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.

Annual report on the development of the project in 2007

This year the main efforts have been concentrated in the dissemination and further translation of the QC booklet, and in the contribution to different international ENSI (and not ENSI) projects where the definition and discussion of ESD concepts was an important part.

As far as the dissemination is concerned, ENSI has provided the technical and financial support for the publication of versions in other languages (the existing ones were English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Finish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Danish, French). As result of this effort the Portuguese and Romanian version of the booklet are now available on the website, and a Russian version is ready to come.

Furthermore, a Catalonian book has been published - F. Mogensen, M. Mayer, S. Breiting, A. Varga, Educaciò per el desenvolupament sostenible, Editorial GRAO’, Barcellona, 2007 - where both the QC booklet and the general part of the research that was the basis of the booklet have been presented. A large presentation to the ‘Catalonian green schools’ and to the general public is foreseen for the first week of April 2008.

It is also important to notice that the booklet was recognised as an important input by the German Transfer 21 Programme publication: Developing quality in ESD schools.
About the conceptualization of ESD, the work this year missed a common moment of discussion and was carried on individually or in small groups. Examples of these conceptualization carried on within the ENSI framework are:

• the Council of Europe book, where an ENSI conception of what ESD is about has been presented through the collection of Good Practices;
• the APCEIU introductory seminar on ESD in Seoul, where a group of ENSI partners and affiliated members (Michela Mayer, Mariona Espinet, Sun Kyung Lee) prepared a 2 days workshop directed to teachers and educational authorities in the Asia Pacific Region, on the main issues to deal with in ESD.

Planned development and activities in 2008

In 2008 the activities will be aimed to write a common short document on the conceptualisation of ESD and to continue the process of dissemination and monitoring of the QC booklet.

The final objective will be the contribution of the group to a large ENSI conference to be planned for 2009, where one part of the conference should be devoted to the comparison of the different ESD visions embedded into different Quality Systems for ESD schools. The final product of the conference should be a new publication, reflecting on the process.

Project leader

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  Michela Mayer

  INVALSI, Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema dell’Istruzione
  Villa Falconieri
  00044 Frascati (RM)
  Italy

  Tel: +39 06 94185250
  Fax: +39 06 94185216