Conference Agenda

Monitoring and reporting mechanisms are highlighted in many regional and policy documents as critical for demonstrating the progress that has been achieved in education at both national and regional levels. Such reporting provides data and information regarding the gaps and support needed to promote necessary reforms for the improvement of education and training systems (EU 2021, p.4; 2023, par.17).

In the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) monitoring and reporting provide strategic insights for governments and policymakers to help accelerate progress (Unesco, 2016), target holistic ESD implementation (Holst et al., 2020) and identify successes and challenges for implementing ESD at national and regional levels (Hadjiachilleos & Zachariou, 2022).

National and regional policy frameworks, guidelines, and monitoring mechanisms form the ‘spine’ of ESD implementation across diverse educational contexts, assigning responsibility and accountability to relevant stakeholders across different levels of government (Glass and Newig, 2019). Several international efforts have been developed to monitor progress on ESD (Unesco 2015; UNECE 2009); however, these efforts also highlight various challenges and weaknesses in the monitoring and reporting process, primarily connected to the difficulty of ensuring effective stakeholder engagement.

Achieving comprehensive monitoring and insightful reporting on ESD is necessary "to break down silos and build cross-sector collaboration that contributes to a shared vision on system-level policy interventions and monitoring" (Unesco 2016, p.16). Various studies on ESD underscore the importance of stakeholder engagement and collaborative partnerships. Such collaboration can increase the identification of existing gaps, support the continual review of implementation and practice, ensure the ongoing relevance and effectiveness of ESD efforts and enhance understanding of ESD progress thereby inspiring and building knowledge among stakeholders at both national and regional levels (Didham and Ofey 2012; Tilbury 2007). Despite extensive discussion, examples of regional reporting mechanisms reveal little attention being given to facilitating collaborative, multi-stakeholder partnerships for co-investigation and knowledge exchange at the research-policy interface (Didham and Ofey Manu, 2020) in relation to monitoring and reporting.

The current study focuses on the example of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) ESD Strategy implementation, which is perhaps the most concrete process developed to support countries in developing national plans and policies for integrating ESD across their education systems in a collaborative manner (UNECE, 2005). The UNECE region includes 56 Member States and its ESD Strategy, which is integrated internationally and nationally, serves as a peer learning mechanism. It is the only such strategy that is accompanied by a comprehensive assessment framework based on multi-stakeholder collaboration for reporting.

Since the establishment of the Strategy in 2005, it has completed three reporting cycles. These have identified the significant successes and challenges involved in the Strategy’s implementation at the national level and have provided an overview of ESD in the region, capturing ESD holistically. It offers the international community concrete examples of ESD policy, practice and research providing insights on how reporting can fill gaps in policies and vice versa.

As a fourth cycle of reporting against the UNECE ESD Strategy concludes, this study explores the following questions:

- Which stakeholders need to be engaged in the ESD reporting process, and how are they being identified?

- What challenges have emerged in expanding stakeholder engagement in reporting, and how might these be overcome?

- What are the roles that different stakeholders play in reporting and might these expand?

- Who determines what gets reported and how is this agreed?

The paper presents a qualitative study on education in Germany in the field of soil health, which includes a focus group discussion and interviews. Soil health can be understood as “the continued capacity of soils to support ecosystem services” (European Commission, undated). Past analyses by Belek et al. (2019) have shown that numerous and diverse events are taking place on the ground in Germany for the communication of soil-related issues. Yet, there is still insufficient awareness of the topic in public perception and in media reporting. Accordingly, the complex topic of soil remains to date not well presented, especially for people who are not soil experts. New approaches for soil science education and awarness raising are necessary (Brevik, 2022).

This study complements parallel secondary research and participatory activities that involve experts in a newly established network of a community of practice at country level as well as on an European level. It aims to identify the experiences, training needs and teaching requirements of participants on soil health education by answering the twofold general research question, what the state of soil health awareness education is and what the wishes for future soil health awareness education are. Findings in this qualitative study will be triangulated with findings provided by a desk research on soil health education, focusing on teaching and learning offers, policy documents, scientific literature as well as grey literature and various kinds of media formats.

At a later stage, the results of studies in 14 other countries in Europe based on the same research design will be combined and further analyzed in order to further develop educational concepts and materials for the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, including VET and also addressing the general public, so that the importance of soils can be better understood on a broad scale and their protection can be increased more effectively.

Soil is a very basic, vital component of the natural environment. Countless, predominantly microscopic creatures find their habitat in the soil. They influence the composition of the soil and its fertility and keep the global carbon cycle going. Soils store the greenhouse gas CO2 to a greater extent than the world's forests. Through their storage function, they regulate the availability of water and purify it at the same time. Without intact soils, humans lack the basis for their nutrition and health. However, the soil is under enormous threat, and with it the ecosystem services it provides (Baer and Birgé, 2018). The high proportion of sealed surfaces, which has increased year on year, threatens biodiversity. 60% of European soils are considered to be damaged and the harmful effects associated with industrial agriculture continue to exacerbate the situation. Together with global warming, this is the reason why desertification is also taking place in Europe. (Luig, 2024). To draw attention to the need to protect and restore soils and promote sustainable management practices in urban and rural areas, the European Union (2023) has launched the initiative 'A Soil Deal for Europe' (Mission Soil). Its aim is to raise awareness and to help ensure the long-term health and productivity of soils of all types. The mission also promotes the exchange of knowledge with interest groups and the general public. Specifically, the Soil Mission focuses on sustainable practices in the areas of land use planning, soil conservation and agricultural techniques that rely less on the use of chemical inputs.

Introduction

Outdoor education and outdoor play and learning has a long-standing heritage. Based on a desire to engage learners experientially through structured and unstructured activities, and via reflection on “learning by doing” (Dewey, 1915, p255). Distinctively, the affordances of the outdoor environment are seen to enhance opportunities for learning in ways that are interdisciplinary, authentically felt, ‘hands-on’, ‘place-based’ and connected to local contexts (Beames and Brown, 2016; Lloyd, Truong and Gray, 2018). Of late, concerns around young people’s wellbeing, and the need for an educational response to issues around sustainability, climate change and biodiversity loss, have led to renewed emphasis on provision for outdoor learning. However, internationally, little is known about the durations and locations of this provision, how prepared teachers are to facilitate these, and how countries compare in this regard.

Few countries worldwide have much in the way of empirical evidence of the extent of provision of education in outdoor settings at school and pre-school levels. Exceptions include Canada (see Asfeldt et al. 2020), Hungary (Fuz 2018), England (Prince, 2019). In New Zealand, Hill et al (2020) (basing some of their protocols on the survey reported upon herein) revealed ‘education outside the classroom’ was mostly teacher led and focused on curricular enhancement. In Denmark, for example, Barfod et al. (2021) looked back at multiple surveys in Denmark wherein school leaders reported on outdoor schooling across three time points (2007, 2014, 2019) helping them discern the regularity of grassroots udeskole provision.. In Scotland, Beames and Polack (2019) reviewed inspection reports (2011 – 2018) to show that outdoor learning in ‘grounds, local green space or local community during school hours’ appeared in ¾ of primary schools’ inspections providing another way to capture evidence of the extent of provision. Internationally, each survey team have sought to capture evidence on curricular-linked outdoor learning using approaches that mostly differ. These differences make international comparison difficult.

This paper will describe research which empirically measured outdoor provision in Scotland and in Rimini, Italy using the same methodological approach. This enables international comparisons to be made and sharing of practice across the two countries.

Findings

The evidence presented here indicates there is value and need for an approach to surveying outdoor educational provision in a national and international context. The Scottish survey data provide a valuable, evidence-based measure of provision that counters popular opinion and others’ assessment of prevalence of outdoor learning provision in Scotland. Firstly, post-Covid, over half of the teachers in our survey held the perception that provision outdoors had increased compared to pre-pandemic levels. This of course might have been true, adding weight to the possibility of a sustained decline between 2014 and 2022. Secondly, the survey findings also counter the perspective offered by the HMIE report (HMIE, 2022) for the same year which suggested outdoor provision was an increasing feature, and that the pandemic had ‘accelerated the breadth and depth of provision’ (though for their exemplification cases this may have been true). Our survey showed the early years sector did increase provision but our this did not hold true on average for most of our randomly sampled schools. The Italian survey data found that the impact of the pandemic had an even greater perceived impact on outdoor provision, with ¾ of practitioners across Kindergarten and Primary school settings identifying an increase. The ability to compare educators’ perceptions with the reality of provision, across settings and indeed across countries going forward, is an important step in understanding the motivators towards increased outdoor provision.