EffSET: a Self-Evaluation Tool to Assess the Effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) plays a prominent part in the process of building the ethical, responsible, and sustainable consciousness of future generations and in addressing the sustainability challenge that society is facing. Nevertheless, very few methodologies have been developed to assess the effectiveness of sustainable and responsible teaching, so far. EffSET is a qualitative and quantitative instrument which was developed to enable Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and instructors to classify and analyse their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability related courses and teaching concepts according to different criteria. The tool is also intended for benchmarking courses and HEIs in time (i.e. against previous years’ evaluation) and space (i.e. against comparable courses/HEIs) and to become an instrument to foster debate on ESD within and outside the institution. The idea behind EffSET is that a holistic perspective that involves, in an inclusive approach, values, strategy, operations, activities, stakeholders, structures, etc. of the HEIs and considers inputs and knowledge from different field of studies must sustain CSR/sustainability curricula/course if an effective impact on students’ long-term ethical, sustainable, and responsible behaviour is the envisaged learning outcome. This paper introduces EffSET and discusses its methodology. Preliminary results from very first applications are, also, showed.

Fostering Skills for Sustainability – Lessons Learnt from Curriculum Design and Learning Outcomes

“…The findings figured out that the higher the degree of maturity in curriculum design at the institutional level, the better the learning outcomes for sustainability-related competencies. Although there is a strong emphasis on the need to improve the effectiveness and quality of teaching to foster sustainability commitment, there is still a shortage of comprehensive methodologies to assess the improvements in the performance of higher education institutions (Venezia & Pizzutilo, 2022).…”