Planning & Policy for Transformative Education

Policy-makers are key players in creating enabling environments for scaling up transformative education in formal, non-formal, and informal learning environments. UNESCO's Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Roadmap calls for advancing policy that embeds ESD across learning environments, curricula, teacher education as well as student assessment.  

For policymakers and other education decision-makers, the guiding questions on this page can help you better understand the Mission 4.7 framework for transformative education, and how this framework can guide implementation of key policies and practices to transform education systems.

What is the Mission 4.7 Framework?

This literature-driven framework keeps justice and sustainability at the center, with the sub-domain learning areas included in SDG Target 4.7 as lenses through which educators can guide learners to understand how different populations and ecosystems are impacted by various sustainable development challenges. 

Borrowing from  UNICEF’s Social Ecological Framework, these learning areas are nested within school, family, and community environments that can all serve as mutually reinforcing learning and action mobilization opportunities to achieve the SDGs, with education institutions serving as the hubs for fostering deeper connections among these environments. The Mission 4.7 framework calls for education decision-makers to integrate the SDG 4.7 learning areas to be integrated across these three environments:

The learning areas included in the Mission 4.7 framework come from the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 Target language, with some slight modifications. These learning areas are:

What principles should guide transformative education policy-making?

Implementing the kinds of action-oriented, transformative learning that SDG 4.7 calls for requires more than integration of SDG 4.7 content into curriculum. It requires shifts in the education system, school, and classroom cultures so that they are more in-tune and responsive to community histories, cultures, and needs. It also requires the facilitation of learning opportunities that build learner agency and help connect and address local and global challenges.

Expand the sections below to read about Mission 4.7's guiding principles and supporting resources for transformative education police-making.

Integrating SDG 4.7 content, skills, and attitudes across core curriculum

SDG 4.7 calls on us to “ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development." Some education systems offer courses related to the knowledge and skill areas named in SDG 4.7 as electives or for advanced students, such as elective courses in environmental sciences or human geography, while others offer extra-curricular programs on SDG 4.7-aligned topics. While these can be great learning opportunities, the best way to ensure that all learners have access to learn and apply SDG 4.7 knowledge, skills, and values is by integrating it across core curriculum. SDG 4.7 focus areas can be viewed as opportunities to enrich and connect existing curriculum by integrating SDG 4.7 concepts into core subject areas in transdisciplinary ways, and helping bring them to life with real-world examples and inquiry. This section offers examples for education decision-makers and curriculum developers of how education systems are approaching this kind of integration.

Reforming and adapting education standards to integrate SDG 4.7-aligned content, attitudes, and skills

A number of education systems at national and state levels have begun the process of reforming their education policy and standards to infuse SDG 4.7 and/or related learning areas, such as climate change and action civics, into curriculum. Such policy-driven approaches are the most effective way to ensure that all schools and teachers are supported to evolve their practice to integrate SDG 4.7 and SDG learning. The following articles and resources offer case study examples of how some countries and states are approaching curriculum reform and adaptation to integrate SDG 4.7-aligned learning standards.

Identifying opportunities in existing curriculum to align SDG 4.7 lessons

In places where existing curriculum is limited in how well it addresses SDG-related issues such as climate change, cultural diversity, and equality, education decision-makers at national, state, and local levels can analyze existing curriculum for opportunities to integrate SDG 4.7 content, attitudes, and skills within existing education standards across grades and subjects. Such curriculum analyses have been conducted in select countries and states by Mission 4.7 partners in order to identify gaps in existing curricula where further integration of the SDGs and aligned areas of learning are needed, as well as identify opportunities within existing curricula where SDG 4.7 learning can be woven in. Findings from select curriculum audits can be found here.

To support integrating SDG 4.7 into existing curriculum, there are a wealth of existing resources that have already been aligned to common subjects, standards, grade levels, and SDGs. The following links show some examples of learning resource collections that have been mapped to standards, and guides for how to make curriculum connections. 


Whole-school, transdisciplinary approaches to SDG 4.7 based in real-world phenomena

Beyond developing curriculum that infuses SDG 4.7 focus areas across subjects, the capacity of learners to unleash their problem-solving potential within their schools and communities will be more fully enabled when all school stakeholders - including school leaders, teachers, school staff, students, families, and community organizations - are engaged in a whole-school approach that helps break down subject area silos to equip learners with knowledge and skills to understand and address complex problems. 

Such an approach requires educators being equipped and empowered to facilitate opportunities for learners to engage with local and global challenges in ways that apply learning using transdisciplinary approaches. Transdisciplinarity goes beyond simply addressing topics in different subjects, as it is driven by student interest in real-life issues and phenomena, with subject area teachers helping to equip learners with specific knowledge and skills to help tackle problems, with the ultimate goal of transcending individual subjects to foster broader understandings. To facilitate transitions to such transdisciplinary, transformative learning opportunities, education systems and school leaders must empower educators with shared planning time and resources. Dedicated time in the school day to facilitate teacher planning and collaboration is key. Below are examples of resources and guidance for transdisciplinary planning and collaboration involving the whole school.

To help illustrate how a whole-school, transdisciplinary approach might work, let’s imagine that at the start of the school year, teachers are encouraged to ask their students what they are interested in learning and what issues they see in their community that they want to tackle. Students identify a problem with pollution in their local waterway, and so this guides district and school leaders and educators to collaborate on developing transdisciplinary units. This might include, in science class, students conducting field tests of water quality and inputting data using their mobile phones, while conducting data analysis in math class, writing persuasive letters describing the problem and potential solutions in language class, and learning about the relevant histories of their locality and exploring ways that policies can be enacted in social studies classes. By helping students explore how the disciplines connect and support each other to understand and address complex problems, students not only build subject-area skills and knowledge, but also develop their critical and systems thinking skills. The below resources present case studies of how schools and non-formal education organizations have integrated project-based, whole-school and community-connected approaches to address the SDGs.


Culturally-responsive curriculum - affirming and promoting students’ diversity of cultures, languages, and ways of knowing 

A key component of SDG 4.7 is acknowledging the important role that cultural diversity and culture’s contributions play in achieving the SDG agenda, yet traditional curriculum and pedagogical practices often serve to uphold hegemonic ways of knowing and engaging in public life. Learners with backgrounds outside of the mainstream too often learn - whether explicitly or implicitly - that their difference is a deficit, propagating learning gaps along racial and economic lines. Funds of Knowledge are defined as “Historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skill essential for household and individual functioning and well-being”(Moll & Amanti, 2005, p. 133). Incorporating learners’ Funds of Knowledge can enable culturally-responsive teaching and can help validate learners’ differing experiences as assets enabling more enriching learning experiences that can promote equity and inclusion in the classroom and help broaden perspectives, empathy, and mutual understanding among diverse groups of learners. The below resources include examples of how education systems are implementing culturally-responsive curriculum, tools for schools and teachers to incorporate learners’ cultural and family knowledge, and case study examples of how educators are promoting appreciation of cultural diversity and culture’s contributions to sustainable development in their classrooms. 


Fostering learner empowerment and agency through SDG 4.7

The essence of SDG 4.7 is about empowering and equipping young learners to be active participants in progressing toward the SDGs. Education must equip learners with knowledge, skills, attitudes, and self-efficacy for civic engagement. In many parts of the world, civic education has been neglected over the past half century as concerns over global competitiveness and security have spurred STEM into the upper echelons of education investment, while increasingly polarized societies struggle to find consensus for what civic education should entail. Civic engagement can be learned across disciplines when learners are facilitated and encouraged to identify issues in their community, develop and implement plants to address them that help build skills in various disciplines, and reflect on their actions and what they learned. The below resources include professional development resources, case studies, and learning resources for facilitating action civics across disciplines to promote learner agency.

Taking a broader view beyond formal education, UNESCO's report "Integrating Action for Climate Empowerment into Nationally Determined Contributions" outlines 6 key areas where countries should focus their action toward empowering citizens to address climate change, including education, training, public awareness, public access to information, public participation, and international cooperation.


How can we measure progress toward achieving SDG 4.7 in my education context? 

The SDGs are designed to guide action by governments, businesses, civil society, and everyday citizens to take action to build a more sustainable and equitable world. The SDGs also offer specific indicators that countries and stakeholders can use to measure and track our shared progress toward achieving these global goals. Our Assessment, Measurement, and Metrics page offers tools and guidance to translate the broad indicators for SDG 4.7 and other related SDGs to practical measures and tools that can be implemented in school districts, schools, classrooms, and communities to measure and document student learning and community action as progress toward achieving SDG 4.7.


How can we learn from other countries' experiences? 

UNESCO's report "Education for Sustainable Development: A Roadmap" outlines priority action areas including, policy, curriculum, teacher training, youth empowerment, and local action. For a global comparative review of country level progress toward integrating climate change education, this UNESCO Review of 100 countries explores country integration of climate change education into national curricula and teacher training, as well as discussion of teacher views on their readiness to integrate climate change education into their teaching, and examples of best practices. This report highlights the types of inter-ministerial collaboration needed for climate education integration into the curriculum.

For case study examples of how specific countries and states are transforming their education systems, explore below:

Global Schools' Country Reports on the Opportunities and Challenges of Curriculum Localization for the SDGs

California's Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum

The model curriculum was adopted by the State Board of Education for K-12  on March 18, 2021. Armstrong (2020) notes that Indigeneity is a social construct and should be accessible to all. Indigenous knowledge is adapting and learning from nature into human practices. Thus indigenous knowledge which is very place based is for all and forms the foundational guiding principles to make decisions that are best for the communities (Armstrong, 2020).

 

In a similar vein, the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum for the State of California will be based on ethnic groups and will provide a historical account of marginalization resulting from power systems. This background is important for all students with varied backgrounds. It will help marginalized communities to see themselves as a part of the main narrative of the country. The curriculum is based on four foundational disciplines: African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. The focus on the experiences of these four disciplines provides an opportunity for students to learn of the histories, cultures, struggles, and contributions to American society of these historically marginalized peoples which have often been untold in US history courses. Given California’s diversity, the California Department of Education understands and knows that each community has its own ethnic make-up and each demographic group has its own unique history, struggles, and contributions to our state. The curriculum also attempts to question the institutionalized systems of advantage, causes of racism and other forms of bigotry including, but not limited to, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia within our culture and governmental policies. Educators can create and utilize lessons rooted in the four foundational disciplines alongside the sample key themes of (1) Identity, (2) History and Movement, (3) Systems of Power, and (4) Social Movements and Equity to make connections to the experiences of all students. 

 

The course will equip students with the tools to promote understanding as community members in a changing democratic society and will help to raise social consciousness and strengthen democratic institutions.


More on the curriculum here

Armstrong, J. (2020). Foreword. In Prioritizing Sustainability Education: A comprehensive Approach. Edited by Joan Armon, Stephen Schoffman, Clara Armon. Earthscan Routledge.


Environmental Education in India

In the late 1980s, the National Curriculum for Elementary Education,  developed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), had for the first time systematically infused environmental issues in national textbooks (Sonowal 2009 in Iyengar & Bajaj (2011). Although the National Policy on Education of 1986 acknowledged the importance of Environmental Education, it was not a mandatory subject in the formal schooling system until December 2003, when the Supreme Court of India ordered that “green curricula” be taught in all 28 states of India (Sonowal 2009 in Iyengar & Bajaj (2011).  

 

In 2004, NCERT held a nationwide curriculum review, which laid the foundation for the most recent National Curricular Framework (NCF), published in 2005 (NCERT 2005), in which EE figured prominently. Both the life sciences and the social sciences included environmental issues and, more specifically, a “habitat and learning focus group” was formed to work on issues relating to EE. The 2005 NCF document promoted a more holistic concept of ESD, in which natural resources, socioeconomic factors, local cultural perspectives, psychoemotional

influences, global and national peace, and economic development are engaged to address environmental issues and promote better citizenry.


The 2005 NCF document suggests that “science be placed in the wider context of the learner’s environment, local and global, enabling him/her to appreciate the issues at the interface of science, technology and society, and equipping him/her with the requisite knowledge and skills to enter the world of work” (NCERT 2005, 48). The framework integrates environmental science

with science and social science in the primary classes. In the upper primary classes, it calls for learning scientific principles through familiar experiences and hands-on design of simple technological units and modules, while at the secondary level, science is approached as a “composite discipline,” which includes environmental science.

 

NCF 2005 recommended that classes 3–5 have a separate environmental science studies (EVS) subject that emphasizes the natural environment, its preservation, and the urgency of counteracting degradation. These themes are important to gain factual knowledge about scientific processes that influence our environment. However, EVS, in the ideal projected by NCERT, should also introduce social issues like poverty, child labor, illiteracy, and gender, caste, and class inequalities in rural and urban areas. The framework mentions that the content

should reflect the day-to-day experiences of children and their lived realities. It acknowledges that the child’s community and local environment form the primary context in which learning takes place, and in which knowledge acquires its significance. The objective is to use education to “provide the necessary perspective on how human life can be reconciled with the crisis

of the environment so that survival, growth and development remain possible”

(NCERT 2005, 6). Using the NCF 2005 framework on EE, NCERT developed detailed national syllabi and textbooks. The underlying themes of the NCERT-prescribed syllabi are learning about the environment, learning through the environment (implying a systematic exploration through a variety of activities), and learning for the environment by developing sensitivity toward its protection and preservation (NCERT 2010b). The objectives of EE as stated by NCERT

are “the need to focus not only on knowledge but more importantly on generating awareness, developing attitudes, values and skills, and promoting participation and action among children at all levels of school education. By implication, learning opportunities would not remain limited to the classroom alone but extend much beyond it” (NCERT 2010b). To achieve these

objectives, the NCERT provided a detailed list of topics to be included in science, social science, and mathematics classes or as a separate compulsory subject that approach the ideals set forth by the ESD framework.

Excerpts taken from (Iyengar & Bajaj, 2011)


Read more information here-

Iyengar, B., & Bajaj, M. (2011). After the Smoke Clears: Toward Education for Sustainable Development in Bhopal, India. Comparative Education Review, 55(3).

New Jersey's Climate Change Education Integration

Pre-covid, New Jersey’s Governor and the First Lady announced that Climate Education will be integrated into K-12 formal school curriculum. Climate Education will not be a separate subject, but will be integrated across all the subjects, starting with science and followed by social-science. The Department of Education has taken the New Jersey Student Learning Standards (NJSLS) and have mapped all the standards to Climate topics. For instance, for elementary grades science subject, four Climate Education themes have been mapped to NJSLS. They are- Climate/Environment, natural resources, human impacts on earth and global climate change.  These themes along with the standards are mapped to science lessons for each grade.  The full school year is divided into 3 trimesters with Physical sciences taught in the first year, Earth and Space in second and Life sciences in the third trimester. 

A similar process is underway for Social Science followed by other processes. TCNJ, The College of New Jersey is conducting teacher professional development programs along with other prominent non-profits such as Sustainable Jersey for Schools and New Jersey Audubon are holding seminars and panels discussions with lead teachers. With Center for Sustainable Development’s Eco-ambassador program, many youth have organized panel discussions with the First Lady of New Jersey and other lead teachers to put-forward what they would like to learn. Student groups have been formed to create their own lesson plans. Many school district also have the school’s Green Team as a part of the sustainability policy at the district level. The Green Teams are organizing their own Green Challenges and events across the year that involves the schools and the communities. Summers have been used to create lesson plans based on these integrated standards. 2021-22 will be the first year when districts will implement the Climate Education integration plan. There have been delays and each district is taking its own pace based on the level of preparedness.

 

Read more about how New Jersey organizations are contributing to the new climate change curriculum:

Explore the New Jersey climate-integrated standards:

New Zealand's Climate Change & Well-being Curriculum

New Zealand is implementing climate change education, activism education, and discussions around eco-anxiety and well-being into curriculum for 11-15 year olds. Learning materials have been developed by the country’s leading climate science agencies. The Climate Change Wellbeing Guide has been developed to provide teachers with background information and tailored resources to help them navigate the delivery of climate change scientific content, whilst maintaining the well-being, or "hauora (Māori philosophy of health and well-being unique to New Zealand)", of students.

New York State's Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework