appointed as the “custodian agency” for Target

4.7 (UNESCO, 2019), acknowledges a pedagogical reorientation is necessary, in their 2016

Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM). Wals (2016) observes that while the GEM

Report is easily critiqued as “an extension of hegemonic globalizing thinking” it also includes

“a potential shift,” representing an evolution in “mainstream UN-speak.” This potential shift

is evidenced by statements in the Report such as, “for education to truly be transformative,

‘education as usual’ will not suffice,” and “learning needs to foster thinking that is more

relational, integrative, empathic, anticipatory and systemic” (UNESCO, 2016, p. 163). To

address the SDGs, both classroom resources and the instructional methods need to be

rethought. This poses multiple challenges, considering how deeply entrenched the “education

as usual” model has been embedded in teacher training, classroom resources, and educational

16
institutions. How do we begin to make a shift?

Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) and its related “cluster of teaching and learning

strategies” (Blessinger & Carfora, 2015, p. 5) offer an entry point for investigating the SDGs

with students. Also associated with real-world, problem-, project-, and place-based learning,

IBL is a student-centered approach based on problem scenarios that encourage students to

critically interrogate themselves, their communities, and the nature of the problems they are

investigating (Herman & Pinard, 2015). The IBL approach to learning predates Socrates as a

“method of developing self-knowledge through intensive questioning” (Jones, 2015, p. 277).

Further developed by constructivist theorists such as Dewey, Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bruner,

the inquiry method allows students “a means by which to construct their own knowledge

rather than just having that knowledge merely spoon-fed to them by others” (Blessinger &

Carfora, 2015, p. 5).

A key component of IBL is the active role taken on by learners in shaping the

questions, purpose, and path of discovery. The traditional relationship between teacher and

student is thus disrupted, which can be a difficult transition as participants develop new

attitudes about classroom roles, the purpose of teaching, and the nature of learning (ibid.). A

skillfully designed and facilitated IBL environment is collaborative, multi-disciplinary,

empowering, and purposefully unpredictable. For some educators, the classroom debates and

outcomes arising from inquiry may be uncomfortable, removing them from the dominant

“sage on the stage” role; however, practiced IBL facilitators use dialog to “contextualize

problems and help to critically inform or nuance student arguments” (Herman & Pinard,

2015, p. 52). IBL may disarm teachers who have been conditioned in the very structures that

are the target of transformation and help cultivate a learning environment that acknowledges

we do not yet have answers to the complex issues under investigation. Sund and Pashby

17
(2020) observe the challenges educators face in teaching global issues, “given the complex

ways teachers are or not prepared to engage in ethical global issues pedagogy,” nor confront

colonial systems of power (p. 166). To move beyond surface-level inquiry, Andreotti’s

HEADS UP tool helps educators deepen the level of questioning around “seven problematic

historical patterns of thinking and relationships” that often frame educational engagements

with global issues: hegemony, ethnocentrism, ahistoricism, depoliticization, salvationism,

uncomplicated solutions, and paternalism (2012, p. 2). Utilizing such a resource facilitates

difficult discussions and guides educators in “their own critically reflexive practice” (Pashby

& Sund, 2020). With the SDGs as an object of examination, an IBL approach creates space

for such difficult conversations and reflexivity to occur, inviting teachers and learners to see

the connections—and contradictions—between each of the 17 SDGs. The tensions arising in

such a classroom setting may serve as “prerequisites rather than barriers” from a learning

perspective (Jickling & Wals, 2008, p. 5).

While systematic educational transformation is daunting, changing the way we think

about subjects offers a starting point for rethinking what all this might look like at the

classroom level. Flipping the focus of classrooms from segregated subjects—which

perpetuate siloed thinking—to interdisciplinary themes opens up possibilities for learning:

Indeed, subjects are at the heart of our modern dilemma […] a subject-centered approach
yields a deficit model of instructional design, wherein teachers, curriculum designers,
textbook producers and test developers identify “gaps” in the learner’s knowledge and
develop plans to close them. Meanwhile, the “minor” subjects, such as art, music,
physical education, which, ironically, are the pathway for many to deeper learning—
don’t count in contemporary achievement metrics...What if educators approached their
discipline as a lens for understanding the world, not simply as a body of knowledge to
be mastered? (Riordan & Caillier, 2019, 130-1).

18
The SDG targets provide abundant fodder for teachers to design and facilitate inquiry-driven

investigations with the ultimate goal of critical engagement with the world. Examining the

very first SDG target (1.1), some of these possibilities may be explored by considering links

with traditional subject matter (see Table 3).

Table 3. Pedagogical Opportunities for SDG Target 1.1

SDG Target Guiding Questions Traditional Subject Conversion

1.1: By 2030, Who defines poverty? Why? Philosophy

eradicate extreme
poverty for all How is poverty defined globally? Geography
people everywhere,
currently measured How is poverty defined where I live? Civics
as people living on
less than $1.25 a day What are the roots of poverty? Why History
does poverty exist?

How is $1.25 calculated? What is a Mathematics

poverty line and how is it calculated?

What is it like to live on $1.25 a day? Sociology

Is $1.25 a day just? What would be Ethics

“just” and why?

How could the global poverty line be Economics

raised? How can we imagine a world
where poverty doesn’t exist?

Using the SDGs as a list of essential topics to explore in the classroom invites localization,

customization, and cultural responsiveness (see Hammond, 2015). It allows students to make

connections at personal, local, and global levels, seeing the intersectionality of issues both

within and among the 17 Goals. A “student-framed” approach to IBL creates space for

students to define their own questions (Marquis & Tam, 2015), thereby increasing

authenticity, self-determination, and curiosity. The practice of collaborative inquiry can also

serve a first step towards transformative learning, which involves making deep shifts in the

way we think, act, and exist in the world (Laininen, 2019; Sterling, 2010). In an unpredictable

19
world, this ability to ask ongoing questions and adapt to new situations is a key attribute of a

critically thinking and engaged global citizen.

Conclusion

The UN prioritizes education for three key areas in its 2030 agenda: global citizenship,

sustainable development, and climate change. Instead of dismissing these signifiers as

“dissatisfying and ultimately empty,” I argue they can call us to “do some more fundamental

rethinking of education and its purposes in a rapidly changing global context” (Jickling &

Sterling, 2017, pp. 5–6). There has been ongoing debate over the meaning, purpose, and

framing of these terms; however, if practitioners look beyond what the SDGs say and invite

learners to investigate why the 17 issues are prioritized as areas of global concern, then they

become generative educational opportunities. Applying an inquiry-based approach that

positions learners as co-designers driving investigations, the SDGs may be localized,

interrogated, and used as a springboard for deeper examination of the issues themselves and

of why they are in need of attention.

With global learning trends entrenched in efforts towards standardization, any

revision to existing educational systems seems daunting. Yet, the quality of our collective

future rests on our “capacity and ability to learn and change” (Sterling, 2014, p. 90). Given

the abundant examples of recent youth-led civic demonstrations, students are not waiting for

top-down reforms to happen, and educators must respond with change starting in their own

classrooms. It is time for the purpose and structure of schools to be fundamentally

transformed, initiating a process of unlearning (Sterling, 2017; Laininen, 2019) that is not

simply about “reframing or reconstructing our current thinking but moving away from our

existing mental structures towards a position which enables a fundamentally different way of

20
seeing the world” (Laininen, 2019, p. 177). Instead of being seen as a “technical toolbox,”

the SDGs may contribute to a “living tradition of inquiry” (MGIEP, 2017, p. 2) and serve as

a common, globally-recognized reference point for educators. As the conversation

surrounding the SDGs goes on, our planet continues to warm and inequities to grow. If we

use the SDGs to drive a pragmatic definition of global citizenship education, then

pedagogical approaches such as inquiry- and problem-based learning come to life with a clear

and urgent purpose.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ying-Syuan (Elaine) Huang, Blane Leslie Harvey, Carlos Pittella, and

the journal's reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would

also like to recognize Global Citizenship Experience Lab School in Chicago for fostering the

innovative environment that helped shape my ideas on GCED.

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