Indicators for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Indicators for ESD Conference 2012

On June 3rd/4th, the international expert conference "Indicators for Education for Sustainable Development" took place in Berne. This conference marked the conclusion of the project "Development of Indicators to Evaluate Offerings and Performance in the Area of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)", which ran 2008-2011 with partners from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The goal of this project was to present indicators that reveal the extent to which sustainability as an idea has been integrated into the education system on all levels of formal education, not only nationally but also in an international comparison.

The expert conference gathered around 40 invited experts to discuss the results of the project. The main topics were: validation of the developed indicators by ESD experts, discussion of applicability in more countries and feasibility of the indicators. The following keynote presentations laid the foundation for these discussions:

• Exploring the potential benefits and risks of ESD indicators (William Scott, University of Bath)
• The differing perspectives of ESD and the proposed ESD indicators (Charles Hopkins, York University Toronto)
• National monitoring of the education system through indicators (Stefanie Hof, Swiss Coordination Centre for Research in Education (SCCRE), Aarau)
• Possible role of ESD indicators in the European higher education area (Laima Galkute, Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences)