Inclusion of Global Citizenship Education and Sustainable Development in Pre-Service Curriculum: A Perspective Study

Abstract

Education Agenda 2030 emphasizes the role of Sustainable Development Goal 4 which focuses on excellence in education and its prominence for the attainment of sixteen other sustainable development goals.  For this purpose a study was carried out to investigate the opinions of Educationists/Curriculum developers for inclusion of themes of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Pre-Service Teacher Education Curriculum (Elementary) level in Pakistan.  There are six broad themes of GCED and ESD: Human Rights, Education for sustainable Development, Peace, Gender Equality, Health Education and Global Citizenship.  It was a descriptive study. On the pre-determined themes suggested by UNESCO, a survey questionnaire was developed having both open and close-ended questions. There were 70 participants in the study who were M.Phil to Post Doctorate and had professional experience of 10 -35 years.  Data for close-ended questionnaire were analyzed through SPSS 21 and the qualitative part used descriptive explanation with verbatim quotes and word clouds using NVIVO 10.  The results showed that participants strongly favored inclusion of these themes in curriculum and believed these to be cross cutting themes. It was recommended that these may either be integrated into already existing subjects of B.Ed. or may be taught as separate subjects. Keywords: Pre-Service Curriculum, Target 4.7, Global Citizenship Education, Education for Sustainable Development