School Leaders’ Experiences of Implementing Education for Sustainable Development—Anchoring the Transformative Perspective (original) (raw)
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Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 2021
While research on education for sustainable development is expanding, empirical evidence on its impact and outcomes remains very limited. Moreover, the facilitating role of the school organization, while extensively documented in literature on school management and school effectiveness, is lacking. In this study we present and qualitatively validate a framework for an ESD-effective school, previously developed via a critical review of ESD and school management literature. This framework consists of eight characteristics: sustainable leadership; school resources; pluralistic communication; supportive relations; collective efficacy; adaptability; democratic decision-making; and shared vision. Via semi-structured interviews, the framework for an ESD-effective school was theoretically validated via a sample of nineteen teachers and school leaders with expertise on education for sustainable development. The findings from the interviews show that the participants largely confirm the framework and the individual characteristics are recognized by the sample. There were relevant differences between the respondents in terms of positioning the different characteristics within the framework. Specifically, views on pluralistic communication differed from the initial conceptual framework.
School Leadership for Sustainable Development: A Scoping Review
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Sustainable development within educational institutions encompasses an array of objectives as outlined in Agenda 21 (United Nations [UN], 1992). We recognize in this paper that there are cognate terminologies in the field of sustainable development: Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), Education for Sustainability (EfS), Development Education (DE), and Sustainability Education (SE). As stated in the Education for Sustainable Development toolkit (McKeown, 2002), ESD is the terminology most often employed within UN documents; hence, we also employ ESD because it is the term utilized by UNESCO and at the international level. Thus, we avoid the many debates about these terminologies in this paper. The fundamental interest of this review is to assess the current status of school leadership for sustainable development in the K-12 context. With the help of a scoping review, three literature databases were combed to achieve this purpose. The findings reveal school leaders’ perceptio...
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Education is expected to support the development of a more sustainable way of thinking, working, and living. Although there is a broad range of literature on Education for Sustainable development (ESD), the role of principals in the implementation of sustainability and ESD in schools has rarely been taken into consideration. However, based on the results of school effectiveness research, one can assume that school principals exert a significant influence on ESD. Sustainability is a leadership issue. When a school aims at integrating sustainability and ESD, the principal plays a pivotal role. She or he has to support the endeavor wholeheartedly and credibly, organize a participative process of school development, push ahead sustainability and ESD in the daily life of the school, support teaching staff in the application of ESD, involve students and offer them opportunities to launch their own initiatives. This article seeks to support principals in leading their schools towards susta...
Leading sustainable schools: exploring the role of primary school principals
Environmental Education Research, 2012
The purpose of the paper is to identify the kinds of leadership that are likely to support implementing and sustaining education for sustainable development (ESD) effectively in a primary school. The paper identifies links between ESD and principal leadership literature and constructs a conceptual model of the leadership practices needed for reorienting a school to ESD/education for sustainability. Aspects of the model are explored through Cypriot principals' views on leadership and reported leadership practices. Data were obtained by a nationally administered questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Outcomes indicated some enabling factors for ESD implementation such as encouraging teachers to engage in ESD programmes, collaborate with others and other ways of support which nevertheless reflect what is generally expected of school administrators without seeking deep change. Constraining factors included principals' reported lack of confidence in administrative skills for sustainable schools, limited willingness to challenge the status quo, limited engagement in actions important for supporting ESD activities and features of the national educational policy. Constraining factors pointed towards principals' limited commitment to ESD. The practical significance of the findings is that they identify specific areas of needed professional development for principals such as empowering staff, encouraging critique of current approaches and exploring alternative possibilities for curriculum, pedagogy and policy.
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This study examines the process of educational change as demonstrated in three elementary schools implementing education for sustainability (EfS). Actions and stages in the change process were characterized. Data included interviews with the school principals and teachers involved, in-school observations, and documentation (schools' vision statements, websites, and reports). Our findings indicate that important factors for a successful implementation include motives for change, persons involved, actions carried out, and follow-up activity. While all three schools showed evidence of changes implementing EfS as a regular part of the school's philosophy, only one school demonstrated changes deemed permanent and significant. This was the only school that implemented a gradual and structured process of change, that executed many actions at each stage, and where the principal and staff were well-qualified and fully committed. This study contributes to understanding how changes may be implemented in educational systems and emphasizes the importance of each stage.
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Environmental Education Research, 2020
This study complements the discussion on theoretically derived competence models through an empirical analysis that gives a voice to teachers who are experienced in education for sustainable development (ESD). It adds their insights and expertise to the academic discourse. Our original contributions are threefold: (1) We find justification for aspects of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and content knowledge (CK), which share a common understanding of the relevance of competencies in teaching, and for the importance of acting on an institutional level. (2) We illustrate these competencies via an example from ESD in Germany. (3) We contribute to the discussion of ESD by adding (a) the view of the teachers, (b) the drivers behind and barriers to ESD as reported by the investigated teachers themselves, and (c) an ascertainment of the structural competencies of ESD teachers in terms of their awareness of structures and hierarchies and the communication patterns used therein. We interviewed 12 teachers involved in ESD at German elementary schools and identified two types of ESD teachers. Both types aim to contribute to social change through their ESD activities; however, the teachers display different sets of competencies when it comes to integrating ESD into teaching.
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Background The Sustainable Development Action Plan produced by the DfES in 2003 was an important first step towards sustainability in the formal education system. This encouraged schools already developing their own sustainable practice to share their experience and support others. The recent Sustainable Schools consultation (DfES, 2006), which received 870 plus responses, has shown that there is a significant level of support for sustainable development in schools and wider society.
Implementing Education for Sustainable Development in schools: learning from teachers’ reflections
Environmental Education Research, 2012
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been viewed as education that helps people develop the attitude, skills, and knowledge to make well-informed decisions for the benefit of the present and future generations. It aims at providing quality education through shared understanding and multidisciplinary approaches in meeting the developmental and environmental apprehension for a sustainable future. Many theorists envisaged ESD as enhancing active involvement of learners both in school and out of school learning initiatives to acquire knowledge about sustainable development issues. The present paper discusses Namibian school teachersí (n=9) perceptions of ESD and the teachersí teaching practices using a qualitative-explorative study design. The data were gathered through two semi-structured interviews and lesson observations. The findings have revealed that senior secondary school teachers perceive ESD in terms of knowledge acquisition about the environment in order to use its resources sustainably for the benefit of future generations. The study has also revealed that teachers have positive sentiment toward the inclusion of ESD into the senior secondary school curriculum. Following this, they suggested that ESD should be either implemented as an independent subject or integrated with other existing subjects as a multidisciplinary subject.