Education & the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The review conducted here is not a “systematic review” in the technical sense, with a fixed set of search and selection criteria applied to a defined set of potential sources. One of the aims was of this review was to capture insights from across a large range of disciplines, many of which use their own language and terminology for phenomena that are educational in fact but not in name. In addition, in the area of educational development itself, “grey” literature is common, which ordinarily would not be included in a scientific review. Accordingly, we proceeded through a combination of “snowball” sampling, starting from key studies or review articles, purposive searching to close specific gaps (or to verify the absence of evidence), and by consulting our extensive professional networks. This approach allowed us to identify a diverse range of important items, which would have been missed had we taken a more systematic, scientific approach. An important limitation is that a review of the present scope and ambition can never be fully comprehensive, and that the selection and choices made inevitably partly reflect our own particular areas of expertise and interest, as well as a certain amount of chance. In addition, the timing of the work relative to the SDG process means that only the draft targets were available when we began our review, and also that keeping up to date with other related efforts has been a “moving target”. Around the formal adoption of the SDGs, relevant documents, reports, and data were published almost on a daily basis. At the same time, one strength of our approach has been precisely to be able to take advantage of our networks and social media to learn of such publications almost immediately.