Presentation of the UNESCO publication “Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives” in Barcelona
On Wednesday December 12th 2018 at 7pm in the Auditorium of La Pedrera, the Center for UNESCO of Catalonia organized the event Transforming education to transform the world we live in, with the participation of Prof. Stefania Giannini, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, the highest responsible for Education within the United Nations system. During the event, the UNESCO document Education for Sustainable Development Goals, which has been now translated into Catalan, was presented in front of a full room at the auditorium of La Pedrera in Barcelona.
In recent years, the Center for UNESCO of Catalonia has endorsed the UNESCO call to promote great alliances to transform education so that it sensitizes and empowers people to carry out full lives and be able to respond to global and local challenges. Recently the Center for UNESCO of Catalonia has published in Catalan the UNESCO document on Education for Sustainable Development Goals. The Center is working on the initiative to disseminate and promote the education system an education for advanced sustainable development, integrating the work of the Sustainable Development Goals , with the aim of preparing our society to meet the main global challenges and contribute to the deployment of Agenda 2030.
This UNESCO document has already been translated into 12 languages. The aim of the Catalan translation is to provide ideas and information for teachers of the Catalan schools about how to work with SDGs and show learning objectives (i.e. that students can be agents of change, that students have empathy, etc.). "Skills that will have to be used so that future generations can meet the challenges we have. This document is a tentative answer to the global problems we face today", stated Gianini. During her speech, she highlighted three main challenges:
- migrations (people on the move, displacements, forced migration, integration, respect, interculturality ...)
- aging societies (linked to the UPF project that presents an interdisciplinary approach to aging in their summer school)
- and environmental challenges
"We need awareness, we need competences and skills, we need knowledge and research. Placing the student in the center and making it think to find solutions is to create agents for change. We need to build peace in the mind of the people", stated Prof. Stefania Giannini.
Three examples of local projects were presented by Escola de Rellinars (primary school), Escola Virolai (secondary school) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The three cases were examples of project learning, multidisciplinarity, putting the student in the center and where the teacher is a companion and not an expert. They emphasized the need to work with experts during these projects.
