RESEARCH NOTE Regaining legitimacy in the context of global governance? UNESCO, Education for All coordination and the Global Monitoring Report D. Brent Edwards Jr. 1 • Taeko Okitsu 2 • Romina da Costa 3 • Yuto Kitamura 4 Published online: 29 May 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning 2017 Abstract This research note shares insights which resulted from a larger study into the ways in which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Orga- nization (UNESCO) – during 2010–2014 – used its position as coordinator of the post-Dakar Framework for Action (initiated at the World Education Forum held in 2000 and designed to reinvigorate the Education for All initiative) to help it regain some of the legitimacy it had lost in the preceding decades. The research study focused on the role of both the UNESCO Education for All Follow-up Unit and the production of the Global Monitoring Report (GMR) during the 2000s because they were at the heart of UNESCO’s efforts to repair its image and renew its impact in one area of global governance, specifically in the global education policy field. The study’s findings were based on an analysis of documents, archives and interviews (n = 17) with key actors inside and outside UNESCO, including representatives of UNESCO’s peer institutions. & D. Brent Edwards Jr. Brent.edwards@hawaii.edu Taeko Okitsu t.okitsu@otsuma.ac.jp Romina da Costa romina.dacosta@gmail.com Yuto Kitamura yuto@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp 1 University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA 2 Otsuma Women’s University, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan 3 University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 4 The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 123 Int Rev Educ (2017) 63:403–416 DOI 10.1007/s11159-017-9646-1