Public Lecture III: 22nd January 2025
Under the theme “Global Learning Crises and the Role of International Organisations,” Dr. Iris Santos (Tampere University, Finland) and Professor Aaron Benavot (University at Albany-SUNY, USA) delivered two lectures on 22nd January 2025.
Dr. Santos shared her research on “The Global Learning Crisis: Perspectives from Finnish Education Experts in UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank.” She critically examines how international development agencies, led by the Global North, construct and perpetuate the learning crisis narrative. Based on interviews with 23 Finnish education experts, her study highlights systemic challenges and power dynamics shaping global education governance. It reveals how international organisations often rely on narrow, technical, and short-term solutions that overlook local socio-economic and cultural contexts, reinforcing dependency and inequality in the Global South.
Professor Aaron Benavot, in his lecture ‘The ‘Global Learning Crisis’ and Ready-Made Policy Solutions’, explored the long history of educational crises and the growing focus on a ‘global learning crisis’ among international organisations and aid agencies. He highlighted how this narrative has spurred interest in ‘effective’ interventions such as accelerated learning to combat the crisis.
He examined the rise of ‘learning loss’ and ‘learning crisis’ discourse, tracing its roots to the expansion of international, regional, and national learning assessments over the past two decades. These assessments contributed to standardised learning data, enabling the creation of global learning metrics (GLMs). He argues that the learning agenda set by SDG 4 in 2015 further legitimised GLMs, with strong backing from the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, and bilateral aid agencies. He also discussed how school closures during COVID-19 and the effects of extreme heat from climate change have reinforced the learning crisis narrative.
About the Presenters:
Dr. Íris Santos is a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University, Finland, specialising in global education governance. Her research focuses on education policymaking, international organisations, global citizenship education, and sustainable development, examined through a critical decolonial lens.
Dr. Aaron Benavot is a Professor of Global Education Policy at the University at Albany-SUNY, USA. He was a Senior Policy Analyst for UNESCO’s Education for All Report (2005–2009) and later Director of the Global Education Monitoring Report (2014–2017), overseeing education progress in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.