SCHOOLRESOURCES SUSTAINABLELEADERSHIP

Contextual characteristics

Sustainable leadership – School leaders are often the initiators of ESD and play an important role in the implementation of ESD at a school (Verhelst et al. 2020). Leadership style determines processes and results. Sustainable leadership can support and strengthen the creation of a powerful ESD experimental environment. There is, of course, much to be said on the subject of sustainable leadership, but one of its most important aspects is participation by teachers, pupils and parents in decision-making (Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2017). Participation does not mean that everyone must always participate in the decision-making process. There are two conditions for real participation.

– Expertise in the subject, which leads us once again to the importance of professional development at school.

– The extent to which teachers, pupils and parents feel involved. This involvement may have its origins in personal interest and personal concern.

These conditions cannot be separated.

Example: Interaction (in the ESD experimental environment) can broaden and deepen the holistic view of the supervisor.

Example: Making thinking processes visible (in the ESD experimental environment) can facilitate interaction and communication about them.

School resources – School resources are the second contextual feature of school organisation focussed on by ESD-effective schools. The resources include three components: time management, professional structures and physical structures (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021).

– Time management: Here, the necessary attention is paid to the time frame within which tasks are planned, and whether matters can be outsourced.

– Professional structures: Paying attention to the way groups are organised.

– Physical structures: Dealing with available infrastructure and financial resources.

School resources must, after all, be applied to achieve a high-quality, powerful ESD experimental environment.

Example: Purchasing display boards to make thinking visible and thus reinforce the ESD experimental environment.

Example: Providing spaces in which pupils can easily confer with each other.

Example Providing resources for introducing pupils to a specific societal issue outside of school.

Sustainable leadership and available resources are the context that enables the other parts of school organisation to achieve ESD (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021). These two contextual conditions enable school teams to work with the six central characteristics of school organisation while the physical environment at school makes collaboration and support possible (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021).

Core characteristics

Pluralistic communication – ‘Pluralistic communication’ at the level of school organisation refers to the way in which the different stakeholders at school, such as teachers and school leaders, communicate with each other, both formally and informally (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021). It implies recognition of other points of view and the need to engage in dialogue with the different stakeholders at a school, such as teachers and school leaders, in both formal and informal contexts (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021). Pluralistic communication enables professional development, or the creation of new knowledge within the school team. As it makes us think critically about what we are doing at school - and can continue to interrogate the education process in a constructive way. Pluralistic communication can enrich differing perspectives and deepen our own thinking and acting. In other words, pluralistic communication supports our professional development by enriching our own point of view through dialogue with others. It creates a critical and objectively distanced perspective on the educational practices at school. Pluralistic communication is therefore important in creating, encouraging and supporting an ESD experimental environment.

Example ‘Learning through interaction’ (in the ESD experimental environment) gives concrete expression to pluralistic communication, as it refers to the richness that different perspectives bring to one’s own thinking and acting.

Example Making the thinking processes of those involved

‘visible’ is a useful tool and a focus for communicating in such a way as to bring many ideas and viewpoints from multiple perspectives to the fore. Thus, each idea, in itself, can be a starting point for further thinking.

Supportive relationships – ‘Supportive relationships’, as a characteristic, includes the way the school team is supported by people within the team, but can include support from other schools, support from management teams and support from external partners (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021). These supportive relationships reinforce the creation of an ESD experimental environment, in which the enrichment that others can offer us is important.

Example: A teacher wants to commit to regular, action-oriented reflection on societal issues in the classroom. This involves bringing people from the community into the classroom in order to better understand the issues. The school organisation then supports the teacher in contacting and arranging to receive these parties, etc.

Democratic decision-making – Democratic decision-making requires seeing the knowledge and expertise of others as a source of new ideas and possibilities, without compromising our own perspective (Öhman & Kronlid 2019). It is a characteristic that creates opportunities to practice democracy, for both teaching staff and pupils, through the activity area, ‘learning by doing’. Democratic decision-making is closely linked to sustainable leadership. After all, through sustainable leadership, a culture can be created in which democratic decision-making is put into practice and valorised. School principals do not take into account the knowledge and expertise of teachers, pupils and external parties just once, but do it systematically, so that it becomes part of how things are done at school. Management teams, with their sustainable leadership, attach importance to participation, both inside and outside the school (Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2017).

Example: Management discusses a proposal with the teachers’ team, seeking the teachers’ opinions. This discussion takes place with an open attitude on the part of the management, and with management not feeling its position is threatened by teachers wanting to adjust its proposal. On the contrary, management sees the value of other perspectives and welcomes amended proposals.

Shared vision – ‘Shared vision’, as a characteristic, requires zooming in on the need for a common understanding of what we want to develop in pupils and how to best go about it. We achieve a shared vision by interacting and communicating with each other, both inside and outside the school. Above all, we must keep in mind the dynamic aspect of such a vision: there is no single truth, and the vision is in constant evolution, together with the times, the people and the societal context of the school.

Example: A school that is committed to learning through interaction with other’s perspectives will find it easier to achieve a shared vision. Engaging in dialogue and sharing ideas with each other is part of the school culture and infiltrates the nature of the school organisation.

Adaptability – The courage to challenge prevailing paradigms is a characteristic of ESD (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015). This is the context in which we understand ‘adaptability’ - it is the disposition of the school team to react in an appropriate way to questions, expectations and opportunities from within or outside the school, with a view to improving or further developing the education provided (Vanhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021). The school always keeps its pedagogical project and thus its vision in mind. It asks itself whether it should change itself, or its environment, and whether it should take action on the issue at hand. While we are considering what adjustments should be made, it is interesting to also ask whether a particular change should be small or far-reaching. Should new elements be added to the school’s operation, or should new processes be designed? The courage to question prevailing paradigms is a characteristic of ESD (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015).

Collective effectiveness – ‘Collective effectiveness’ means that all members of a school team believe that the efforts they make together have a positive influence on the learning of children and young people (Verhelst, Vanhoof & Van Petegem 2021). This belief has a strong influence on pupils’ learning and on the effectiveness of the school team’s ESD approach. Belief in its own abilities will actually make the school team more effective in its approach. And empower it to make the school a powerful ESD experimental environment.

Example: ‘Learning through action-oriented thinking’, means time is spent building positive experiences based on our own ability to make an impact. Deployment in this field of action in the ESD experimental environment gives colour and substance to the collective effectiveness of the school organisation.

School culture

The importance of school culture in a WSA Our thoughts and actions are always related to the context and prevailing culture in which we move. This is an important insight for education, because it means that pupils think and act in the way that is encouraged in school.

As a result, making conscious choices for a sustainable society is not only linked to learning activities, but also to ‘enculturation’. If we want pupils to think independently about societal issues, confident of their own impact on society, then it makes sense to build that into the school culture. If we want to see pupils think for themselves, we need to create a culture in which thinking is valued and encouraged. If we want pupils to work together based on the idea that different perspectives can enrich and deepen their own ideas, then that principle must preferably made tangible in the school culture.`

Making conscious choices for a sustainable society is influenced by the culture in which we find ourselves.

What is culture?

Vanhoof and Van Petegem (2017) define school culture as the whole of shared meaning-making between all participants in school events. Ritchhart (2015) describes school culture as a group of people telling a story. The relationship between teachers, pupils and learning is central here. Everyone has a part in the story, influences the story and makes it come alive.

If we follow the metaphor of culture as a story, then culture is something dynamic, which is constantly being created and shaped by all participants. But it also implies that there is a special role for (school) leaders.

Many people play a role in a WSA - pupils, teachers, management, administrative and executive staff and, preferably, also parents and people related to the school. The story of a school culture is told by all of those involved. Knowing this, it is interesting to look at the story of our own school and (try to) answer the questions that it raises. What story are we actually telling? What message do we explicitly and implicitly send to the pupils, and what do we tell them by deliberately or unconsciously leaving some things out? Which people play a role in our story? What relationships do they have with each other? What is the purpose of the education we provide? What is our vision of learning? Not to mention - does our vision match the messages we send out? What message do we convey explicitly through our rules of conduct and, implicitly, through what we evaluate, through the questions we ask and through the learning activities we design? In other words, coherence is central here. Is the ideal story we have written about ‘making education’ and our vision thereof also the story that pupils experience at school?

The story of the education we want to provide must be evaluated and adjusted so that pupils themselves play a part in the story we have in mind. Adapting also implies shaping the culture we live in.

Shaping culture through our story

Project Zero, a research initiative of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (pz.harvard.edu of Harvard 2021), identifies eight forces that can create, shape and also tell our story. Eight forces with which we send messages to the pupils. In this way we create a school culture.

Expectations – The concept of ‘expectations’ as the designer of a school culture has two aspects.

– On the one hand, adults can have expectations about the behaviour of pupils. This is expressed, for example, in the rules of conduct and standards at school. They describe what we expect from pupils.

On the other hand, expectations can also concern a set of beliefs about the world and how it works. At school, for example, we have expectations about learning and how that works, how pupils build up knowledge and develop their dispositions to make conscious choices for a sustainable society. These kinds of expectations are called by David Perkins, ‘action theories’ - theories about how our actions and behaviour relate to desired results.

Our expectations of pupils influence the goals we want to achieve. They not only explicitly determine the course we take, but also act as a kind of internal compass. To shape a school culture requires thinking about these expectations. What vision of learning does the school have? What is the vision of education? What role does subjectification have in that education? What are the expectations with regard to evaluation?

Example: A teacher clearly states in an assignment that he/ she expects pupils to compare two solutions to a problem.

Example: By emphasising the value of thinking, the teacher shows pupils that they are expected to think for themselves.

Language – Language, as a shaper of school culture, guides our attention and actions. However, language is not only about the explicit meaning of the words themselves. It also conveys messages in an implicit way. By expressing certain things in words and leaving others unsaid, we indicate what we consider important. What we value in practice and what we do not value. If we are aware of this, we can create a language within the school, as a group, that states what we really want to valorise. In this way we work more purposefully.

In the context of ESD and the approach described in this theoretical framework, it is interesting to use the language of thinking - i.e., language that names thinking processes, but also identifies that someone has been so alert as to initiate a particular thinking process. It is language that stimulates further or deeper thinking, and raises the idea of cooperation. With words like ‘we’, ‘together’ and ‘us’, language can highlight the strengths of a group.

The language of hypotheses invites us to speak not in absolute terms, but in assumptions that are still to be investigated. This implies the use of the conditional form. Examples are: ‘How could one do this?’ instead of ‘How can one do this? or ‘How could we deal with this?’ instead of ‘How do we deal with this?’

Example: The teacher creates a culture in which thinking is seen as important. He/she does this by naming the thinking processes used in the classroom in assignments, feedback, class discussions, etc.

Time – The time we spend on something reflects how much we value it. Giving pupils time to formulate their ideas shows that we value what they say. Giving time to explore a societal issue, so that pupils can relate their own challenges to it, tells how important we think it is for pupils to think about which societal issues they want to tackle. All these things leave a mark on pupils’ thinking and actions, and help shape the school culture.

In this context, it is interesting to consider the functions of education. How much time do we spend on qualifying pupils (building knowledge and skills)? How much time is spent on socialisation? And how much time do we really spend on providing opportunities for subjectification, providing the freedom to make one’s own choices and act accordingly? The three functions of education are always present, in every school, but the balance between them, which function/s prevail in the education actually provided, is significant for the school culture. If we want pupils to develop the disposition to make conscious choices in society, then ample attention and time must also be devoted to subjectification activities.

Example: Spending time in the classroom on learning through interaction, in which pupils explore each other’s perspectives, indicates that we value this.

Modelling – An educational professional is always consciously displaying skills, knowledge, strategies, etc., with the explicit intention that pupils will learn from this display. At the same time, a teacher is constantly in pupils’ view. Pupils see what you spend time on, how you talk, where your teaching interests lie, and how you collaborate with others. We call this modelling, and it happens at both explicit and implicit levels.

Modelling does not mean that the teacher has to be a perfect role model. For the teacher, learning to think also means taking risks and sometimes arriving at a dead end. Teachers who strive for conscious choice in society also gradually adjust the processes that they themselves initiate, and this takes place in the presence of the pupils. They think and act, reflect and monitor. ‘Learning to think’ means, among other things, learning to cope with uncertainty and mistakes, learning to make adjustments, learning from experience, and reflecting on this entire process.

Modelling opportunities are not only provided by teachers and management. Pupils also learn from each other. This often requires that a teacher has to draw a pupil’s attention to another pupil.

A powerful ESD experimental environment, in which pupils are given optimal opportunities to develop their ESD dispositions, must be populated with teachers who identify with ESD dispositions and the values behind them. This means that pupils can recognise the same ESD dispositions (in development) in the teachers. In other words, modelling requires a certain authenticity from the teachers.

Example: A teacher is open to receiving criticism from pupils about rules at school that are not sustainable. He/ she searches, together with the pupils, for how things could be done differently and shows by his/her own attitude that insights are constantly evolving and that we can deepen our insights by collaborating with others.

Example: A teacher shows, by his/her own attitude, that it is not bad not to know something. The teacher is prepared to tell pupils that he/she does not personally understand a societal issue well enough and has asked for advice from others.

Opportunities – At school we want to offer pupils opportunities to develop, both individually and within a group. In this sense, the ESD experimental environment is very important. It offers opportunities for development. Creating opportunities is an important tool, necessary to start learning. And crucial in this context, of course, is the question of what you want to develop using these opportunities. If you create opportunities specifically to develop ESD dispositions, you send the message that you value them.

Moreover, you create not only opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills (qualification), and to socialise in the world, but also opportunities for pupils to take the freedom to shape their own thoughts and actions, taking into account their physical and social environment (subjectification).

For the school, a number of questions are of interest: what are these opportunities for? What can pupils get out of it? And which opportunities do we not provide (even though we may want to do so)?

Example: A teacher sets up a task in such a way that the pupils themselves come up with the idea of involving others in the solution. By doing so, he/she encourages pupils to be alert to opportunities to learn from others.

Example: A teacher offers societal issues as a learning context, because he/she wants to make pupils aware of societal issues in the school environment.

Routines – Routines are shared practices or ways of thinking and doing, which the group takes for granted. They provide a framework that helps us to think and learn, for example by offering a system of thinking processes. These kinds of thinking routines play an important role in tackling problems or questions for which there are no answers yet, such as societal issues. Thinking routines are especially useful if they can initiate and support the ESD dispositions in terms of achieving a specific goal. They provide an infrastructure that the pupils can use when tackling societal issues, and which they themselves can further develop over time.

By introducing thinking routines at school, one shapes a culture in which thinking is considered valuable. It is also important that these thinking routines are ‘released’ after a while. In other words, that the pupils themselves can evolve them.

Example: een krachtige denkroutine in de klas is de gewoonte om de vraag en de aanpak met aandacht te bespreken, alvorens te starten met de opdracht.

Example: het kan een vaste routine in de klas zijn om de leerlingen anderen te laten betrekken bij het nadenken over een (maatschappelijk) vraagstuk.

Interaction – The quality of interaction between teachers and pupils strongly determines a school culture in which learning is enjoyable and good.

Interaction that is respectful, stimulates thinking and promotes autonomy is particularly valuable for the development of ESD dispositions. The way questions are asked is particularly decisive here, because questioning is an important form of interaction between teacher and pupil. After all, questions reflect what the teacher thinks is important.

Environment – The physical environment of the school influences the way pupils and teachers interact. The environment can either inhibit or stimulate the development of EDO dispositions.

The development of ESD dispositions requires a school where the various fields of action in an ESD experimental environment are at least possible to engage.

Example: It must be possible to learn by interaction. In a classroom in which pupils can only look in the direction of the teacher, it is difficult for them to interact with each other’s perspectives. The physical environment must allow for interaction.

Example: Empty walls in the classroom on which thinking processes can be displayed send the message that learning is a process, and that making ideas visible can contribute to what the pupils are working on at that moment.

The messages that a physical space sends out are the reason why the environment is also seen as a shaper of a school culture. Taking pupils beyond the school walls sends the message that what they are learning has a purpose and a function in the real world.

The above mentioned eight forces help us create, shape and tell our story, and so to create a school culture.

Summary

A WSA in which the ESD experimental environment is opened up, from classroom level to school level, is a way of thinking and doing. School organisation and school culture are two aspects we can work with if we want to make the school a powerful, quality, ESD experimental environment. The fields of action defined for the ESD experimental environment are then present in every fibre of the school, from the school’s organisation to its culture. A must for achieving this condition is the openness and sensitivity to grow and learn as a school.

For growth, learning from each other and from each other’s perspective through dialogue is a basic disposition. Management and teachers should also be open to developing new knowledge and skills and to socialising within a school culture that is consciously taking shape. Management and teachers are the designers of the change they envisage, while respecting the limits of the given physical and social environment. In this way, the school is a real place for practice for change and renewal, in which all participantspupils, teachers, management, other staff and all involved partners - can learn together from societal issues.