Five Key "Learnings"

We were asked to comment on our five key messages or "learnings" from the latest draft of the Indicators report. Here are mine - what do you think?

1. Multi-stakeholder participative, representative and transparent development of DESD Indicators both bottom-up and top-down is essential to help ensure their relevance and utility and particularly when such Indicators are proposed to be applicable across educational sectors and expansive geographical regions. This is also in-keeping with the general rationale of the DESD, e.g. to increase “ownership”.

2. Piloting of the resultant Indicators in 2007 will provide important feedback as to their practical utility across demographic, geographic and educational contexts. In this way we facilitate an important meta-reflective process, i.e. monitoring of the monitoring.

3. Although it is important to learn from Indicators developed for other initiatives such as EFA and the MDGs undoubtedly the DESD also requires unique approaches. For example, it is suggested that qualitative as well as quantitative indicators will be required, in-keeping with the educational research communities’ current practices.

4. It is now a commonly-held belief that formal, informal and non-formal stakeholders should all be included in ESD. Thus, the proposal is that UNESCO National Commissions and Field Offices will work with Governments to set up National Committees representing a broad range of stakeholders including, in addition to Governmental agencies, NGOs, the private sector, media, educational institutions and individuals.

5. There are many kinds of Indicators serving different purposes in a variety of contexts. Firstly, status types include baseline Indicators. Secondly, facilitative types include context, process and learning Indicators. Thirdly, effect types include output, outcome, impact and performance Indicators. Fourthly, communication types include headline and aggregate Indicators. Each Indicator’s rationale, and hence the benefits and limits of its applicability, need to be thoroughly understood if they are to have the desired effect. The belief is that careful selection and possibly modification (in the light of cumulative knowledge gained through application of the Indicators) in-keeping with the context of their application can ultimately maximise their utility.