Navigating the Integration of Education for Sustainable Development in Senegal's National Curriculum: A Policy Discourse Analysis

Abstract

{ "background": "Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a globally endorsed framework, yet its operationalisation within national education systems, particularly in the Global South, remains under-examined. Senegal has formally committed to integrating ESD, but the processes and underlying policy discourses shaping this integration are not well understood.", "purpose and objectives": "This study analyses the dominant policy discourses that have shaped the integration of ESD within the national curriculum, examining how these discourses frame the purpose, content, and envisaged implementation of ESD.", "methodology": "A qualitative policy discourse analysis was conducted. The data corpus comprised key national policy documents, curriculum frameworks, and official strategy texts. These were analysed using a critical discourse analytic approach to identify recurring themes, rhetorical strategies, and implicit assumptions.", "findings": "The analysis revealed three competing discursive frames: a dominant technocratic-instrumental frame emphasising skills for green economic growth; a subordinate social-critical frame linking ESD to issues of equity and colonial legacy; and a marginalised holistic-integrative frame. A concrete finding was that over two-thirds of the coded policy excerpts aligned with the technocratic-instrumental discourse, which largely decoupled ESD from critical post-colonial perspectives.", "conclusion": "The integration of ESD is being steered predominantly by a technocratic discourse that prioritises economic adaptation over transformative social change. This narrow framing risks limiting ESD's potential to address deeper socio-ecological injustices within the educational landscape.", "recommendations": "Curriculum developers and policymakers should consciously engage with and elevate social-critical and holistic discourses in future ESD policy iterations. Teacher professional development programmes must be designed to equip educators with the critical pedagogies needed to navigate these competing frames in practice.", "key words": "Education for Sustainable Development, curriculum policy, discourse analysis, Senegal, post-colonial education, policy implementation", "contribution statement": "This paper provides a novel discursive typology of ESD integration in a Franco-phone West African context, revealing how policy language