This brochure has been produced to mark the respective 80th and 75th anniversaries of the founding of UNESCO and the Georg Eckert Institute. It traces the joint activities of these two institutions by highlighting key aspects of their collaboration as well as the changes in international textbook work over the past three-quarters of a century.
The first part examines the most important aspects of their cooperation at the institutional level: from UNESCO’s involvement in the founding of the International Institute for the Improvement of Textbooks, through the connection between the Institute and the UNESCO General Conference, to the role of the German Commission for UNESCO, the bestowal of the UNESCO Peace Prize on the Braunschweig Institute, and finally the development of bilateral textbook commissions.
The second part focuses on the substantive aspects of the collaboration. It highlights the wide variety of topics that have been the subject of international textbook work over the decades. These include reconciliation and understanding, human rights, inclusion and diversity, racism, Holocaust education, and anti-Semitism.
The third part examines the spaces of joint cooperation. While international textbook activities were initially limited to Western Europe, the scope of joint action expanded to Asia as early as the 1950s, to Eastern Europe after 1989, and in recent decades to the Middle East and Africa.
The fourth part summarises the products of this collaboration, which have ranged from the UNESCO Newsletter and the UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision to joint guidelines and recommendations. The various guidelines, and the Guidebook, communicate the insights gained through practical experience, but have always been primarily based on academic studies that have both reflected and enriched research on the substantive topics.
After a brief look ahead at the future challenges facing international textbook development the last part documents excerpts from selected bilateral textbook commissions, recommendations, guidelines, and reports that illustrate the various types of outcomes resulting from the collaboration between the GEI and UNESCO over the past eight decades.
Read the brochure here.
[Description of the product taken from the publication's Introduction.]
