By Aimee Reeves, Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist at EnCompass
Inclusivity and diversity are undeniably important characteristics of a quality education system. We know that learning environments that meaningfully include learners from all genders, from different backgrounds, and with disabilities can improve not only their social and emotional skills, but also their learning outcomes. Reaching the goal of disability-inclusive education has proven difficult, and learners with disabilities continue to face barriers. Compared to peers without disabilities, learners with disabilities are 2.5 times more likely to have never been in school, and when in school, these learners often face bullying or violence. In a study of 10 low- and middle-income countries, were 19% less likely to achieve minimum reading proficiency.
Although there are complex systems-level challenges to creating inclusive learning environments, those of us working in international education ask ourselves what we can do in our classrooms and programs to overcome barriers and foster more inclusivity. Developing global citizenship skills in learners of all ages may hold one—of many—keys.
What is inclusive education, and what are global citizenship skills?
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education. To achieve this goal, education systems around the world are working hard to create inclusive learning environments in which children with disabilities receive quality education alongside their peers. Real inclusion goes beyond placing learners with disabilities in mainstream education without appropriate support, often referred to as “integration.” Truly inclusive education requires transformative and whole systems changes, from the policy level to finance and budgeting, and from infrastructure to the delivery of education in schools and classrooms. It requires changes to existing cultural beliefs and attitudes, both within the education system and throughout society, about people with disabilities and the importance of diversity.
Sustainable Development Goal 4 also highlights, under Target 4.7, the role of global citizenship education and skills in reaching the overarching goal of inclusive and equitable quality education. UNESCO defines global citizenship as a “sense of belonging to the global community and a common sense of humanity.” Global citizenship education aims to build learners’ capacity to proactively contribute to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure, and sustainable world.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) categorizes global citizenship skills in four domains: civic skills, green citizenship skills, human rights and peace skills, and, critically, gender and diversity skills. Diversity skills can help people become advocates for the rights of all groups, including those who are marginalized, and turn attitudes and perspectives away from discrimination and bias.
How are global citizenship skills and inclusive education related?
Global citizenship skills and inclusive education have a clear through line: They both emphasize not only the value but also the imperative of diversity in creating a better world. Global citizenship education facilitates the development of the skills needed to recognize this imperative, while inclusive education operationalizes this concept in practice. As described by American University professor Alida Anderson, “global citizenship education has the potential to advance inclusive education and to improve education more broadly” by considering both conceptual and physical access (Figure 1). Global citizenship skills give people the necessary tools to understand and communicate the value of inclusive education—the conceptual access—and to exercise their civic duties to make inclusive education a reality—the physical access.
The reverse is also true: Inclusive education—meaningfully including learners with disabilities in mainstream classes—can help learners develop global citizenship skills. In this way, the two approaches are mutually reinforcing. How better to instill learners’ appreciation for diversity than to have them experience it in their classroom? Case and point: A 2014 systematic review showed that contact with people with disabilities had a positive effect on attitudes towards disability.
Figure 1. Anderson (2019); adapted from Mansilla and Jackson (2011)
How can we leverage global citizenship skills to achieve more disability-inclusive education?
Though we know that simply developing global citizenship skills will not lead to inclusive education, there are a few actions we can consider to capitalize on the relationship between the two.
- Integrate global citizenship education into primary and secondary education policy and curricula.
We can start by creating policies to require global citizenship education for young and adolescent learners. There are a number of different ways to integrate global citizenship education curricula, and UNESCO’s Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives (2015) provides helpful guidance and case studies from different contexts. By enabling young and adolescent people to develop global citizenship skills, we are enabling future leaders to be advocates of inclusivity and diversity in classrooms and throughout society.
- Create opportunities for adults to develop global citizenship skills.
Global citizenship skills are crucial for adults, too—including caregivers, educators, and policymakers. Policymakers with global citizenship skills can recognize the imperative of disability-inclusive education and institutionalize it in their contexts. Teachers with global citizenship skills have the attitudes and skills necessary to promote inclusion in their classrooms. Caregivers with global citizenship skills can overcome social stigmas and internal biases to advocate for the needs of children with disabilities in the education system. UNESCO’s Addressing Global Citizenship Education in Adult Learning Education (2019) provides useful examples of how we can facilitate the development of these skills in adults, including empowerment-based literacy programs and professionalization of adult educators in global skills education.
- Put our own global citizenship skills into practice by advocating for global citizenship education and inclusive education on the world stage.
Global citizenship’s civic skills empower us to address global challenges and become collaborative, outspoken advocates for diversity and inclusion. Working in international education gives us a prime platform upon which to exercise those civic skills, and we must put into practice this global citizenship mindset to ensure we are building education systems that include learners with disabilities. We must urge our counterparts in governments, in NGOs, and in donor organizations to recognize the imperative of global citizenship skills and inclusive education, and to prioritize them in their work.
Critically, we should not wait for one to lead to the other. The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2020: Inclusion and Education: All Means All reminds us that “inclusive education promotes inclusive societies, where people can live together and diversity is celebrated.” Global citizenship education and inclusive education can have positive spillovers outside of the classroom, including in the workplace and in our daily social interactions. Let’s take advantage of the synergies between global citizenship education and inclusive education to create a better world for all.
Aimee Reeves is the former Director of Inclusive Education Measurement and Evaluation at School-to-School International, where she specialized in designing learning assessments for children with disabilities. She is currently a Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist at EnCompass, working on the USAID Data Ecosystems for Development in Education activity.
Stay tuned for more blogs on global citizenship skills. This blog series is part of the Skills for Life Initiative, an Inter-American Development Bank effort to develop crucial competences among children and youth in Latin America and the Caribbean and address the skills gap deeply present in our region.