Global Citizenship Education Resources and Guides

The resources below provide a better understanding of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and how it has been supported in Aotearoa and globally.

UNESCO’s focus areas for GCED are:

• global advocacy and policy dialogue
• the global measurement of progress on GCED and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (Target 4.7)
• peace and human rights education
• preventing violent extremism through education.

Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives Topics and Learning Objectives provides pedagogical guidance to UN member states on global citizenship education. This document outlines an extensive list of GCED topics, learning objectives, and themes organised under three GCED domains - the socio-emotional, cognitive and behavioural.

The International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship is a result of work done by over 1300 students from 11 countries, including New Zealand, in partnership with The Centre for Global Education, Canadian Commission for UNESCO, TakingITGlobal, the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research, and the Global Centre for Pluralism. Students came together to collaborate, through the use of technology, in a Virtual Town Hall to discuss the youths’ vision for Global Citizenship Education. At the Third UNESCO Forum on Global Citizenship Education in Ottawa, Canada, Scarlett Parkes from Auckland Girls’ Grammar School presented the final paper.

The Canoe is the People is a great educational resource for teachers, with scope for interdisciplinary application ranging from biology to woodwork, geography to art, and poetry to mathematics. This online tool is available in Te Reo Maori and brings into the classroom the in-depth knowledge that Pacific Island nations possess of their ocean environment. It was especially conceived to encourage Pacific youth to take pride in their heritage, and to keep their indigenous knowledge alive.

Pūtātara – a Ministry of Education resource supporting schools and teachers to incorporate sustainability and global citizenship across the New Zealand curriculum.

Sandwatch – Through a combined approach of global citizenship education and climate change adaptation, Sandwatch is an educational tool that bring together teachers, students and local communities to work in the field to monitor their coastal environments, identify and evaluate the threats, problems and conflicts facing them, and develop sustainable approaches to address them. Groups not only learn curriculum material, but also understand their beaches and coastal areas, develop critical thinking and team work skills, while instilling a sense of caring for their environment.