Quality Criteria for ESD schools

• Publications A Database with Quality Criteria for ESD schools publications - available for downloading. -show the publications

General Description of the Project, inclusive goals/target group, timeframe and stakeholders

This research project, started in 2006, focuses on two parallel and interrelated issues / themes: conceptualisation of ESD and the use of Quality Criteria for school self-evaluation.
The project aims to a deeper understanding of the ESD concept, a contested concept to some extent open for interpretation, unclear and unfamiliar to many, both on the level of theory as well as the level of practice.

The ‘Quality Criteria for ESD schools’ ENSI booklet, proposed a vision of what ESD is about, focusing on the issue of evaluation as a significant mean for ‘quality enhancement’ and its dissemination and debate is the other main aim of this project.

The project goals are:

• to follow and debate the evolution of ESD concepts, and to constantly compare them with the developments of evaluation tools as Quality criteria or indicators;
• to monitor the dissemination of the already produced Quality Criteria booklet in the different ENSI countries, analysing and comparing different strategies for the dissemination;
• to analyse and compare quality certification systems in different countries (the procedural system) and of existing training courses for evaluation competencies;
• to develop training courses for building up competencies for the use of QC in self-evaluation, peer evaluation and external evaluation.

All countries where the QC booklet has been presented have been involved in the monitoring and dissemination issue.

Countries that have been directly involved in the debate of ESD concepts and their use in the whole school approach, have been Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Korea, and Spain. Other stakeholders are all the NGO or local group working with eco-schools or ESD schools.

Project report 2010 - developments 2011

The QCESD project has been one of the more successful ENSI projects: thanks to the Austrian leadership of the SEED project, who left to ENSI the ‘property’ and the dissemination of the SEED products, but at the same time was actively supporting new translations and lay out,– the Quality Criteria for ESD Schools booklet has been successfully translated in 18 languages – all available on the ENSI web site – and quoted and used by many publications and teachers training courses.

In 2009 the key note of Michela Mayer and Paul Vare and the 2 WS guided by Sören Breiting and Mariona Espinet allowed to discuss again the project main ideas in an international contexts and to collect valuable insights for future projects and publications.

One Internet based survey on the use of the QC booklet, made by Finn Mogensen (in attached), was also presented, and a proposal for a book collecting international ideas and experiences related to the use of Quality Criteria for ESD was circulated between ENSI members.

In October 2009 a meeting, partially funded by ENSI, was held in Austria with the aim to apply for a Gruntwig/Comenius Seminar to be held in 2010 concerning Quality Criteria. The application was not presented as ENSI seminar but the Comenius Gruntwig Seminar for teachers and teacher trainers ‘Teacher Competencies for Education for Sustainable Development’, proposed by Austria within the SUPPORT Project, used part of the ideas discussed during the 2009 meeting for proposing a ‘Workshop on Quality Criteria for ESD Schools’.

In 2010, Daniella Tillbury offered to publish the Quality Criteria booklet and the 5th of the 13 Case studies examined by the UNESCO publication: “Education for Sustainable Development: An Expert Review on Processes and Learning for ESD”, released at the end of February and available online at www.unesco.org/en/education-for-sustainable-development/monitoring-evaluation-process/ as from end of April.

In the Bergen meeting in 2010, many ENSI members and friends agreed that it was important to maintain high the interest around the ‘quality criteria’ topic, both extending the exemplification of the criteria to other ESD examples and collecting in a book new achievements and reflections on the field. Two of the proposals issued in 2008 still appear to be valid for 2011:

• To write a toolbox, or travel guide, on how to use the QC existing booklet, collecting examples of possible uses of the booklet in different conditions strongly related to ESD (in fact, present examples refer more to EE but, due to the many translations done, it was considered better to publish an addendum than to prepare a new edition);
• To write a research book, reflecting on the use of Quality Criteria for ESD in different countries and in different situations. Many people within and outside ENSI could contribute with their own experiences and reflection on this fields. A draft outline of the book “Theory and practice of ‘Quality Criteria’ for the enhancement of Education for Sustainability” was sent in 2010 to many of the possible authors.

In order to realize these aims, it is important to find other people interested to the project: in fact, because of personal and work problems neither Soren Breiting nor Finn Mogensen could take care of this publication, and Michela Mayer could spend only a little time on this. Georgia Liriakou, from Eagean University offered her help, and may be other ENSI friends or members could be involved.

Project leader

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  Michela Mayer

  Tel/Fax: +39 06 5110949