BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst shock to educational frameworks — shaking up existing processes and causing enormous disruptions across countries— with the century’s most prolonged, uncertain, and unprecedented school closures impacting over 1.6 billion learners across the world. Notwithstanding the adverse impact on the social and emotional well-being, social cohesion and inclusion, just the learning loss alone would significantly affect this generation's earnings and life opportunities. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is a watershed moment for education and has held up a mirror to the cracks in our education system. It has brought to attention the need for educational institutions and educators to recognize these cracks and adapt to the emerging realities. This defining moment in history has coerced us into rethinking education and reimagining learning spaces — changing the means and ways of educating our children. With the adverse impact of school closures — induced by COVID-19 restrictions and ensuing massive disruptions and shifts in education processes and practices— many educators, educational leaders, policymakers, and experts are increasingly seeking to integrate transformative education (such as Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), Global Citizenship Education) and transformative pedagogies (such as hybrid and blended learning) in the curricula and teacher education.

Transformative education is a recognized need that encourages learners to be equipped with awareness about global challenges and imparts core values, attitudes, and skills that promote respect for human rights, justice, diversity, equality, and a sustainable future. Transformative education is geared towards ensuring individual and collective human flourishing.  Transformative education equips learners with the core knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills needed to address pressing local and global challenges in addition to preparing them to contribute to a more just, inclusive, diverse, equitable, secure, and sustainable future for all.

It is in this context that the Global Citizenship Foundation, this year, has three thematic tracks — Global Citizenship Education, Social and Emotional Learning, and Transformative Pedagogies—  at the International Conference on Transformative Education for Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development 2022.

The Global Citizenship Foundation and the Council for Global Citizenship Education will bring together the largest gathering of domain specialists, experts, practitioners, researchers, policymakers,  scholars, and education leaders from the world’s leading organizations, universities, and institutions to:

• Deconstruct challenges to mainstreaming transformative education in the current context;
• Discuss innovative practices, strategies, and ideas towards transforming our schools, classrooms, and education for human flourishing.
  

Over 1000 education leaders, policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and researchers from 70+ countries are expected to participate in the Conference as representatives between May 18th to 20th, 2022 at the International Conference on Transformative Education for Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development 2022 and mainstream transformative education towards unlocking the potential and promise of education for human flourishing.

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OBJECTIVES

This international conference, in the spirit of Partnership for Global Citizenship Education, will bring together domain experts, practitioners, educational leaders, educators, policymakers, youth representatives, and several partner institutions in the field of transformative education to:

• Broaden the participants' understanding and knowledge of the fundamental principles, themes, and concepts of GCED, ESD, SEL, and transformative pedagogies towards fostering and advancing the discourse and action on transformative education.
• Explore the role of transformative education such as GCED, SEL, and ESD to tackle local and global challenges.
• Articulate and address key issues to advancing transformative education in the current and emerging challenges posed as an outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Strengthen the participants' professional skills to design, implement, and monitor contextualized and localized educational pedagogies such as SEL, GCED, online, and hybrid learning.
• Build the capacity of the participants to refine pedagogies and strategies in response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• Establish the community of practice to mainstream and advance GCED and SEL in online, hybrid, and physical classrooms towards fostering and advancing students’ critical thinking, agency, and participation.
• Share relevant innovative and best practices, case studies, and lessons in the field of transformative education.
• Equip participants with experiential sessions and cutting-edge educational research in innovative pedagogies and technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Holograms, and Gamified Learning.
• Enable educational leaders, educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to unlock and utilize the potential of transformative pedagogies across emerging learning media online and hybrid learning to promote transformative education.
• Contribute to the Global Citizenship Foundation’s mandate to advance United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 and Target 4.7.

CONFERENCE INFORMATION

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, this Conference will be organized via an experiential virtual event platform that imitates features of a physical venue (Lounge Discussions, Conference Halls, Networking, Personal Connections, Arena, etc). 

Additionally, the sessions will be streamed to encourage audiences from across the world to benefit from the proceedings and outcomes of the conference.

• Number of Tracks: 3 Parallel Tracks
• Conference Dates: May 18 - 20, 2022
• Mode: Online
• Venue: Virtual Event Platform (Airmeet)
• Working Language: English
• Agenda: Tentative/ To be finalized.

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CONFERENCE THEMES

The ICTE 2022 encompasses three tracks that are organized in parallel.

• Track A: Global Citizenship Education

Global Citizenship Education (GCED) as a transformative, lifelong pursuit involves both curricular learning and practical experience to shape a mindset to care for humanity and the planet and to equip individuals with global competencies to undertake responsible actions aimed at forging more just, peaceful, secure, sustainable, tolerant and inclusive societies. It covers three conceptual dimensions or domains of learning: Knowledge (Cognitive), Socio-Emotional (Affective), and Behavioral (Psychomotor).

Global Citizenship Education is a Target 7 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4. Global Citizenship Education is a response to challenges like human rights violations, inequality, and poverty that still threaten peace and sustainability.

SDG Target 4.7 unlocks the transformative vision for education by recognizing the purpose and transformative potential of education to promote sustainable development and lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity. Even though the various elements of SDG Target 4.7 may at first glance look different, they share a joint aim — transformation towards a more just, equal, and sustainable future. It aims to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both locally and globally, and build more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, and secure societies.

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• Track B: Social and Emotional Learning

One of the core domains of Global Citizenship Education is Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) which is aimed at delivering holistic and transformational learning experience. A recent study has shown that in order to learn and for society to thrive, students must be "socially aware" and "emotionally engaged." There is growing evidence on the positive impacts of SEL in leveraging young people’s academic performance and in also equipping them with skills needed to be successful. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a complex array of challenges that had mental health repercussions for everyone, including children, adolescents, and educators. Grief, fear, uncertainty, social isolation, increased screen time, and parental fatigue have negatively affected the mental health of children. Through analysis of effective SEL programs, we have learned that SEL practices are particularly effective in interrupting the stress-response-system and in supporting children and adults to manage and bounce back from traumatic, chaotic, and disruptive experiences.Given the shift in educational paradigm during the pandemic, developing strong social and emotional skills is all the more crucial and fundamental as these competencies could be the key to resilience and adaptability in addressing these challenges that students encounter inside and outside the digital classrooms.

Having said that, there is no one-size-fits-all social and emotional learning model, approach, or program anywhere in the world that is suitable to all students and educators. If implemented incorrectly, Social and Emotional Learning can do more harm than good.

Therefore, the integration of Social and Emotional Learning as a foundational literacy is crucial to help shape more resilient, adaptive, empathetic, mindful, compassionate, and critically aware individuals who are equipped to advance humanity by addressing some of the pressing challenges in our world.

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• Track C: Transformative Pedagogies and Technologies

Education is at a pivotal moment in history where traditional in-person pedagogy has either made way for digital or remote learning or interacts with it. An explicit integration of transformative education such as Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED) in formal curriculum offers an opportunity to transform the approaches to imparting education. 

A transformative pedagogy is an innovative pedagogical approach that empowers learners to critically examine their contexts, beliefs, values, knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes with the goal of developing spaces for self-reflection, appreciation of diversity and critical thinking amongst others. Transformative pedagogies move away from the passive nature of traditional pedagogies to foster active learning. Transformative pedagogies enable learning that goes beyond the mind, thereby, connecting the hearts and actions —exposing learners with the tools, frameworks, and resources to transform themselves and their societies. 

Transformative pedagogy involves teaching and learning geared to motivate and empower learners to make informed decisions and actions at the individual, community, and global levels. Transformative pedagogies should ensure, for instance, the curriculum, education, learning materials, schools, teacher education, or learning environments are meaningful in the natural, political, economic, and cultural contexts.

In the traditional pedagogies, the teaching strategies involved are highly repetitive (drill) tasks that emphasize primarily on memorization (rote learning) while overlooking critical thinking, problem-solving, metacognitive, and social skills. Therefore, transformative pedagogy addresses these issues through innovative learning approaches like hybrid learning, hyflex learning, flipped classroom, personalized learning, etc. that assist educators to meet long-standing and emerging challenges and aid learners to become effective learners, reflective practitioners, better problem-solvers, and critical thinkers.

The COVID-19 exposed the gaps in teacher education to prepare them to foster transformative pedagogies pushing educators and educational institutions to adopt an often treacherous trial and error method in acquiring resources such as technology and equipments along with opting for an effective pedagogy, teaching techniques, and student engagement strategies.  

Given the advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), it is imperative to reconsider the applicability of existing transformative pedagogies and innovative models to suit the current and emerging contexts. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Internet of Things, 3D Printing, Robotics, Drones, Blockchains, 5G, self-driving cars, Augmented reality, Virtual reality, Holograms, and Quantum Computing can play a role in helping students to develop skills, including creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, perseverance, problem-solving, self-direction, global awareness, and digital literacy, and in fostering inclusivity in the digital learning space.

Since the importance and role of GCED and ESD in synergizing transformative education have been well-documented, ICTE 2022 will explore some of the  crucial issues underlining our efforts to transform education for human flourishing and the realization of UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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CONFERENCE SESSION FORMATS

The ICTE 2022 offers diverse session formats that empower participants to discover, connect, and learn. Enhance your experience by understanding  each of the formats to enhance your goals and opportunities!

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KEYNOTES (Duration: 45 Minutes)

Keynotes are powerful presentations by some of the world’s inspiring thinkers and visionaries in the field of transformative education. Keynotes set the stage for the International Conference on Transformative Education 2022.

LEARNING SESSIONS (Duration: 90 - 120 Minutes)

Looking for wit-expanding presentations by educational leaders, practitioners, and domain experts? The learning sessions are carefully curated learning experiences to contribute to the professional growth and development of participants. 

BREAKOUT SESSIONS (Duration: 30 minutes)

Breakout sessions include a deep dive into transformative education research through Poster Presentations on cutting-edge research topics such as GCED, SEL, and transformative pedagogies. 

CATALYTIC KEYNOTES (Duration: 30 minutes)

Catalytic Keynotes bring together some of the biggest and brightest names in the field of transformative education. Catalytic Keynote Speakers present a snapshot of the most transformative ideas shaping the many futures of education. 

SPEED NETWORKING (Duration: 45 minutes)

Speed Networking offers a one-on-one exchange between participants. There will be four one-on-one meetings lasting 11 minutes each.  

LOUNGE MEETUPS (Duration: 45 minutes)

Take a seat, virtually! Lounge Meetups are a more relaxed way to connect, seek out inspiration, and find collaboration opportunities across a wide range of regions, interests and groups. 

BOOK READING (Duration: 60 minutes)

Hour-long sessions focusing on the introduction of a new book, giving the author and audience a chance to explore the themes or motifs present in their book. These are a great way for authors to showcase their latest title to a diverse audience.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS (Duration: 60 minutes)

Panel Discussions feature between three and four education professionals sharing different perspectives and opinions based on a specific topic, making for a lively parley bringing forth some of the best and brightest ideas, insights, and experiences in the field of transformative education. 

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PARTICIPANTS

The ICTE provides an opportunity for the global community of education professionals to encounter cutting-edge ideas, discover new interests, and network with peers and practitioners who share a desire for transformative education and experiences.

The ICTE virtual venue would host 1,000 pre-registered participants from 30+ countries in addition to 2,500 participants engaging through our live/recorded stream and curated content via our website and social media.

The virtual venue is exclusively open to the following categories of participants:

• K-12 educators, educational leaders, and education professionals
• Transformative education experts, leaders and practitioners
• Policymakers, Research scholars and academics
• Curriculum Designers, Game Designers, and Ed Tech specialists
• Representatives from teacher education colleges/institutes, and national/regional/international organizations and civil society organizations
• Representatives from the public and private sector education organizations

The mandate of the International Conference on Transformative Education for Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development 2022 is to partner with stakeholders from diverse sectors of education to exchange knowledge, experiences, and innovative practices, build partnerships to transform education for human flourishing.

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ABOUT THE ORGANIZER

The Global Citizenship Foundation is a leading specialist organization established with a mandate to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.7, that is, education for global citizenship and sustainable development (GCED & ESD). 

Since its inception in 2016, the Global Citizenship Foundation has contributed to its vision of transforming education for — every child; human flourishing; sustainable development — through its publications, programs, initiatives, and events. 

The Global Citizenship Foundation provides strategic support to individuals, institutions, and organizations to help achieve our mandate in line with Education 2030, as envisioned by the United Nations through — Capacity-Building; Policy Research and Analysis; Consultation and Support; Development of Pedagogy and Practice; Advocacy and Engagement; Youth Empowerment; Educational Leadership Development.

The principal seat of the Global Citizenship Foundation is Delhi National Capital Region, India.