Conference: “What Curriculum(s) for the Sustainable Development Goals?”

Montpellier, April 5–6, 2018.

As both formal and non-formal education systems rally in response to the release of UNESCO’s new “Education 2030” roadmap—which focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—it is essential that we, as a community of education researchers, also take action. The seventeen goals defined by the United Nations indeed encompass the entirety of what is commonly referred to in the French-speaking community as “education for.” The educational implementation of these 17 goals constitutes in itself a major challenge for the world of education: does this mean creating as many new pathways or programs from scratch? Does it mean integrating these goals into existing curricula by breaking them down? Does it mean restructuring curricula around the SDGs? Is this, finally, a new educational utopia, a heterotopia (in Durkheim’s sense), or a neoliberal normalizing agenda? How should they be adapted to different geopolitical and cultural spheres, in the North and the South? This conference aims to discuss these questions from a critical and scientific perspective.

View the full program of the event

Opening of the conference

by Jean-Paul Udave, with contributions
from Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier

Thinking about education in terms of "curriculum": benefits and challenges.

Roger-François Gauthier

Education for sustainable development in the daily school curriculum.

Ines Barbosa de Oliveira

The SDGs: A Necessity for Public Policy Makers and Society to Embrace.

Eric Vindimian

Roundtable Discussion: “Voices from the South / Voices from the North”