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 study is inductive and follows a mixed-method approach based on three research instruments: 1. Quantitative and qualitative data collected through the analysis of the 34 national reports submitted in the fourth reporting cycle of the UNECE ESD Strategy, 2015-2019 (see below) 2. The organization of two online webinars: one with the 56 national focal points and experts responsible for submitting their progress report, and the second conducted with 47 stakeholders from the Member States in the UNECE Region, and 3. Personal interviews conducted with national focal points whose countries' national reports were identified as good examples of stakeholder collaboration and engagement The study coincides with the conclusion of the fourth evaluation report (Item 1) on the progress of the UNECE ESD Strategy. The results of the fourth cycle of progress reporting led to this study because it included a focus on multi-stakeholder collaboration and engagement in the completion of the national ESD reports, which in turn highlighted some of the obstacles and challenges that countries faced. The following workshops with UNECE National Focal Points for ESD (Item 2) helped to surface the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges in the processes of multi-stakeholder engagement in ESD reporting. The follow up interviews (item 3) supplement the other data collection methods and provide a valuable triangulation for the findings from analysis of the national reports and conclusions of the international webinars.

We are still in the process of data analysis with interviews planned for triangulation purpose (to be concluded some months ahead of ECER 2024). According to the findings to date, however, it is clear that the way in which stakeholders are involved in the process of reporting varies by country and is related to national geographical, social, and cultural contexts as well as national emphases on ESD policy issues. At the same time, several National Implementation Reports identify weaknesses and obstacles reflecting challenges in stakeholder collaboration for the purposes of reporting, most commonly related to national education policies, networking issues, practical issues such as time constraints, lack of coordination and/or communication, limited expertise on models and processes for engaging stakeholders in the reporting process, and, most importantly, compartmentalization of ESD. Nonetheless, the findings to date have revealed effective practice in stakeholder engagement, as well as useful collaboration models for ESD reporting, which facilitate participative decision-making and ensure significant contributions from stakeholders in the report. For example, some countries have established stakeholder engagement models based on the Whole Institution Approach and have created platforms for communication, negotiation and discussion on ESD implementation, which are organized in ways to fully capture the spectrum of ESD-related actions and to ensure transdisciplinarity in ESD implementation. Other countries have developed models to assist stakeholders and to increase their capacity to engage in the reporting process, enabling them to determine how and for which indicators they might successfully contribute to the reporting. Guidelines for stakeholder participation, communication, dialogue, consultation, and collaboration are discussed. Additionally, recommendations are made to assist countries in motivating and accelerating stakeholder engagement. Findings will be discussed in the context of the broader literature regarding models of stakeholder engagement in ESD reporting.

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