Evaluation and education for sustainable development (ESD)

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday I)

Group Submission Type: Refereed Round-Table Session

Proposal

Although social science is directed to understanding and explanation rather than deciding how to act (practical reason), we have to be evaluative if we are to describe, understand and explain social life adequately (Andrew Sayer, 2011, p.216)
Most environment and sustainability education processes include elements of action and reflection that, in ESD, are commonly associated with participant-initiated change projects in their daily lives, institutional settings or communities. The conclusion of an intervention project commonly involves evaluation work to assess effectiveness and impact. This narrow approach to evaluation reflects instrumental systems of reason which developed within modernity in a period where education was seen as an instrument of change. The instrumental assumptions and functionalist dispositions of modern education are examined towards repositioning evaluation as emergent reflexive processes where people are engaged in the production of sustainable well-being within the finite limits of socio-economic and ecological systems and processes. Here evaluation work is emerging as a reflexive human agency that has expanded the hitherto narrow scope and reductionist systems of reason in evaluation and evaluation research to become a reflexive process of change.

The proposed round table discussion session will be developed around three papers that will be available before the event:
• A conceptual paper on evaluation as, in and of ESD
• A hybrid tool kit for the evaluation of ESD in RCEs and
• A case study of an evaluation process in Makana RCE

Sub Unit

• SIG: Environmental and Sustainability Education

Individual Presentations

• ESD as an evaluative game-changer - JOON DEEPIKA, ESD Expert Net and UNESCO MGIEP; Jennifer Krah, ESD Expert Net and WWF; Eureta Rosenberg, Rhodes University Environmental Learning Research Centre, South Africa

• The Development of a Toolkit for Collaborative Evaluation in RCEs - Zinaida Fadeeva, UNU RCE and TERI Universtiy

• Case study of work with the hybrid evaluation framework in Makana RCE - Tichaona Pesanayi, Rhodes University