Resources
Explore a wide range of valuable resources on GCED to deepen your understanding and enhance your research, advocacy, teaching, and learning.
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SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee: Making Higher Education More Inclusive, July 2020 Year of publication: 2020 Corporate author: UNESCO The rapid expansion of higher education in the past two decades, as well as the growing diversity of providers and technological models for delivering education, have made higher education accessible to more students globally. Yet significant barriers remain for many vulnerable groups, and women still lag behind in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. A better understanding of inequality as well as new paradigms, strategies and a renewed political will for ‘leaving no one behind’ are required. Structural equity policies at all levels throughout the education system, as well as extraordinary measures when needed, should ensure that students from any background with the potential to succeed are fully integrated with equal opportunities into higher education. This policy paper reviews the current literature and sets out findings and recommendations to increase and strengthen equity and inclusion in higher education in a lifelong learning perspective. It provides a conceptual framework for equity and inclusion, analyses the urgent need to improve funding and its efficiency, provides insight into the challenges for teaching and teachers, and recommends policy measures for establishing higher education systems that are more equitable and more inclusive. 
Chile: Artificial Intelligence Readiness Assessment Report Year of publication: 2023 Corporate author: UNESCO The Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) is a diagnostic tool intended to assist Member States in upholding their commitment to the Recommendation by helping them understand how prepared they are to implement AI ethically and responsibly for all their citizens. The RAM questionnaire forms the basis for the first section of this readiness assessment report, providing a comprehensive but detailed overview of laws, institutions, and the cultural, social, and human capital landscape shaping AI. This is then complemented in the second section by a summary of concerns and priorities raised during a national multistakeholder consultation that was conducted in 2023. Finally, the third section presents a roadmap and recommendations for building capacities across national institutions, laws and policies, and human capital, to achieve a responsible AI ecosystem aligned with the UNESCO Recommendation. As the very first country to complete the RAM and the country report, Chile is blazing the trail not only for Latin America but the world. We applaud the initiative the Chilean government has taken to update its AI strategy putting ethics and governance front and centre, and thank them for inviting UNESCO to assist in this endeavour. The report presented here reveals a complex and rapidly-changing landscape. In the legal and regulatory dimension, the 2021 National Artificial Intelligence Policy (NAIP) represents a substantive and wide-ranging commitment to developing AI. One of the key recommendations of this report is to fully integrate the UNESCO Recommendation into the NAIP’s axis of Ethics, Regulation, and Socioeconomic Impacts. Notably, the RAM reveals the pressing need to update legislation around data protection and cybersecurity to meet the challenges of AI. It also highlights several areas the Chilean government is actively working to develop. [...] Overall, this report presents a fundamentally optimistic vision that we at UNESCO share: that ethical governance and responsible regulation of AI is entirely consistent with innovation and economic growth, and is essential for ensuring a technological ecosystem that benefits the public good. In drawing a clear line from the RAM data through to the multistakeholder consultations and the recommendations, Chile has a clear roadmap for how to get there. (This text has been extracted from the Foreword of the publication) 
3rd Global Forum Against Racism and Discrimination: Final Document Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO The third edition of the Global Forum against Racism and Discrimination with the theme “Race to the top: putting racial equity and justice at the forefront of development agendas” was held in São Paulo, Brazil, on 29 November 2023 and 1 December 2023. At the invitation of Brazil, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Mover Foundation, Instituto Ibirapitanga, the Global Forum highlighted the importance of placing racial issues at the core of development and implementation strategies, with a view to socioeconomic development. The Global Forum welcomed Ministers, high-ranking officials of national bodies responsible for combating discrimination and promoting equality, mayors of the International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities - ICCAR, academics, scientists, civil society actors, NGOs, artists and digital influencers to share good practices, strengthen commitments and discuss effective strategies to combat racism and various forms of discriminations, including recommendations on how to proceed. The Global Forum’s agenda covered several topics, such as co-creating inclusive policies with impacted communities’ inputs; increasing awareness-raising on historical systems such as transatlantic enslavement to better comprehend and dismantle their contemporary legacies such as racism; progress towards gender equality; enhancing the capacities of civil society to be an agent of change; addressing artificial intelligence and its role in perpetuating racism; protecting the rights of indigenous peoples; establishing legal and policy frameworks prioritizing anti-racism and anti-discrimination on a local and global scale; strengthening the roles of cities, civic spaces, artistic and academic communities; enhancing the importance of informed data baseline on equality for governments; and promoting social philanthropy to address racial inequality. The 2023 edition was also marked by the launch of new initiatives. One of the main outcomes of the Global Forum is the establishment of the UNESCO Network of Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination Officials aiming to strengthen the development of innovative and inclusive policy solutions for peace, equity and non-discrimination. UNESCO has launched the new UNESCO Anti-Racism Toolkit, the Gender-Based Resilience Framework, the ‘Let’s Talk‘ project with Harvard University to combat prejudice against migrants, and the development of a new joint OECD-UNESCO briefing on combating discrimination against migrants. Volume X of the UNESCO General History of Africa, entitled Africa and its Diasporas, was also launched during the Global Forum. The publication offers a mapping of African diasporas throughout the world, valorizing their contributions to modern societies. 
Global Education Monitoring Report 2024, Pacific: Technology in Education; A Tool on Whose Terms? Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | Global Education Monitoring Report Team | Commonwealth of Learning Information transmission and connectivity is crucial in the Pacific, a region characterized by high geographic dispersion. While the application of ICT in education has significant potentials, it is hindered by the region's limited and costly infrastructure. This edition accompanies the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report, which acknowledges technology as a useful tool but invites the education community to question on whose terms it is deployed. The report considered four key policy areas of the Pacific Regional Education Framework (PacREF) (2018–2030): In terms of quality and relevance, mobile technology has offered an affordable and flexible approach to learning, and social media have improved communication between institutions, parents and learners. Moodle is the most widely used digital platform in the region. Textbooks are being digitalised and digital resources made available. Yet content is not always developed or adapted to local languages and cultural contexts. Open and distance learning has historically expanded learning pathways in the Pacific, specially in higher education and as a response to natural hazards. The University of South Pacific is a leading example of open and distance learning connecting campus across 12 countries. With the aim to enhance student outcomes and well-being, efforts have been made to incorporate digital skills into curricula and initiatives have increased outside formal education. Yet regulations do not adequately address threats from the use of technology to privacy, safety and well-being. With a focus on the teaching profession, countries leverage technology to provide training opportunities and transform the teaching profession. However, ICT training varies greatly across the region and limited digital infrastructure hinders technology integration into classrooms and teacher training. Three conditions need to be met for technology's potential to be fulfilled: equitable access to technology, appropriate governance and regulation, and sufficient teacher capacity. Supporting this publication is seven background thematic studies that provide a comprehensive overview of education technology issues; Commonwealth of Learning’s short case studies on some of its projects; a survey administered to key informed respondents from the region; and a series of country profiles on PEER, a policy dialogue resource describing policies and regulations related to technology in the region’s education systems. 
Global Education Monitoring Report 2024: Gender Report; Technology on Her Terms Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | Global Education Monitoring Report Team The 2024 Gender Report tells the increasingly positive story of girls’ education access, attainment and achievement, which is helping reverse decades of discrimination. But there is much more to say on gender equality in and through education. A companion to the 2023 GEM Report, this report looks at the interaction between education and technology with a gender lens. First, it looks at the impact of technology on girls’ education opportunities and outcomes. Although many instances are seen of radio, television and mobile phones providing a learning lifeline for girls, particularly in crisis contexts, gender divides exist globally in both access to technology and in digital skills, although the latter are smaller among youth compared to among adults. Biased social and cultural norms inhibit equitable access to and engagement with technology in and outside of school, with girls always left on the wrong side of the divide. While technology offers many girls opportunities to access important education content in safe environments, for instance on comprehensive sexuality education, technology in practice often exacerbates negative gender norms or stereotypes. Social media usage impacts learners’ and particularly girls’ well-being and self-esteem. The ease with which cyberbullying can be magnified through the use of online devices in the school environment is a cause of concern, as is the biased design of artificial intelligence algorithms. Second, the report looks into the role of education on the shape of future technological development. It shows that women struggle to pursue STEM careers, which manifests from an early age in the form of anxiety in mathematics and develops into a reluctance to study STEM subjects, ultimately resulting in a lack of women in the technology workforce. Women make up only 35% STEM graduates, and hold only a quarter of science, engineering and ICT jobs. Ensuring women participate on equal terms in shaping the world’s ongoing digital transformation will ensure that technology works for everyone and takes into consideration the needs of all humanity. 
Youth Report 2024: Technology in Education; A Tool on Our Terms! Year of publication: 2024 Corporate author: UNESCO | Global Education Monitoring Report Team | Restless Development The 2024 Youth Report on technology in education is the result of an extensive consultation process in partnership with Restless Development involving +1500 youth and students across 8 regions. The consultations invited participants to reflect on the key challenges and opportunities for the use of technology in education in their regions through the lenses of the recommendations in the global 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education: Technology on our terms. The discussions centred on the need for the use of technology in education to be appropriate for national and local contexts and to be equitable and leave no one behind. The report calls for decisions about technology in education to keep learners at the centre when deciding whether the use of technology in education would be appropriate, equitable, evidence-based, and sustainable. Through this report, young people have described what technology on their terms would look like. It concludes with a call to action calling which highlights concrete recommendations that governments can follow to ensure that technology in education is on youth terms. 
Transforming Knowledge and Research for Just and Sustainable Futures: Towards a New Social Imaginary for Higher Education (Education, Research and Foresight: Working Papers; No.33, 2024) Year of publication: 2024 Author: Leon Tikly Corporate author: UNESCO The paper considers why it is important to transform knowledge and research for just and sustainable futures and discusses the role of higher education in these transformation processes. The paper sets out how knowledge, research, and knowledge systems can be understood and critiques knowledge hierarchies that have emerged in the context of colonialism, leading to the marginalization of the knowledge systems and languages of the colonized. It is argued that there is a need to create new ecologies of knowledge that value and develop synergies between ‘all of the archives of the world’ and that can revitalize and expand the knowledge commons and contribute to more just and sustainable futures. Higher education has a pivotal role to play in the creation of new ecologies of knowledge and a revitalized knowledge commons through promoting socially and ethically engaged research, the decolonization and reorientation of university curricula and pedagogy to foster sustainable futures, and the democratization of universities to better represent historically marginalized groups. Underpinning this role must be a shift from a Western modernist social imaginary of higher education to one based on a new planetary consciousness. 
Guidelines for the governance of digital platforms: safeguarding freedom of expression and access to information through a multi-stakeholder approach Year of publication: 2023 Corporate author: UNESCO Guidelines for an Internet for TrustSafeguarding freedom of expression and the right to information while dealing with dis- and misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories requires a multistakeholder approach. This is the reason why UNESCO, the leading UN agency for the promotion and protection of freedom of expression and to information, is launching Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms. The Guidelines outline a set of duties, responsibilities and roles for States, digital platforms, intergovernmental organizations, civil society, media, academia, the technical community and other stakeholders to enable the environment where freedom of expression and information are in the core of digital platforms governance processes. The Guidelines were produced through a multi-stakeholder consultation that gathered more than 10,000 comments from 134 countries. These global-scale consultations fostered inclusive participation, ensuring a diversity of voices to be heard, including those from groups in situation of marginalization and vulnerability. Cultivating an Internet of Trust is a shared responsibility among all stakeholders. It calls upon us all to sustain an enabling environment for freedom of expression and the right to information.