Assessment, Measurement & Metrics

The Sustainable Development Goals are designed to guide action by governments, businesses, civil society, and everyday citizens to take action to build a more sustainable and equitable world for all people and our environment. The SDGs also offer specific indicators that countries and stakeholders can use to measure and track our shared progress toward achieving these global goals. This section aims to provide tools and guidance for translating the broad indicators for SDG 4.7 and other related SDGs to practical measures and tools that can be implemented in school districts, schools, classrooms, and communities to measure and documenting student learning and community action as progress toward achieving SDG 4.7, Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship. 

6.1 UN Indicators to Measure SDG Target 4.7

We know by looking at SDG 4.7, we know that sustainable development encompasses topics of: sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of culture of peace and nonviolence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.

So how can we go about measuring these dimensions? One great guide is UNESCO’s Technical Cooperation Group on the Indicators for SDG 4. It has proposed the below set of indicators for SDG 4.7, including guidance on whether they should be used for monitoring.

These indicators can also be viewed on the UNESCO website at: http://tcg.uis.unesco.org/target-4-7-global-citizenship/

The experts and researchers who have contributed to developing these indicators have sought areas where measurement of progress on SDG 4.7 can also contribute to measurement of related indicators in order to streamline monitoring efforts. The Technical Cooperation Group has therefore determined that Indicator 4.7.1 above will be used to also measure the related indicators below:

• 13.3.1 Education on Climate Change - number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning into primary, secondary and tertiary curricula.

• 12.8.1 - Understanding of Sustainable Lifestyles - extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development (including climate change education) are mainstreamed.

Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education

A partnership between the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report and the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project is generating new insights on country approaches to climate change communication and education (CCE). The profiles offer a comparative perspective of country progress on Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Targets 4.7 and 13.3. The profiles aim to promote peer learning and policy dialogue between countries on CCE. Country Case Studies can be found here. 

A report on the role of indicators in advancing global climate communication and education, by Aaron Benevot, Marcia McKenzie, Kate Greer, and the MECCE team can be found here.

6.2 Measuring Sub-National and Local Progress

While these country reviews help provide a high-level snapshot of progress within and across participating countries, there remains a large disconnect between countries’ commitments to SDG 4.7, and the richness of what is actually happening at sub-national and local levels with regard to curriculum, teacher training, classroom practice, community action, and student assessment (Leicht in CSD, 2021). For example, in the US, while the state of New Jersey has recently adopted K-12 Climate Change standards across core subjects, this statewide accomplishment does not get reported at the national level.

In turn, state level reporting to national levels often fails to fully account for progress being made at school district and/or municipal levels, who in turn may fail to fully account for action happening at the community and grassroots levels. For example, in many school districts and municipalities, grassroots actions by students organizations, parent-teacher associations, small businesses, and other community groups have translated to policy changes such as single-use plastic bans in municipalities and changes in procurement of school lunch trays from plastic trays to compostable school trays. Creating reporting mechanisms from the ground up to ensure that these actions are captured in national-level reporting is key. 

An approach to measuring progress at the sub-national and local level could include collaborative development of checklists to audit progress in key areas outlined in SDG 4.7 Indicator 4.7.1 - policy, curriculum, teacher training, and student assessment. Audit criteria could be co-developed and data collection carried out by key education and community stakeholders. Sample audit checklist items are provided below:

Education Policy Questions

1. Does your ESD curriculum align to national standards (if applicable)?

2. Does your curriculum effectively implement state standards relating to ESD?

3. Does the school and district administration support ESD curriculum implementation?

4. Does municipal government support the school district’s ESD curriculum design and implementation with programming? 

5. Are there monitoring and support mechanisms in place at the state level to ensure equity in ESD curriculum implementation across districts? 

6. Are there monitoring and support mechanisms in place at the district level to ensure equity in ESD curriculum implementation across schools? 

Curriculum Questions

1. Does the science curriculum include the lens of ESD/climate change?

2. Do ESD/climate change concepts span across all subjects, beyond science?

3. Does the curriculum include local environmental/ sustainability challenges across subjects?

4. Is there flexibility in the curriculum design for teachers to adapt to their local context and student needs/interests?

5. Were school teachers and/or community educators consulted to co-create the curriculum, particularly integration of ESD concepts?

6. Does the ESD curriculum include social issues such as gender, public health, economic challenges, good governance, and others?

7. Does the ESD curriculum include climate & environmental justice issues that address racial and economic marginalization?

8. Are ESD lessons taught at least twice per month in every subject (or at least your subject)?

9. Is the curriculum connected to the lived realities of students?

10. Does the curriculum encourage engagement with local sustainability experts and advocates?

11. Does the curriculum encourage engagement with parents and other community members?

12. Does the curriculum encourage project-based teaching?

13. Does the curriculum encourage students to do internships that could offer additional learning and/or career opportunities in sustainable development?

Teacher Training Questions

1. Are teachers trained in interactive pedagogies?

2. Are teachers aware of relevant state curriculum standards that address ESD issues?

3. Are teachers trained to understand how issues of injustice, including environmental and climate injustice, racial injustice, and/or economic injustice intersect to impact their students in different ways?

4. Are teachers trained and/or encouraged to share resources on sustainable lifestyle practices with students and families for practice at home?

5. Are teachers encouraged to document/collect stories of student engagement in climate action or other forms of advocacy in school and/or in their community?

6.3 Measuring SDG 4.7 learner competencies 

Capturing the nuances of how high-level inclusion of key SDG-related content in curriculum translates to changes in learner attitudes and behaviors requires more creative monitoring approaches at sub-national and local levels that consider how education systems are contributing to learner empowerment, agency, hope, and capacity to pursue sustainable development solutions (Kwauk & Niepold in CSD, 2021). Current indicators also focus heavily on content knowledge of the environmental and geological sciences (4.7.5) without also considering the social science aspects of sustainable development challenges, such as the role of inequality. By focusing only on the technical aspects of sustainable development challenges, learning will only lead to technical fixes without addressing the social aspects of these issues. How can monitoring efforts look not only at the easy-to-measure cognitive learning outcomes, but also looking at social-emotional, socio-ecological and behavioral outcomes as well (Kwauk in CSD, 2021).

Approaches to better track and document implementation of SDG 4.7 on the ground can go beyond traditional monitoring mechanisms to include more qualitative methods, such as narrative and storytelling/journalistic approaches that better capture not only the cognitive learning outcomes, but multidimensions, such as social-emotional and behavioural outcomes. This sort of monitoring data can help provide insights into best practices that can help inspire further integration of SDG 4.7 in education systems, classrooms and communities.

Similarly to the sample audit checklist items offered in the previous section, checklist items that pertain to student learning outcomes might include the below examples:

Student Assessment Questions

1. Are students assessed on ESD content knowledge in science? (Aligned to SDG Indicator 4.7.4)

2. Are students assessed on ESD content knowledge in other subjects? (Aligned to SDG Indicator 4.7.4)

3. Are students aware of local sustainability issues?

4. Do students take part in local climate or environmental actions, or are they part of any climate/environmental action coalitions?

5. Do students feel connected with local sustainability issues and have a sense of responsibility towards them?

6. Do students understand the justice components of environmental and climate issues, locally and internationally?

7. Are students encouraged to take part in Earth Day and other Sustainability-related events and celebrations?

8. Are there opportunities for senior students to mentor younger students, particularly relating to action toward sustainable development/climate action?

9. Are students and their families implementing eco-friendly practices such as composting, plastic use minimization, energy conservation, sustainable food procurement, and/or sustainable fashion?

10. Have students read and understood major international treaties such as the Paris Climate Agreement and others? 

11. Do students know about the Sustainable Development Goals? 

6.4 What gets missed, why & thoughts for way forward 

Kwauk in CSD, 2021 notes that gender and inequalities as integral as they are to global citizenship education are difficult to quantify and thus get missed out on the indicator reporting. These underlying drivers of climate change, the social structures of inequalities are missed out by the indicators and thus they keep perpetuating without getting measured and noticed. Understanding the biophysical components of climate change still can be measured at the classroom level, however to bring any kind of transformative change these underlying processes need to be highlighted and reported. It will help to clarify that climate change is both a technical and a social problem. The 21st Century skills need to measure these larger societal constructs that must change to bring a large impact on climate change.  Kwauk in CSD, 2021 narrates that local civic participation must find a way to be measured and reported to become the levers of global change. Visually depicting local action will drive visibility to the local issue and thus will promote more ripple-effect on the action. These proxy measures can be a great substitute, where inclusive participation of youth can be measured by whether learning ecosystems and communities are creating spaces for civic participation and youth engagement, even if youth are not yet old enough to vote. Creating local goals by various community-based organizations and sticking to measuring those benchmarks will be a great way to meet the localized SDGs. These are processes by which systems can be incentivized to start changing, rather than coming up with a “perfect measure”, which is a major challenge especially when time is running out. Regurgitating scientific concepts to provide only technical solutions will not solve the larger societal challenges that we have. Niepold in CSD 2021, adds there is a fundamental change in thinking that is required for a new vision for measurement, such as viewing empowerment as a dimension that could be measured to bring transformative change at the school and community level. The shift in thinking requires a designing a new education modality that yields empowerment, agency, hope and capacity. Lotz-Sisitka in CSD 2021 elaborates that current assessment and measurement processes need to be re-imagined and re-crafted because even when transformative thinking and approaches are considered, when it comes to assessment, they take everyone back many years. 

6.5 More ideas and tools for local monitoring

Addressing the disconnect in state and district level reporting: In some cases, environment-friendly practices and sustainability education opportunities and environmental awareness campaigns take place locally, but are not reported, hence they are not captured at broader state or national levels. For example, in many districts in India, many tree planting initiatives are reported to the national level, but they are not reported as a part of educating children on the environment or ESD. This is also the case for municipality level practices of recycling and reuse systems, that are not reported as pertaining to sustainability or SDG-linked practices.The data linkage across sectors that often link to education opportunities and SDG indicators may be missed out, and this presents an opportunity in which existing practices can be better captured to interact between local monitoring versus national monitoring indicators.

Digital Map ideas for township level initiatives: Actions taken by community members in Millburn, New Jersey, USA, related to educational awareness workshops, drives, local activism for plastic pollution control, environmental actions and challenges, waste reduction, have not been reported as a part of SDG 4.7. In such cases, a digital map that highlights local actions can be an aggregated and powerful tool for tracing SDG 4.7 actions, such as the one provided in Sustainable Jersey maps. These local level actions can inform national strategies, best practices and visually depicting ESD in one easy view.

The engagement of various members in a local community become vital in pushing forward the education initiatives and accompanying monitoring mechanisms. Neighborhoods that are more prone to climate and environmental risks can be highlighted for targeted local education to better understand the local landscape. From there, schools (including green committees), parent-teacher associations (PTAs), student groups, community and citizen-led groups, local businesses, can also be mapped, as well as to become involved in sustaining environmental and educational actions and tracking progress.

Learn more about SDG 4.7 indicators here.