<P><FONT color=#33711E><STRONG>Day 2 – Session 4A: <br>Indicators and Assessment Tools for ESD</STRONG></FONT></P>

Rainbow Room, 5th Floor

13:00 – 13:20

4.A.1 Education for Sustainable Development, the Challenge to Come: What Does ‘Good’ Look Like?
Andy Johnston, Forum for the Future, United Kingdom
A debate on education for sustainable development has begun and the challenge is to be clearer about what “good” looks like in terms of the outcome or general direction. Indicators can have three main functions: to measure progress, to communicate and to reward effort. This paper studies indicator sets used by higher education, such as GRI, EFQM, BITC and HEPSRT, and assesses their ability to drive organizational change and curriculum innovation. This paper argues that while uniform indicator sets are useful, only those generated within the organization are capable of producing real change. This paper reminds that indicators need to be robust and SMART, and recommends that indicators be internally generated, be easy to communicate and reward creativity, so as to give real confidence and point the way to sustainable development. The paper concludes that sustainable development in higher education is an organizational change challenge and that while indicators are an essential part of any change strategy, they are not a substitute for a strategy.

Download the presentation (pdf, 80kb)

13:20 – 13:40
4.A.2 An Introduction to the AtKisson Accelerator Suite of Sustainable Development Learning, Training, Planning and Assessment Tools
Robert D. Steele, Associate and Senior Trainer, AtKisson Group International
The challenge that we all face right now is “how to make sustainable development mean something in practice?” The “AtKisson Accelerator” is a suite of tools that aims to help address that challenge. It is a toolkit for supporting and facilitating sustainable development initiatives of all kinds, that has been developed over a period of 16 years through “real-time” use by organizations around the world. Like a physical toolbox, it contains separate tools that can be used for different sustainability related tasks.  The primary tools include: Compass, which is the overall name for a family of tools used for framing, defining, assessing and measuring progress towards sustainability; Pyramid, a versatile group-process tool that can be used for introducing sustainable development or for planning workshops for creating new initiatives, and as a multi-stakeholder process for building consensus around a specific course or action; Amoeba, a set of tools for accelerating innovation, planning for change and building competence in the art of change agentry. This suite of tools has been packaged together under the name Accelerator because we believe that using them will speed up progress towards genuine sustainability. 

Download the paper (word, 300kb) and presentation (pdf, 1.2mb)

13:40 – 14:00
4.A.3.  Education  for  Sustainable  Development  versus  Environmental  Education  in Australia: An Analysis of “Positions Vacant” Advertisements
Joy Hardy, University of New England, Australia
This  paper  describes  a  study  that  examined  the  discursive  construction  of  Education  for  Sustainable Development (ESD) and Environmental Education (EE) in Australia through “positions vacant” advertisements.
The study involved content analysis and critical discourse analysis of advertisements registered with online Australian recruitment agencies. The content analysis revealed significant differences between the terms and conditions of positions designated as ESD compared with EE. Further, critical discourse analysis was used to explicate the power relationships into which prospective employees were being positioned. The findings indicate that EE positions in the sample are often precarious, poorly paid and disempowering, whereas positions in ESD are more secure, more highly paid, empowering and, in many cases, offer career advancement. This paper will provide an overview of the content analysis findings and demonstrate the use of critical discourse in the explication of the power relationships inscribed in ESD and EE advertisements.

Download the paper (word, 140kb) and presentation (pdf, 220kb)