Inclusivity and Sustainability in Education

with Stefania Giannini

Stefania Giannini was appointed UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education in 2018, becoming the top UN official in the field. Prior to this, she served as Minister of Education in Italy, Senator of the Republic of Italy, and Rector of the University for Foreigners of Perugia.

Episode 20: Inclusivity and Sustainability in Education

Public Sector Future

Episode summary

In this episode we speak with Stefania Giannini, who was appointed UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education in 2018, becoming the top UN official in the field. Prior to this, she served as Minister of Education in Italy, Senator of the Republic of Italy, and Rector of the University for Foreigners of Perugia. Discover her goals for inclusion and sustainable development in education. Hear how priorities have shifted with the rise of digital learning and how UNESCO is supporting teachers.

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Inclusivity and sustainability in education

Stefania Giannini was appointed UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education in 2018, becoming the top UN official in the field. She provides strategic vision and leadership in coordinating and monitoring the Education 2030 Agenda, encompassed in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Discover her goals for inclusion and sustainable development in education. Hear how priorities have shifted with the rise of digital learning and how UNESCO is supporting teachers.

UNESCO’s Goals

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Giannini described UNESCO as the only UN agency with mandates to cover all dimensions of education.

“Since the establishment of this organization 76 years ago, we have been driven by a very clear principle and idea, which is about education as a fundamental human right – the bedrock of personal, economic, and social development,” Giannini said.

UNESCO is working within the 2030 agenda of the UN for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which is working to achieve quality, inclusive education for all by 2030.

“It’s a mission which has a lot of responsibility in terms of coordinating all the efforts that member states as well as international organizations are doing to achieve this ambitious goal,” Giannini shared.

“We are in charge of setting normative instruments, whether it’s about fighting discrimination or education or supporting teachers, and we are also present on the ground,” Giannini continued.

UNESCO has 53 field offices that primarily support lower-income countries. The field offices support projects such as children going back to school in the recovery phase from the pandemic or work on literacy programs. Over the last decade, UNESCO has been running the largest literacy program in Afghanistan.

Determining priorities as Assistant Director-General for UNESCO

Giannini related her position as Assistant Director-General for UNESCO to the conductor of a grand orchestra, with the goal of getting all the instruments to play in harmony together.

Since she started her role four years ago, the challenge has been to make the system of international organizations focusing on education work better together, as well as results-oriented priorities on the ground.

Education in emergencies, education for migrants, and girls’ education have also been top priorities.

“It’s very much listening to country needs, watching carefully the big picture we have, and looking at the specific context, how we can support communities to prioritize education, to give education as a human right to every single child and learner in the world,” Giannini shared.

She explained that UNESCO has a humanistic approach to education, “understanding education not simply as a way for skills development, but also about sharing values, and transmission of better knowledge and awareness of the importance of cultural diversity, respect, and tolerance.”

COVID-19 impact on education – The rise of digital learning

“The COVID 19 pandemic has dramatically increased the role of technology and increased reliance on education technology and digital learning,” Giannini explained.

Digital learning has been about assuring continuity of learning. With virtual classrooms becoming the new normal, Giannini shared how priorities shifted for the following groups:

• Education systems – focus on education reorganization
• Government – putting new policies in practice and making education systems agile
• Teachers – reskilling

Priorities for inclusion in EdTech

“It’s time to take a critical look at how to put inclusion and equity at the very center of EdTech,” Giannini shared, outlining two priorities in UNESCO’s common agenda in education:

1) Closing the digital divide and leveraging technology for learning innovations and inclusion

“About one-third of the world’s students still – it’s about 500 million students – couldn’t access remote learning opportunities. And that is about exclusion. Then we can say that digital divide actually amplified inequalities that we already had before the crisis,” Giannini explained.

2) Building an ecosystem around technology and education

UNESCO took leadership and with support from the private sector, partnering with Dubai Cares, gathered experts and led consultation to chart a new course for connected learning.

RewirEd Global Declaration on Connectivity for Education

UNESCO’s newly launched RewirEd Global Declaration on Connectivity for Education focuses on three key principles:

1) Innovation centered on the most marginalized

2) Investing in open, free, and high-quality digital content

3) Supporting innovation, especially pedagogical innovation

Moving from the traditional classroom to the digital classroom is not simply putting content on the screen. The transition is “to rethink, to rebuild, to reimagine education,” Giannini described.

Supporting teachers at the frontlines of education

Teachers have been on the frontlines of education throughout the health crisis, managing a fast-changing landscape. Not only did the system of teaching change, but so did the role of teachers in both the system and the classroom.

“Teachers have to be directly involved now in the design and the use of technology in their practice. This is very much about their training. This is very much about their social, emotional support. And I think that teachers more than ever now require systematic professional development to teach with technology,” Giannini continued.

Giannini shared results from a joint survey recently published by UNESCO and World Bank that found that “two-thirds of advanced countries offer special courses on digital skills during the health crisis, while only 20 percent of low-income countries did so.”

UNESCO also conducted a survey covering 60,000 teachers worldwide where 65 percent of teachers shared they were not well-equipped to address the new teaching landscape.

Prioritizing teaching as a profession and supporting teachers is critical for UNESCO. UNESCO is in the process of empowering one million teachers with digital skills through their global teacher campus, which is a special initiative built under the coalition established to support countries in the pandemic. While Giannini mentioned it was a small step in comparison with the global need, she acknowledged it was a first step.

Education for sustainable development

“We have a tremendous opportunity to use education for sustainable development to become the driver for change,” Giannini shared.

This means building a green curriculum and advocating with countries to keep sustainability as a priority in the coming years. This also means making learning environments sustainable and sustainability oriented.

Green schools must become a model of sustainability, through energy, waste, and trash collection as well as curriculum-based changes. This includes learners being in more contact with nature and having good experiences with biodiversity, in addition to teaching about climate change.

“According to our recent survey from some 100 countries, we found that only half of them made reference to climate change,” Giannini shared, adding that its now a question of reorienting education systems.

“The power of education is about transforming society, individuals first, giving knowledge, awareness and changing behaviors, and as a second step, change in society and the environment around schools,” Giannini said.

Where Giannini finds inspiration for sustainability in education

Giannini is inspired by a movement of universities taking leadership on sustainability in education. She highlighted how Bergen University in Norway is convening many other universities and research institutes to focus on prioritizing sustainable development in terms of their curriculum and programs, and to be the new normal for research.

Giannini also brought up UNESCO’s Associated Schools Networks, with 11,000 schools all over the world, “especially in Japan, these children and teachers are very much developing the model of sustainability at school level.”

To find out more:

UNESCO

Learn more about the UN’s SDGS

 Follow Stefania Giannini on Twitter

Learn more about Microsoft Education