Europe and North America Regional GCED Network

Relevance and Recommendations
This research was undertaken to understand the potential of the network of GCED practice
and practitioners to support the work of GCED in Europe and North America. The study
provides an important contribution to understanding better how GCED "works" across
different locations that are linked less by geography than by history, knowledge systems, and
well-established relationships. The findings support insights shared by practitioners early in
the planning stages of the research that Europe and North America are not often conceived
of as one region, at least to people within these areas. However, the findings also highlight
a strong knowledge network formed around the work of GCED. Dense knowledge-sharing
relations were evident in the network maps. Some organizations were positioned as central
actors, particularly because of their multiscalar relations. Other organizations work on what
SNA calls the periphery. In these positions, organizations worked with fewer relations. When
we bring together the core-periphery maps with the data, indicating a range of conceptual
communities formed, we can see the importance of the organizations working outside
the centre. New ideas and experiences can be moved into the network from positions on
the periphery. While research is needed to fully understand how ideas move within the
network, we can recommend that organizations and network actors attend to the network
that has been created out of their shared work. Practitioners in this study expressed this
in their definitions that included goals, actions, concepts, orientations, issues, and future
visions. It is the nature of GCED to be a shifting notion. Previous studies aiming to define
global citizenship support this range and that GCED provides multiple ways to respond to
urgent and diverse conditions, events, systems, and histories of the world. As ideas flow
within this network, actors can pay particular attention to new ideas, many that emerge from
organizations working on the periphery of the network.
It was also clear that organizations that were multiscalar in their work, linking locally, nationally,
and internationally, had more dense relations and greater reach. With an enhanced sectorwide
networked approach to GCED, where small and mid-size organizations intentionally
nurtured networked relations of collaboration, we would see a dynamic flow of new ideas
and a deep understanding of how GCED impacted local communities. The strength of the
already existing knowledge exchange of this network could be further strengthened with
broad and more inclusive participation of, particularly, local and smaller organizations.
Participants were enthusiastic about the research and interested in finding ways to enhance
collaborations and information sharing. Efforts to strengthen the network without forcing a
homogenizing agenda on GCED could contribute to stronger GCED work by individual
organizations and the wider sector. Using the data from this study, the range of ideas linked
to GCED will provide important organizational learning that will benefit the sector as a whole.
Multi-stakeholder collaborations seem to be well established in this network. This
collaborative environment can be used to deepen and extend the important contributions of
GCED to education policy and practice.
Given that there have been no other network analyses done in the GCED sector, we have
produced a detailed vademecum (study handbook) that will use this SNA approach
accessible for other regions and networks.
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