About the Community of Practice

As an open and plural space, the COP facilitates opportunities to share visions, approaches, experiences, innovative practices, research results and analytical studies. It also offers concrete possibilities for jointly undertaking programmes and projects for institutional capacity building around curricular themes. These joint undertakings are based on the requirements and needs identified in the field by educators themselves. Through this approach, horizontal co-operation, South-South and South-North, is promoted by the COP on a permanent basis.
 

Since its inception in June 2005, the COP has co-organised and/or participated in a total of 98 workshops, seminars, conferences and symposiums covering all regions of the world. COP Focal Point Coordinators are located in: Africa (4), Asia (2), Europe (3), Latin America (3), Arab states (2). During 2007-08 – through the COP and in close coordination with UNESCO Offices, Ministries of Education and international organisations – the IBE has co-organised nine regional workshops and four conferences on Inclusive Education. These were held in preparation for the 48th session of the International Conference on Education (ICE, 25-28 November 2008, Geneva) entitled “Inclusive Education: the way of the future”. These workshops and conferences have contributed to deepening the understanding of the content and scope of Inclusive Education from an inter-regional perspective, and to identifying common educational policy and curriculum concerns.

Key activities

• Focal Points in all UNESCO regions – carrying out regional activities through the coordination of prestigious curriculum specialists and developers.
• Inter-regional comparative studies – finding out commonalities and differences between education systems and curriculum processes taking place in different regions.
• University partnerships around Education for All (EFA) goals – promoting and facilitating the production and sharing of research about critical issues in education.
• Community of Practice interaction – providing and facilitating conditions and opportunities for realising varied types of activities such as e-forums, training programmes, access to networks in curriculum development, research partnerships, call for papers/presenters etc.
• The COP is also engaged in other activities such as the piloting of our Training Tools for Curriculum Development: A Resource Pack, and the set up of a database of experiences of different learning situations to support competency-based reforms in Basic and Youth Education. The COP has also worked on comparative curricular research and the development of comprehensive capacity building approaches (from policy dialogue to changes in classroom practices, for example in Central America).