The 4th International Conference on Global Citizenship Education was held on September 3 to September 4, 2019 at Seoul Dragon City Hotel in Seoul, South Korea. The conference was co-organized by the Asia-Pacific Centre of Education for International Understanding under the auspices of UNESCO (APCEIU), the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, in partnership with UNESCO. With the theme ‘Reconciliation, Peace and Global Citizenship Education’, the Conference highlighted GCED’s potential for building and maintaining long-lasting peace particularly in post-conflict societies. It promoted the use of transformative pedagogy while also systematically mainstreaming GCED in terms of policy, curriculum and teacher training. The Conference served as a platform to discuss the importance of GCED and its tangible contribution to the reconciliation process by having a wide range of sessions from plenary sessions that provide an overall view of the conference, to various concurrent sessions with panel discussions, case presentations and participatory workshops.
Over 700 education policy-makers, teachers, experts from the academe and the private sector, representatives from international and civil society organizations and youth representatives from 77 countries actively participated in the Conference. The Philippine National Commission for UNESCO or PH NatCom was represented by Deputy Executive Director Lindsay Barrientos and Programme Officer for Education, Rex Ubac Jr. Other agencies such as the National Economic Development Authority or NEDA, Department of Education, Philippine Normal University and state-supported schools (selected by APCEIU) were part of the Philippine representatives.
For the Philippine representatives, their presence in the Conference is essential to their roles as part of the technical working group and advocacy groups that promote the mainstreaming of GCED in curriculum and policies. It may be noted that PH NatCom, together with partners in the education sector, is developing indicators for SDG 4.7 in line with attaining targets under the 2030 SDGs. Follow through meetings shall be held in the first quarter of 2020.
