Additional guidance for designing assessments in ESD

Assessment in ESD should always support transformative and change oriented learning approaches and significant learning as discussed above. As seen in Learning Action 2, ESD involves supporting learners to become more engaged with environmental stewardship, to develop the capacity for future thinking, to engage with complex issues, and to develop ethics and values for people and planetary well-being. Learning Action 3 emphasised engaging in sustainable development actions and active learning processes. Assessing these processes requires the capacity to design assessments that are congruent with the learning objectives of ESD, as highlighted above.

As also mentioned above, often ESD educators are not only concerned with assessment of learning, but also with assessment for learning, which means that they prefer their assessment approaches to also foster and strengthen the learning process. Hence we can also talk of learning-centred assessment. Such assessment is often formative (i.e. it takes place during the learning process), but can also be summative (i.e. take place at the end of the learning process).

Study the additional guidance for designing assessments in ESD in the Learning Action 4 text – it offers much more comprehensive guidance than we provide here. Try to continuously keep in mind your own context and how you can apply these ESD assessment approaches to your curriculum and learning content. Once you have gone through the additional text in Learning Action 4 open the Case Story or continue to listen to our story below.