Hatley, J (2019) The position of universal values as a barrier to the effectiveness of UNESCO's global citizenship education. In: Academic Network on Global Education & Learning (ANGEL) Conference, 9 - 10 May 2019, Institute of Education, London, UK.
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Target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals promotes Global Citizenship Edu- cation (GCE) as a vehicle to develop the skills, values and attitudes of learners so that they may work towards the resolution of the interconnected challenges facing the world today. Focusing on UNESCO’s approach to GCE, this doctoral research draws on a multimodal criti- cal discourse analysis of values within 8 UNESCO documents central to their approach. Anal- ysis of the texturing of relationships of equivalence and difference and the classification of values shows that UNESCO have instantiated a strict sense of institutional values, termed ‘universal values’, with the implication that the subjectivity of a global citizen is defined by the powerful. Other values are positioned as outdated and invisible, further reinforcing Uni- versal Values as the only values that make an ‘acceptable’ global citizen. Education trans- mits, promotes and amplifies values. With values as motivators of human action and as the basis on which actions and choices are evaluated as worthwhile, which values are played out through education and how this may influence motivation towards global citizenship be- come vital questions. This research argues that UNESCO’s approach to values is intended to socialise learners towards UNESCO’s agenda at the expense of values and forms of global citizenship more relevant to local contexts. Further, this paper argues that Universal Values cannot achieve their aims within GCE due to being abstract and disconnected from social reality. As such, Universal Values become a challenge to global education - counterproduc- tive both to the achievement of UNESCO’s GCE and to the achievement of the sustained motivation and action necessary to solve the interconnected challenges the world faces. For GCE to achieve its purposes, UNESCO must take account of context and incorporate values and forms of citizenship relevant at the local level.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Speech) |
|---|---|
| UN SDGs: | Goal 4: Quality Education |
| Subjects: | L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LB Theory and practice of education |
| Divisions: | School of Education |
| Related URLs: | |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2022 13:27 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Aug 2022 13:27 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/14903 |
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