Consultancy to Update a UNESCO Publication on Global Citizenship Education

OVERVIEW

Parent Sector : Education Sector (ED)

Duty Station: Paris

 

Job Family: Education

Type of contract : Non Staff

Duration of contract : 8 months

Recruitment open to : External candidates

Application Deadline (Midnight Duty Station Time) : 09-NOV-2025

 

UNESCO Core Values: Commitment to the Organization, Integrity, Respect for Diversity, Professionalism

 

OVERVIEW OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE POST

Background

 

In 2015, UNESCO published the Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives to support the UN Secretary-General’s 2012 Global Education First Initiative, which identified global citizenship as one of its three key priorities. The publication provided the first comprehensive pedagogical guidance on the topic. It was the result of extensive global research and consultations with experts, enriched by feedback from UNESCO and partner institutes and through various events and forums, and tested in diverse countries to ensure cultural and geographic relevance, including through APCEIU and ASPNet. Designed as a resource for educators, curriculum developers, trainers, and policymakers, it also serves practitioners working in non-formal education settings.

A lot has changed and been learned since the Guide was originally published and it is timely to update the Guide to benefit from past experiences and lessons in GCED conceptualisation and practice as well as to better reflect current conditions and address new needs in the realm of GCED.

 

Long Description

Since its original publication, a wide range of new scholarly and practice work has progressed that further expands our understanding of GCED and provides additional topics and learning objectives.  UNESCO and partner institutes and centres have also produced additional specific guidance and research on issues of relevance to GCED, such as on social and emotional learning and on education for democracy and rule of law, which should be considered by the updated Guide.

Similarly, world events, new technologies, and socio-political dynamics have emerged over the last decade that make GCED critical (e.g. misinformation, conspiracy theories, hate speech, increasingly polarized societies, new forms of racism, new expressions of toxic masculinity, increased violent conflict and rejections of multilateralism), but that also require expanded guidance and potentially new topics and learning objectives and resources to be added.

Moreover, there is a need to update the Guide to more explicitly ground it in the 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace and Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development1, and to help in its operationalization at school level. Included in the Recommendation are a range of guiding principles, curricular learning objectives, and action areas of peace, human rights, sustainable development, global citizenship, international understanding and freedoms, which are of relevance to teaching GCED. UNESCO is also developing new guidance on the 2023 Recommendation (i.e. such as an Implementation Guide for the 2023 Recommendation, which is being finalized and expected to be published soon in 2025). The update to this Guide will benefit also and should consider this new and forthcoming guidance.

To support the UNSCO Section of Global Citizenship and Peace Education in this undertaking, a senior consultant will be required to lead the drafting process together with the UNESCO secretariat.

Overall objective

• To review and update the Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives publication with the most recent context considerations, GCED practice and lessons, any new relevant approaches and tools, as well as anchoring the approach in the 2023 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.

This will involve analysing progress and lessons to date, new relevant conceptualisations and guidance, and relevant regional and global contextual changes and, on that basis, revising, updating or adding new areas of discussion and action into the publication to support the teachers and learners, in order to make the GCED concept more robust, systemic and applicable to different levels of education, as well as to ensure the topics and examples are up to date for today’s context