Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

The primary objective of the capacity building workshop (May 2016, New Delhi)
was to discuss and build a common understanding of the coding scheme. In
attendance were representatives from 18 countries including UNESCO Field
Office officials and national consultants.
By the end of the two-day workshop, the Technical Support Group was also
established as part of the overall governance structure (see Figure 0.2 in
Introduction), consisting of MGIEP, UNESCO Bangkok, IBE, and select national
experts. The coding scheme was finalised in consultation with the Technical
Support Group.
(2) Primary Data Collection
Education legislations, policies, strategic documents, curriculum frameworks,
overall curricula and syllabi are all very diverse in nature, and differ from country
to country in terms of their structure, content, etc. In order to ensure a certain
level of homogeneity, a data source collection template was developed, and what
to code was agreed upon between MGIEP and the research team. This ensured
that – although a variety of documents was coded for each country – all relevant
documents were a part of the study (in one way or another). With the assistance of
the UNESCO Field Offices, National Commissions, and Ministries of Education 4 ,
the researchers were able to access and obtain these documents.
(3) Content Analysis through rhe Common Coding
Scheme across the Selected Countries
The approved common coding scheme was used to analyse legislation and
policy documents pertaining to education, curriculum frameworks, and overall
curricula and syllabi. A separate document was developed for the analysis of
textbooks, which was taken up by a few countries 5 depending on the accessibility
of textbooks in digital format.
The methodology required the in-depth reading of the documents (as opposed
to a simple ‘word search’) and understanding ESD/GCED concepts thoroughly in
a relatively short period (for an average duration of 5-6 months). The process
of coding itself proved tedious as researchers had to manually insert sentences
into the relevant sub-categories, and then analyse them further (for more
information on the process of coding, see Coding Procedure in the next section).
4 Policy and curriculum documents were not always available in the public domain, or online.
There were many instances where our research teams were coding from hardcopies
obtained by Ministries of Education, which was a tedious, time-consuming process. Access
to national documents was, therefore, ensured by working with UNESCO Field Offices and
National Commissions for UNESCO as necessary and appropriate.
5 Researchers from Bhutan, India, Lao PDR, Mongolia and Sri Lanka were also coding textbooks.
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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