Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

Whereas UNESCO’s (2015d) guidelines for integrating an Education for Peace
curriculum into education sector plans and policies define curriculum as
‘everything students learn in school, intentional and unintentional, planned
and unplanned’, this project takes a different approach. The curriculum of an
educational programme comprises a statement of the goals of the programme
and means to achieve those goals. The curriculum can therefore be unpacked
as (i) educational philosophy/purpose/vision; (ii) educational goals (specified
as learning outcomes)/syllabus design; and (iii) pedagogical choices, including
teaching-learning resources (e.g. textbooks), classroom activities, assessment,
educational policies and infrastructure (Mohanan and Mohanan, 2016).
Additionally, if the example was contextual – the validation or justification for
a particular action – it was coded under 7. Rationale/ justification/ context. A
full version of the coding scheme, including definitions of all sub-categories and
coding components, will be available from UNESCO MGIEP upon request.
CODING PROCEDURE
As mentioned earlier, the scheme is applied by searching for meaning of the
key concepts rather than key words and terms – meaning that is derived from
the shared understanding of the brief definitions of the sub-categories and
coding components. While coding key words or terms and their variants ensures
accuracy of data, by searching for meaning and idea we were able to access more
context-based examples – albeit also inviting a higher degree of subjectivity.
If an idea was present, a code of ‘1’ was inserted in the appropriate cell.
Additionally,
• Space was provided (20 rows, and more could be added if necessary) for
coders to insert each sentence that refers to a sub-category (e.g., climate
change, critical thinking, tolerance);
• For each reference, coders were asked to insert page numbers; multiple page
numbers could also be inserted if an exactly the same phrase or sentence
was repeated more than once;
• Each category was given an ‘Other’ sub-category to code sentences that
were not necessarily covered by the existing sub-categories but fit the
overall category (this could also be country-specific; for example, ‘Buddhist
education’ was Thailand’s version of values education);
• If an example was relevant in more than one sub-category (for example,
gender equality and human rights), it could be coded twice;
• There was a ‘notes’ section provided at the end of every row for coders to add
thoughts and observations, as well as interesting trends and developments
that they may have noticed; and
• At the end of each sub-category and category, there was a ‘total’ count.
Figure A.2 shows examples of coded data. For illustrative purposes, only those
marked as objective/vision are cited below to keep it simple.
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Appendices