In June 2023, the USA was accepted back into UNESCO after a 5-yr hiatus. EduChange is a friend of UNESCO’s Futures of Education initiative. They have asked us to share their report via our networks, entitled “Education in a Post-COVID World: Nine Ideas for Public Action.” The entire report may be downloaded here.
Our work fits squarely within “Idea 7: Scientific literacy within a curriculum based on a strong purpose” meaning that we need to stop making science class a fact-and-formula memorization class and start getting students to embrace actual problems that face global and local contexts, and affect all of us personally. Within Idea 7 the international panel states:
“Curricula should be increasingly integrated and based on themes and problems that allows us to learn to live in peace with our common humanity and our common planet.”
UNESCO has a long history of supporting the integrated science approach, and even commissioned an international team of experts in the 1970’s to try to develop one for secondary students. They abandoned the effort because it was quite difficult, and required more time than they had allotted (yes, we know the feeling!). And guess what? Integrated, multi-year, coherent, competency-based learning progressions are the most EQUITABLE. Are you part of a school serving students ages 13-up, that is truly interested in leaving behind inequitable, outdated academic structures that are not grounded in the current neuroscience of learning?
We invite you to learn more about our instructional designs!
