Curriculum and education for sustainable development: Does the U.N. emperor have new clothes?

Resumo

In 2015 the UN system agreed its framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) intended to guide investments in development through until 2030 (UN 2016). Goal 4 and its 10 associated targets explicitly relate to educational development. Target 4.7 (see Annex) is most often identified as the one most closely concerned with the curriculum issues that gives meaning to learning. The well known Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs of the World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA, UNESCO 1990) implicitly located curricula at the heart of development with its commitment to meet needs for knowledge and skill at different levels, so there is a long history behind the SDGs. This is important since an awareness of this history is essential to any strategy going forward that does not repeat the mistakes of the past (Lewin 2015a).

Thus the recent rediscovery of the centrality of learning for development is not new. It was at the heart of the global curriculum development movements initiated in the 1960s, which started with science and technology programmes, and evolved to wholesale national curriculum development in many newly independent countries driven by commitments to invest in human capital and national cohesion. Learning itself is not a development agenda. It is the answer to the question “what learning for what reason” that should reposition curriculum issues back at the centre of the education and development dialogue.

The title of this article asks does the (Sustainable Development) Emperor have New Clothes in a reference to a Danish fairytale (Anderson,1837). If directness is a virtue, as it is in Denmark, then the answer to the question is no. There is a road to travel and those who take it should pause before setting off to reflect on the history of curriculum development in both rich and poor countries over the last 50 years.