The Sheffield Massacre

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The End of the Beginning?

The final version of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development "Asia-Pacific Guidelines for the Development of National ESD Indicators" (quite a mouthful!) has been released.

I hope you find these useful if only as a starting point for your own important work.

Perhaps more comments will appear here in the future...otherwise, enjoy! :-)

the end is nigh!

Hello everyone!

I'm afraid I didn't have time to thoroughly re-read the third draft of the Asia-Pacific DESD Indicators Guidelines. I did take a cursory look and all looked well to me. I guess we've spent something like 6 months or so on this project now? I hope its of some use to people.

Right now, it is available for public comment. I'm sorry I didn't publicise this here earlier. You have until March 16th 2007 though!

I also didn't have time to contribute to a Glossary but I do think its a very good idea.

I presume other regions around Our Planet Earth are going through similar exercises? I hope so.

I understand one can quite readily critique such (extrinsic) goal-driven behaviours but personally I'm hoping that by pursuing a rather participative process we came up with something applicable. If not then let us know!

Best wishes,

Tim

slow progress

I'm sorry I haven't been posting much here of late. Personally I've been busy on Science for Sustainability and more recently Complex Systems. We did recently receive what I think will be the penultimate third draft of the Guidelines for comments. I hope to take another look at it then we have also been asked to contribute to a "glossary" which maybe I can share here.

So, thanks for your patience. Keep up the good work! :-)

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.

Second Draft Recieved

All has been quiet on the Indicators front for some time as, presumably, the hard work of re-drafting the guidelines document was taking place behind-the-scenes. I'm glad to say we now have the second draft of the Indicators for the Asia-Pacific DESD ready for review. Its now a long document, 110 pages!

We in the 'Expert Team' are supposed to review this document, for example highlighting five key issues, before October 23rd!

Again, I'm afraid it would be improper to post the whole of the second draft here although I will post my own comments whenever I can find the time to look at all 110 pages...yikes. ;-)

At this point I'd really love to hear from you all, if not before. Cheers.

Recontextualisation of Indicators in Asia-Pacific

The previously mentioned review meeting of the DESD Indicators has now taken place on 11th - 12th August as stated. It was hosted by UNESCO Bangkok and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Hiroshima Office for Asia and the Pacific (HOAP). Various members of the project, including 'local' national commissions, 'Experts Team' members and 'Guidelines Review Team' members seemed to have basically re-oriented the perhaps abstract first draft of guidelines to be more 'in tune' with the specific needs of the Asia-Pacific region. This can only be a good thing. Thus outcomes were:

1. "Further understanding of national DESD programme priorities, and their diversity, in the Asia-Pacific
2. Increased understanding of the challenges surrounding ESD indicator development in the Asia-Pacific
3. Practical suggestions for the development of ESD indicators, including the setting of clear priorities, basic development processes, and use of targets
4. Suggestions for improving the practicality of the Guidelines at the national level and increasing their alignment with ESD in the Asia-Pacific context
5. Increased awareness of the links between ESD monitoring and reporting and those of other education initiatives such as EFA and the MDGs
6. Increased awareness of data collection methodologies
7. Enhanced understanding of the challenges associated with institutionalizing national ESD monitoring and reporting
8. Identification of preliminary practical needs required for capacity building and training to use the Guidelines
9. Identification of potential partners, funding and the next steps to carry the project forward"

The next step is to redraft the Guidelines taking these important outcomes into account then circulate them for further comments amongst the 'Experts Team' and the 'Guidelines Review Team'. They will then be published and, crucially piloted (I am guessing) in 2007.

Please do comment if you see fit. I obviously won't be publishing the Guidelines drafts here but I will try my best to make sure your concerns are taken into consideration. Cheers.