greenerschemer

The Sheffield Massacre

2017-02-18T11:43:00.001+00:00

http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/community-woodland-use/sheffield-the-battleground-for-those-who-care-about-street-trees-and-woodlands/#

The End of the Beginning?

2007-09-27T20:04:00.000+01:00

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!

2007-03-08T10:23:00.000+00:00

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

2007-01-25T15:24:00.000+00:00

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"

2006-10-24T16:09:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-16T14:00:00.000+01:00

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

2006-09-13T22:58:00.000+01:00

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:

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

Word is...

2006-08-21T04:03:00.000+01:00

A review took place in Japan on 10th to 11th August of various UNESCO "National Commissions" considering the draft we'd all commented on and some of you provided input to. A reviewed draft is supposed to be circulated in September then we'll have 4 to 6 weeks to comment before its finalised.

I'll try to summarise the draft here when it arrives.

So, although little is happening, please do keep an eye out (you can subsribe to the feed if you're into RSS readers, etc.)

Thanks for you patience.

2006-07-15T20:57:00.000+01:00

So the last task for members of the list was to examine an attempt to derive types of indicators based on a review of the literature and similar projects. The 8 proposed indicator types are:

Baseline (performance)
Content
Output
Process
Outcome
Impact
Learning
Communication

These are further defined along the following dimensions:

What does the indicator intend to assess?
Why would you use this indicator?
What does the indicator look like?
What is the benefit of the indicator?
What are the limitations of the indicator?

There was some discussion as to variations and ammendments but personally I felt it was a "noble attempt". I just had a few slight quibbles. One of these was larger than our remit and basically boiled down to a reductionist versus holist approach. Another was the suggestion that 'process' isn't so tricky to define if one employs systems analysis. Further suggestions of my own were very minor although others had more substantial ideas. One of these was that it would be a shame if the derived indicators became a basis for nations to compete. I agreed and argued that this could potentionally create conflict where obviously - with a global problem - one is wishing for cooperation amongst nations. My own solution was that the derived indicators should contain a proviso stating how they should and should not be used. Of course this is a little idealistic. Nevertheless we should assume some responsibility I suppose.

P.S.

2006-07-02T16:39:00.000+01:00

If you have any ideas what indicator types you think should be included please do post a comment. You could check out the links in the column on the right for ideas or maybe you have some more general experiences of evaluating any kind of programme? Maybe you'd like to check previous posts here too please? That way I can feed your ideas into the list. Thanks a lot!

Steady As She Goes

2006-06-30T15:17:00.000+01:00

Sorry there hasn't been much action here for a while. All went quiet on the list. Recently though a 'task' surfaced so expect a further post soon. At first glance it looks like we will be helping out with a taxanomic classification of indicator types. More soon... ;-)

Education & Poverty Alleviation

2006-06-15T12:03:00.000+01:00

Bravo to UNESCO and the FAO for their "Education for rural people" initiative. Evidence.

21 Thoughts on the 21st Century.

2006-06-10T15:32:00.000+01:00

Hi!

This summary is based on a post I made yesterday to the DESD list where I studied participants recent contributions (including the conveners' summary) and a few associated documents then added my own thoughts. I look forward to any comments you may have. Regards, Tim :-)

1. DESD should address all forms of education (“formal, non-formal, informal”) although this needs deconstructing

2. need SD of ESD (for future generations to ‘carry the torch’)

3. self-organisation fosters local knowledge, e.g. ‘indigenous’ cultures (e.g. S. Pacific ‘spiritual’ aspect of knowledge)

4. SD should demonstrate changes in behaviour therefore ESD also should

5. ESD needs to encourage changes in attitudes, values, belief systems, etc.

6. may be useful to highlight differences between “competitive” societies and “ESD societies” [not my idea]

7. both quantitative and qualitative indicators should be used

8. ideas concerning ESD ‘process’ should not be over-prescriptive so as not to stifle self-organisation

9. internationally comparative indicators are difficult due to variability of contexts, etc.

10. however, ‘universal’ indicators may emerge from an overview of context-specific ones (hypothesis)

11. ESD varies as much as SD between contexts (e.g. due to differences in cultures, available technologies, political situations, availability of teachers, school, books, etc.)

12. self-evaluation may encourage self-organisation as its in-keeping [self-evaluation being another participant’s idea]

13. there’s no need to re-invent the wheel, e.g. if sufficient quality assurance systems exist there’s no need for extra ESD ones (instead look at embedding SD in the curricula?) [reiterated by another participant]

14. its difficult to isolate the ESD ‘variables’ in the measurement of changes of values, e.g. they could be a consequence of economic incentives (competitiveness) or politics (vote-winners)

15. ESD is complex

16. measuring education is not synonymous with measuring ESD [not my point]

17. differences in culture make any comparisons difficult (e.g. differing ideas of knowledge or pedagogical approach – instructivist or constructivist?)

18. Draft International Implementation Scheme (IIS) Section 3, Sub-section 9, Table 8 contains 9 expected outcomes of DESD & “potential indicators” and “data for use in verification” although they seem high-level/top-down [it seems a “shortened” version was finally approved, maybe we can revisit the draft version in a future post]

19. UNU Regional Centres of Expertise may make good case studies

20. There are lots of issues to consider (e.g. Education for All, Gender Equality, use of ICTs, etc.) and lots of complex, interconnected systems (e.g. Government, ecological, economic, etc.)

21. Its appropriate that we have at least a decade to tackle all this!

SD of ESD

2006-06-04T14:18:00.000+01:00

Due to the convivial discussions I was having yesterday with friends I came to realise that some of the problems surrounding Sustainable Development will not be solved in my lifetime. It seems obvious really but sometimes the obvious things are the most difficult to realise! The solution, I propose (and which may have been proposed already, in fact I'd be very surprised if it has not) is to ensure that there is Sustainable Development of Education for Sustainable Development.

As I remember this is part of the rationale for UNU-IAS. Quite how this materialises I'm not sure yet but I suggest that any 'indicators' for ESD should include this perspective. The most obvious solution is that we perhaps ensure that we are not only educating 'citizens', be they pupils, employees or communities but we also educate the people with some degree of 'power', i.e. teachers, employers and community leaders and, further still, we educate governments, economic policy makers and societies (all of these examples are based on my GESSD-ECO model, above.) So, we have measurements of how effective the educational programmes for Sustainable Development are for the educators (and their superiors and the systems they are all a part of) as well as those being 'educated'.

Thus, the idea is that when the current generation who enjoy some degree of influence are no longer in such privileged positions and subsequent generations are steering the, hopefully sustainable, development of this planet then they too can maintain this current ESD perspective. As such it is something which is passed from one generation to the next and not simply reified as a flash in the pan because, ultimately, that approach will not work. We have created some unique situations on our planetary habitat which require a very long term perspective if we are to work towards minimising potential long term damage.

[sorry this doesn't indicate what's happening on the list, that will come, this represents my own thoughts...]

flurry

2006-05-31T23:40:00.000+01:00

There's been a sudden flurry of activity on the list. I'm not sure if its because we've reached critical mass or ppl have started to see connections and cross-fertilise. I haven't completely made sense of it yet but I'll post something when I do! Sorry, that sounds so vague! :-)

My recent contribution to DESD...

2006-05-27T20:37:00.000+01:00

Here is an excerpt of my posting to the list, please do comment! :-)

I took part in a course on Pedagogy for Online Learning (POL) [part of the UNU Global Virtual University] (in the ESD context) so was able to be a 'participant-observer'. We had participants from around the world...

The analyses were informed by a systems model of ESD across three sectors of education - Education, Commerce and Organisations - which was called GESSD-ECO. Each sub-system had four stakeholder levels hence I was interested in how five categories of factors impinged upon communications between these levels.

Broadly the conclusions were thus categorised into Pedagogical, Organisational, Economic, Technological and Socio-cultural (which also included political and personal) factors or POETS ...

The final Working Paper is available on the UNU-IAS website or amongst my other publications (pdfs, 956 kb). You can also find the data and research proposal at the latter site.

The conclusions can be found on pages 49 to 53 and general conclusions on page 58 and are repeated here for your convenience:

1. Virtual organisations, particularly trans-national ones, bring unique organisational issues, for example, International Quality Assurance.
2. Virtual organisations can learn from physical ones, for example with regard to institutional mechanisms of collaboration, such as employing clear communication channels.
3. It is important to not be idealistic but pragmatic in e-learning.
4. The Digital Divide is an issue for Developing Countries although for some it is being addressed.
5. More research is required, particularly practical mechanisms of running courses and appropriate organisational structures.
6. Open approaches may be beneficial in e-learning, that is, in terms of pedagogy, technology and content.
7. 'Glocalisation' helps reorient knowledge to a local context and helps recognise multi-culturalism.
8. Social-constructivism should be cautiously employed, it may be unwelcome or problematic in non 'Western' education.
9. Personal lives affect online students just as much as face-to-face students but more so in Developing Countries.
10. Participation in e-learning can lead to performance improvements (as measured by assessments).

What's Happening? (May 24th, 2006)

2006-05-24T23:02:00.000+01:00

In terms of what's been happening on the DESD List, which inspired this Blog in the first place, we have mainly been considering other DESD 'indicators' projects around the world. Most of them are in their infancy and some obviously are at an embryonic stage! Members also contributed their own efforts if not already mentioned. Certainly there is a great variety in approaches, which is heartening (referring to an ealier post).

For my part, aside from sharing some of the experiences and your comments mentioned on this Blog, I also talked about the feelings I share with one member that it is more important to measure process rather than output. To illustrate, one leftfield idea I had was to present students, workers or community members, etc. with scenarios (which could be computer-based or even a board game! :-) then observe their decision-making and problem-solving behaviour. Obviously we are looking for changes in attitudes, etc. that lead to changes in behaviour which are more in-keeping with the notions of sustainability. Hence, although grossly simplified, we can examine if the DESD has been effective. Ideally these indicators can then be fed back into curricula design rather than simply be input from the outset.

I also raised the issues of looking for typical 'quality' indicators of education such as appropriate administrative structures, good assessment results, selection of teaching staff etc. although these may not need to be examined if appropriate 'quality' procedures are already in place.

Finally, I raised the important issues of Internationalisation of the curriculum (although in our case perhaps Regionalisation is more appropriate). Thus learners should be aware of their neighbour's issues in (E)SD which entails perhaps being aware of their socio-political or geographic issues etc. as well as gaining an appreciation of their culture and possibly language (essential for International negotiations) for example.

What Exactly Are Indicators?

2006-05-24T22:21:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I attended a seminar by Douglas Bourn of the Development Education Association (DEA), a self-styled "umbrella" organisation working in the UK. Douglas was at the University of Leicester to discuss with people from this and other Universities about how we may integrate Development Education and the broader Sustainable Development (SD) agenda into UK Higher Education (HE). Douglas has a refreshing participant-centred delivery style, often asking us to break off into small groups to discuss some of the issues. His insights were mostly well elucidated and relevant although I felt obliged at one point to question his question asking us to consider how we would ideally integrate three common UK Government level SD initiatives into HE. In my frank opinion the days of idealism should now be far behind us and pragmatic, realistic approaches should only be entertained. However, in retrospect maybe this was simply a rhetorical trick on Douglas's part, I'm sure he realises the seriousness of today's situation.

I just emailed Douglas to point out my own attempt at a pragmatic approach, " Contextualisation of Virtual Learning in the Global Marketplace", to Education for Sustainable Development (EfSD) through online education based on my research at the UNU Global Virtual University. I'll write more about this sometime but in terms of the pragmatics the conclusions between pages 49 and 53 and the final recommendations on page 58 may be of use.

Anyway, aside from the talk Douglas also brought a selection of material. Of interest to this Blog is the DEA's work on indicators for Development Education, "Measuring Effectiveness in Development Education". Please click on "key concepts" for the descriptions of indicators. This website/"toolkit" is an outstanding piece of work: succinct, clear and sufficiently 'high level' to be of more generic use.

Of course, the work still needs to be done to map all these indicators and knowledge of designing indicators onto the matter at hand, notably the UN DESD in the Asia-Pacific.

top-down or bottom-up?

2006-05-15T19:31:00.000+01:00

It is a perennial question, whether to approach something from the top with decrees, laws and the like or allow something to self-organise from the bottom through shared interests and serendipitous collaborations. One can witness this in all manner of phenomena from nature to the most artificial of constructions. When it comes to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD or EfSD) my concern though is that as so much effort is being expounded from the top of the canopy, from International Organisations to nation states and colloquia, that the bottom could be starved of sunlight. That is, too heavy-handed a top-down approach, materialising in the form of laws or even obligations may result in the opposite of the desired effect at the grassroots.

I think people may become not only de-sensitised to matters concerning ESD but will ultimately revolt (obviously according to their nature) and decry all belief in SD and certainly ESD. And, of course, there is a multiplicity of reasons under-resourced, time-constrained or plain old cynical people could utilise to 'legitimise' their argument. I already have some anecdotal evidence of a potential backlash.

Of course, this would be catastrophic. To be too heavy-handed from the upper echelons of power will ultimately be counter-productive. I think this is worth bearing in mind as we all gather our own thoughts concerning Sustainable Development. Ultimately there will be a wide variety of approaches to approaching SD and ESD as this may prove to be the best solution to dealing with such a complex problem.

Let's not constrain nature but nurture it and allow it to propogate, to find its own way through the difficult years ahead. Supposed control may have been, after all, the cause of the problem in the first place.

From Sustainable Development to EfSD...

2006-05-10T15:56:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Niels Schulz, Postdoctoral Fellow also of UNU-IAS in Yokohama, Japan for some interesting, timely and relevant links. Most have been added to the links section you can see in the right column.

We are beginning to think about what Sustainable Development is which is an excellent place to start. As we all know though the intention is to develop indicators for Education for Sustainable Development. As such if anyone knows of any places to look for educational indicators maybe at some point we can start to think about marrying the two?

I have been involved in matters of international 'quality assurance' which I'll talk about at some point and have collected some literature on international aspects of education. More later.

Thanks. I appreciate the interest, sincerely.

Comments Are Go!

2006-05-08T21:08:00.000+01:00

Maybe I'll live to regret it but I just turned the comment moderation off. So, for the moment, anyone can instantly post comments on the blog without them being moderated. Moderation kind of went against my own personal ethos as well as the ethos that founded the blog in the first instance so it had to go really. However, at the first sign of trouble I would be obliged to reinstate it. For this I apologise in advance. Let's see...

Indicators of Sustainability

2006-05-08T13:29:00.000+01:00

A dear friend and colleague, Claudia Ten Have (JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at UNU-IAS, Yokohama), just whisked a link my way to a UNESCO/SCOPE Policy Brief on "Indicators of Sustainability: Reliable Tools for Decision making" [pdf, 1.7MB]. Its a good introductory document. It serves as a good example in terms of communication, at least. Of course our interest is Education for Sustainable Development but certainly some of the points raised are more generic. For example, p. 4 states:

"Since most of the legitimacy of indicators comes from their framing and conceptualization, stakeholders must be involved from the outset"

and from p.2:

"Making decisions without reliable indicators is like driving without road signs".

Claudias much-appreciated gesture also partially exonerates my decision to blog this foray...thanks Claudia.

any ideas?

2006-05-05T00:26:00.000+01:00

I'm afraid I haven't really had any Earth-shattering (pun intended) ideas yet. The only thoughts I did have whilst walking over the park the other day were kind of meta-level concerning this project. I was a little concerned what colleagues may think about my blogging then I got to thinking about parameters and boundaries - to knowledge and communities, I think, but it relates to anything really. It relates nicely to sustainability for sure too as we have to know where to place the markers for the boundaries of our investigations. Sustainable Development relates to so many inter-connected systems that one can easily start to deal with matters of complexity. That isn't insurmountable as there is a science of complexity itself. However, its kind of tricky. I'm not sure the Terms of Reference referenced our boundaries, probably (quite rightly) intentionally.

I had also thought about trying to define Sustainable Development too but I guess that is quite boring. Or maybe that's what I'm trying to do with the above non-idea?

If anybody has any real ideas about where I should start please do leave comments below. That's the whole point of this blog. I really do thank you for contemplating this.

Welcome: Scheming for Sustainable Futures

2006-05-01T23:21:00.000+01:00

I wanted to start with an earth-shattering quote. However, I don't have my books to hand and, searching my mind, cannot think of one individual who has influenced me sufficiently that their wise words spring to mind. I thought of James Lovelock and his gaia hypothesis, Gandhi and his preference for peaceful means of protest and lastly John Lennon, again for peace, but also as an attractor of the hippie ethic of love and peace, etc. These seem an unlikely bunch of folks to initiate these discussions but hopefully set out my stall at least. I couldn't even find anything appropriate in the one book I did have to hand, the Tao te Ching.

In any case, this isn't about me. I have been asked to participate in an 'Expert Team' by UNESCO Bangkok and the Commission on Education and Communication (CEC) of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), in conjunction with Macquarie University (MU). The project concerns advising on 'indicators' for the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) in the Asia-Pacific region. The idea is that the 'Expert Team' together with a 'Guidelines Review Team' inform the 'Guidelines Development Team'!

Initial topics which may be covered are:

ESD in practice
Monitoring and assessment practices in ESD
Values and limitations of ESD indicators
Lessons learnt from previous/current indicator initiatives
Characteristics of effective ESD indicators
Data gathering and reporting methods

However, topics may come and go as we get talking.

As I kind of belong to some kind of digital diaspora - friends and colleagues being around this globe - and since I have reservations concerning any (especially my own) 'expertise' I shall open up my own mind here. I dearly hope some people are able to sensibly contribute. This way we can have a much-needed wider discussion than the 44 'experts' alone may be able to manage. I sincerely thank you in advance.

Please note that I will be respecting the confidence of other participants in the official discussions. The postings will entirely represent my own views and not those of the other 'experts'. I look forward to your comments.