Levels of indicator development for education for sustainable development

Abstract

The article summarizes some considerations about the development of indicators for education for sustainable development (ESD). It reflects the present state of discussion, especially from a German perspective, and includes present developments in the area of quality criteria and standards for ESD. These discussion threads only denote the beginning of a discourse that will eventually lead to a practicable instrument for estimating the progress of ESD. This article shall give suggestions for the systematic development of an indicator system for ESD linking three dimensions: levels of educational systems, key functions of indicators, and key aspects of indicator development.

Keywords:

• indicators
• education for sustainable development
• educational systems
• research on ESD

Notes

1. This initiative is currently being reorganised into the campaign ‘International Agenda Schools’, with a distinct focus on ESD. Schools in 10 federal states are participating.

2. Gestaltungskompetenz is defined as ‘the forward‐looking ability to actively modify and to shape the future of the societies in which we live in terms of sustainable development’ (de Haan and Harenberg 1999).

3. Additionally, the SEED approach lists 15 quality fields in which teaching and learning processes play an important role. For every quality fields, a catalogue of several quality criteria is introduced that may support the self‐evaluation or self‐estimation of schools and teaching staff within individual class projects. Questions of educational standards, curricula and framework plans are not explicitly taken into consideration, and no expectations regarding the effects are formulated.

4. All six research aims are to be implemented between 2007 and 2015, in three phases. A first usable set of input indicators should be available in 2007.

5. The incipient discussion about standards (see Nagel and Affolter 2004) and quality criteria – e.g., in the SEED network (School Development through Environmental Education), which offers a detailed catalogue of teaching–learning process, school organisation and external relations of schools in the context of ESD (see Breiting, Meyer and Mogensen 2005) – does not represent a breakthrough towards a reliable measurability of ESD‐specific learning performances and the classification of these performances into competence grades.