Monash Education researcher Dr Jason Beech looks at a new report from UNESCO that calls on educators to reimagine their role in the classroom.

Years ago, I was part of a research project looking at the purpose of education. The idea of educating students to be autonomous and flexible people was promoted by international organisations, and in the curricula of many different countries.

I asked teachers what they thought about that. Mabel, a mathematics teacher, mulled over the question and gave me a worried look.

"I never think about those things," she said. "I only have to teach them mathematics."

Her words still trouble me. If teachers are not aware of their political role, the power of education gets diluted.

Of course that teaching mathematics is important, but only if it is part of a general strategy to educate young people to have the tools to fully participate in the world. Education is always political. Any decision about the curriculum or teaching styles should be underpinned by a view of the kind of individuals and societies we want to create.

New UNESCO report

UNESCO has based its new educational strategy on that very idea – that education can shape the future.

Their commission on the Futures of Education, has launched a new report – "Reimagining our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education".

It promotes a global debate on how education can address some of our most challenging issues:  increasing inequalities, social fragmentation, political extremism, the COVID pandemic and the desolating effects of climate change.

The report also adds that changes in digital technologies, artificial intelligence and biotechnology further complicate human perspectives of progress and development, including our education systems and their aims.

How teachers can reimagine education

Teachers play a fundamental role in reimagining education for a more just, secure and sustainable future. Yet, how can conversations about this be promoted in schools?

UNESCO’s report suggests that teaching itself should be reimagined as a collaborative endeavour for educational and social transformation.

Imagine the possibilities if school leaders promote collective discussions about some of the most pressing human challenges mentioned in the report.

• How are these global challenges reflected in schools and in Australia?
• Can the school focus on a theme – for example climate change or decolonizing knowledge – and bring it into all their classrooms?
• What can each teacher/discipline contribute to the design of an educational strategy that addresses the selected challenge?
• How can education help students not only to learn the content knowledge, but also develop skills to become agents of change?

Inspiration from UNESCO report

This report is a bold reimagining of education. Here are three fundamental ways schools can get started.

1. Teaching for solidarity and cooperation

Teaching in many cases is based on individualistic and competitive definitions of achievement. How can we replace them with learning approaches that promote collaboration, interconnectedness, compassion and empathy? This is especially relevant in reconsidering the ways in which we assess students. How could we redesign our pedagogies and assessment strategies to value collaboration as an indicator of achievement?

2. Decolonizing knowledge

Our schools and curriculum are designed almost exclusively on the basis of Western forms of knowledge. How can we open up our classrooms to incorporate diverse ways of knowing and understanding? There is much to learn about the ways traditional owners of the land understand the world. Progress has been made to learn more about our Indigenous communities, but can we go a step further and include Indigenous knowledge in our classrooms to analyse the themes in the curriculum from a different perspective?

3. Rethinking the place of humans in the world

Neither the covid pandemic nor the climate crisis can be understood only from the lens of the natural sciences, nor from the perspective of the social sciences. On the contrary, both phenomena are examples of the complexity and interconnectedness between humans, other species and the environment. In order to understand these issues and find appropriate solutions we need to overcome the artificial distinction between the natural and the social as two distinct realms. How can the entrenched barriers between disciplines be overcome in our teaching?

Education is a political endeavour that can help shape a better future. UNESCO’s report – and the values it promotes – can stimulate a much needed conversation. It’s not easy. The problems are complex, but they are also vitally important to the next generation, and the future of our world.