Impact Assessment for Action Competence

IMP>ACT aims to better understand and provide recommendations on how to measure what learners actually learn in sustainability and climate change education (SCCE).

Central to achieving this goal is the development and validation of the IMP>ACT assessment framework for users in policy and practice.SCCE is still relatively new in the EU context. There is still a lack of understanding of what effective SCCE looks like and how its impact can be measured. As a result, an evidence base to inform decisions for further development of programs and policies is still lacking.

Existing evidence is scattered across scientific fields and societal actors, often resulting in underutilised feedback loops between monitoring, evaluation and implementation.

These gaps hinder effective policy making and achievement of SCCE learning outcomes.At the core of the IMP>ACT assessment framework are the concepts of action competence (key observable learning outcome of SCCE) and action-orientation (key qualities of teaching, driving learning in SCCE).

IMP>ACT will design and validate the framework in a user-centred, iterative approach through small-scale interventions, followed by six large-scale case studies, selected to cover the lifelong learning scope of SCCE. IMP>ACT brings together an interdisciplinary consortium with partners from SCCE research, policy and practice.

In each country a national stakeholder group (35 committed organisations) actively co-develops and validates the IMP>ACTassessment framework, contributing to its validity and viability beyond the project’s lifetime.The IMP>ACT assessment framework will allow designers and implementers of SCCE policies, curricula and practices to collect information on the impact they achieve, and as such drive improved feedback loops between research, policy and practice.

This ensures that SCCE materials, tools, interventions, and curricula stay relevant, and leads to evidence-based quality improvement of SCCE policies and practices.