UNESCO: promising education multilateralism?

Abstract

Drawing on a review of primary and secondary literature, this article examines the UNESCO's educational agenda over nearly eight decades of its existence. Tracing this evolution in four interrelated phases and critically interrogating significant education reports produced by UNESCO, this article examines its functioning as part of the international global architecture for education development and as part of the field of global policy, in general, and education policy. In particular it pays attention to UNESCO's education ideas and how it constitutes its space in the multilateral global field and the tension and contradictions that result from this. In particular, it provides an ideational genesis of the education policy and programmes showing how its vision shifts and alters shape within specific conjunctural and spatial moments and periods. In examining UNESCO's intellectual trajectory, the article reflects on the tension its vision of education as a fundamental human right and a foundational pillar of society on the one hand, and a human capital approach to education on the other. The article charts how over time UNESCO's image also changed to becoming an entity positioned as an evidence broker and monitoring agency. The intellectual trajectories of UNESCO reveal the complexity of an organization operating within a crowded international space, negotiating contested multilateralism as it seeks to be and become a repository of knowledge and expertise for capacity building, a convening and monitoring agency, and a global leader in education. In so doing, it navigates the ways in which “political” and “technical” decisions are made. The analysis of UNESCO points to the need for a better understanding of how global education policy is shaped and reshaped across and between actors within the international development field and how positioning for hegemonic power discursively constitutes the formulation, implementation and monitoring of the global education agenda.