Symposium: “What Curriculum(s) for the Sustainable Development Goals?”
Montpellier, April 5–6, 2018.
At a time when educational systems—both formal and non-formal—are mobilizing 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 entire spectrum 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 so 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, ultimately, a new educational utopia, a heterotopia (in Durkheim’s sense), or a neoliberal drive toward standardization? How should these goals be adapted to different geopolitical and cultural contexts, in the North and the South? This conference aims to explore these questions from a critical and scientific perspective.
Opening of the conference
by Jean-Paul Udave, with the participation
of 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 curricula developed on a daily basis in schools.
Ines Barbosa de Oliveira
The SDGs: A Necessity for Public Policy Makers and Society to Embrace.
Eric Vindimian