Proceedings: Northeast Asia Reporting and Capacity Building Workshop on Monitoring & Evaluation of Education for Sustainable Development

These are Proceedings from the Northeast Asia Reporting and Capacity Building Workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation of Education for Sustainable Development which was jointly organised by UNU-IAS and IGES and held on 20 February 2012 at the UNU-IAS office in Yokohama, Japan.

The United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) are undertaking a collaborative research project in close cooperation with UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok. This project focuses on the Monitoring and Evaluation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and aims to establish regionally-relevant Indicators of ESD to assess the implementation during the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) in countries across the Asia-Pacific region.

The current research phase of the project is based on a multi-country scoping process to identify the important areas for which indicators should be developed. This research will be conducted between December 2011 and April 2012 in two rounds starting first with selected countries in Northeast Asia and then following a refining process moving on to selected countries in Southeast Asia. During the scoping phase, research will be conducted in a total of nine countries based on an evaluation framework that was developed during a consultation with international ESD experts. The main purpose of this research phase is to enable the movement from a wide evaluation framework towards the identification of a core set of important targets and leverage points for ESD.

During the current scoping phase, research is being conducted in two complimentary formats. First, national ESD focal points are participating in a quantitative country survey regarding the national context of ESD implementation. Second, the Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCEs) are providing qualitative research through case studies of their flag-ship projects for comparative analysis. The findings from these two formats will be presented during the sub-regional workshop in order to identify opportunities to strengthen capacity for ESD monitoring and evaluation.

The workshop is the culmination of the research activities in Northeast Asia and provides an important reporting opportunity for the participants from China, Japan and Republic of Korea including both the members representing the national focal points for this study and members of the Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development to share their findings on ESD implementation in their respective countries. The workshop will be supported by ESD experts from international organisations to provide further capacity building on the monitoring and evaluation of ESD. The main objectives of the workshop are threefold:
• To report on the current implementation of ESD in each country and share valuable lessons learned from each of these processes;
• To identify common leverage points in each country’s ESD system for the establishment of regional ESD indicators that are relevant to each country’s individual context; and,
• To strengthen capacity for effective monitoring and evaluation of ESD and to ensure that appropriate information for improving ESD policy is identified.