GPSS Doctoral Student Publishes Study on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Policies in Philippine Higher Education

GPSS doctoral student Maya Agana, supervised by Prof. Yuto Kitamura and co-supervised by Project Assistant Prof. Laÿna Droz, has published an open-access article in Asia Pacific Education Review titled “ESD in higher education in the Philippines: policies shaped through international discourse and national realities.”

The study explores the narrative evolution of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) higher education policy in the Philippines up to its present conceptions. The main methods in this study are policy analysis through the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), and semi-structured interviews with participants from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Philippine National Commission for UNESCO (PH NATCOM), and a higher education institution (HEI). While applications of the MSF are usually used to explain policy change through moments of convergence, this study looks at non-convergence and the absence of a policy window in mainstreaming ESD in Philippine higher education governance.  

The policy analysis traces the evolution of the problem, policy, and politics streams across three periods: early (1977–1996), recent (2001–2010), and present (2011–2022). The findings suggest a structural limitation of the MSF in executive-centered governance systems, where political authority influences both agenda-setting processes and the institutional capacity necessary for stream coupling. The study also provides empirical evidence of institutional decoupling in ESD governance, demonstrating how international sustainability norms are formally embraced but reinterpreted to align with domestic development priorities. Finally, it highlights the importance of adopting longitudinal and processual approaches, recognizing that ESD policy develops cumulatively and is influenced by factors outside of discrete policy windows. These findings underscore the need to contextualize and adapt the MSF to Global South governance settings.

The full open-access article is available here:  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12564-026-10141-x