Ideas And Practices Of UNESCO Global Citizenship Education:A Perspective Of Global Educational Governance

With the expansion of the field of global governance and the development of educational globalization,global educational governance gradually becomes an emerging global issue.Due to its authoritative position in global educational affairs,UNESCO is playing a unique and critical role in this field.Global citizenship education is therefore brought into UNESCO's global educational governance topic as it is not only a product of globalization,but also is of great significance to the sustainable development of the global society.This research analyses the principals and initiatives of UNESCO during its promotion of Global Citizenship Education through literature analysis and case study,to explore and inspect the effect of the development of GCE,and finally to have a critical ideas about the global educational governance of UNESCO.There are mainly three background reasons for UNESCO to promote GCE.The first one is the development of globalization and the mission of UNESCO;the second reason is the drive of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development,both in the international society level and in the future development of education itself;the last one on account of the global educational governance of UNESCO,to fulfill its leading role in global educational development,and to further develop its status and authority.GCE is put into the global educational governance framework of UNESCO,not only as a new area,but also as a pathway..Idea advocacy is a crucial tool global educational governance as concept transformation is the premise of policy shift,it therefore often plays a pioneering role before other governance tools.This is also true in the rationale of UNESCO's form to promoting GCE.The ideological basis of GCE comes from three main educational thoughts of UNESCO,namely,Lifelong Education,Education for All,as well as the four pillars of education which stand for learning to learn,learn to do,learn to be and learn to live together.The content of the idea of GCE includes Education for International Understanding,Peace and Human Rights Education,Intercultural Education and Education for Sustainable Development,along with the development of its own characteristics and connotation.Via this kind of idea advocacy,UNESCO achieves its aim to promote GCE as a global consensus and strengthens its main educational thoughts such as lifelong education in the meantime,and finally further consolidates its authority in generating ideas and promoting conceptual change.Besides idea advocacy,standards development,capacity building and international cooperation are all typical tools for global educational governance.The development of GCE also undergoes a process from concept to practice.First of all,in order to promote GCE worldwide holistically,UNESCO sets up standards including common targets,supporting factors and global actions,as general guidelines.Secondly,capacity building is another important tool,which consists of policy guidance,teacher training and experience diffusion in the case of GCE.Finally,international cooperation is crucial due to the complexity of global affairs.By forming global partner network,bridging the national and global level via regional institutions,and carrying out practice by associated schools project,GCE has become a global practice at different levels.During its implementation of these practical measures,UNESCO's function to be "founder of educational standards","builder of the educational ability"and "facilitator of educational cooperation " has gained further development and recognition.Thanks to the effort of UNESCO,GCE has seen remarkable effects during its development.At the global level,a wide scope of discussion has formed an upsurge;at the regional level,increasing number of institutions has been built;at the national level,the curriculum of GCE is under construction.The developing experience of GCE reflects the paradigm of UNESCO's global educational governance clearly as a direct governance field.However,due to the sensitivity of the concept itself,the tediousness of the contents and the complexity of practice,and the initial limitation of UNESCO,it could be predicted that he development of GCE will still face many challenges.Along with the increasing and deepening of global educational issues,the global educational governance of UNESCO has to be updated to meet the needs of the development continue to lead the global education.