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Leading for Regeneration and Sustainability in Schools

No Child Left Inside - Elementary School Principal

A Phenomenological Case Study

John Hardman, Ph.D.

Department of Educational Leadership & Research Methodology

College of Education

Florida Atlantic University

June 2014

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Table of Contents

PURPOSE................................................................................................................................................... 3

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ................................................................................................................................ 5

RESEARCH QUESTIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Definitions ................................................................................................................................................................ 5

Study Background ................................................................................................................................................ 6

METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................... 8

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................................... 8

RESEARCH SETTING AND SAMPLING PROCEDURE .............................................................................................. 8

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................... 9

Research Questions .............................................................................................................................................. 9

Document Analysis ............................................................................................................................................... 9

Unit of Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 10

Validity and Reliability .................................................................................................................................... 10

DATA ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................... 12

Sample Breakdown ........................................................................................................................................... 12

Interview Process ............................................................................................................................................... 13

FINDINGS .............................................................................................................................................................. 15

Personal Journey to Sustainability Leadership ..................................................................................... 15

Leadership Qualities and Skills .................................................................................................................... 20

Leadership Strategies ...................................................................................................................................... 21

Drivers .................................................................................................................................................................... 23

Challenges ............................................................................................................................................................. 28

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................ 32

APPENDIX A: DRAFT EMAIL INVITATION TO PARTICIPANTS ............................................. 33

APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW PROTOCOL .......................................................................................... 34

APPENDIX C: DOCUMENT ANALYSIS TEMPLATE ...................................................................... 37

APPENDIX D: CONSENT FORM ........................................................................................................ 38

REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 40

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PURPOSE

Schooling for sustainability has never been more important. We need to cultivate thinking that comprehends complex systems, perspectives that widen empathy and nurture mindfulness, better techniques for gathering and sharing information, and new modes of cooperation. The only long-term strategy that makes sense in our changing world is education (Goleman, 2009, in Stone, Smart by Nature, p. ii).

With few exceptions (see Doppelt, 2008; Hardman, 2012; Willard, 2010) much of the available literature on sustainable development, sustainability, or regeneration, focuses on the observable outcomes of best practices and organizational behaviors worthy of imitation. In education, including the US Department of Education’s (USDOE) 2013 Green Ribbon Awards for schools and districts, and the growing acceptance of the US Green Building Council’s LEED certified school construction projects, a similar situation may be seen to prevail. Less attention has been paid to the critical but less visible leadership processes undergone by sustainability champions in education, whether principals, other school administrators, teacher leaders, or district officials that have made these accomplishments possible. The purpose of this phenomenological study, therefore, has been to address this knowledge gap by exploring the personal journeys of sustainability leaders in schools and districts from their initial awareness of the broader importance of sustainability as a core principle to the processes and strategies they are applying most successfully in their respective organizations. The study also seeks to explore how these leaders have been able to overcome internal and external tensions and challenges, and to identify the most powerful drivers that are enabling them to generate the necessary momentum to implement these best practices in their schools and districts. Finally, the study seeks to assess the extent to which these best practices have taken root in the collective culture of schools and districts by evaluating the embeddedness of the principles of sustainable development, sustainability, or regeneration in policy, curriculum, community engagement, and facilities operations and management. The rationale for the study was grounded in the conviction that school leaders and all those engaged in and concerned about education today should consider the need for a profound revision of our educational systems and how we organize them. This need is based on an understanding that there is an urgent need to change how we manage our communities if we are to create a healthy, just, prosperous, and sustainable society for our children and their children, and that one of the most important opportunities for successful change lies in education and how we manage schools.

Each and every day, we are confronted with growing evidence that leadership as we know it does not appear to be helping us design and implement the changes that we need to make to avoid bringing civilization and the natural environment to what Lester Brown (2006) has described as “overshoot-and-collapse mode” (p. 5). This study is intended to contribute to understanding how sustainability leaders have been able to change the

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circumstances, often against institutionalized resistance to change, and to document the strategies they have created to embed best practices in their schools. As has occurred since the beginning of public education, schools will play a decisive role in the kind of future we create for the next generations. The difference today lies in the need to acknowledge that we must adopt a radically different approach to education if that future is to be realized on a planet that can continue to offer people not only similar but healthier, more prosperous, peaceful, and purposeful lives. At this greater global scale, Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky (2009), tell us that:

These are extraordinary times. The turn of the millennium brought the pressing realization that every human being, as a member of a globalizing set of nations, cultures, and economies, must find better ways to compete and collaborate. To build a sustainable world in an era of profound economic and environmental interdependence, each person, each country, each organization is challenged to sift through the wisdom and know-how of their heritage, to take the best from their histories, leave behind lessons that no longer serve them, and innovate, not for change’s sake, but for the sake of conserving and preserving the values and competence they find most essential and precious. (p. 2)

Heifetz et al (2009) propose that one of the reasons leadership fails to foster sustainable change “is produced by treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems” (p. 19). They go on to define technical problems as those that, while they may be complex, can be solved by implementing current knowhow, and through “the application of authoritative expertise and through the organization’s current structures, procedures, and ways of doing things.” On the other hand, “adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties” (p. 19). They add a third definition, that of problems that combine technical and adaptive dimensions. To solve these highly complex challenges we need to possess the relevant technical expertise, we must reach a shared understanding of the cultural environment that gave rise to the problem to begin with, and we must then bring to bear the collective capacity to combine both. If we agree with these distinctions, it becomes clear that we cannot hope to “go green” by addressing all problems as technical problems. There is a difference between technical problems such as adding solar panels to a school building, or implementing a recycling program, and the adaptive problem of creating a shared, long-term vision and comprehensive strategy that will lead to a sustainable future. Just as complex is the technical-adaptive challenge of reforming policy, funding, and curriculum to support the changes we need to make. By studying how districts and schools approach their sustainability initiatives from this perspective, our successes and shortcomings should become easier to understand, and the call to action for educational leaders and their communities can become more focused and effective. This study was designed to understand and describe how these leaders are rising to the challenge, and to identify the most effective strategies that they have applied to implement, scale up and sustain regenerative and sustainable change in their schools and districts.

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Significance of the Study Given the available evidence on shrinking natural resources, androcentric climate

change, and the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor (Brown, 2008; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013; Sachs, 2005), civilization on a global scale is at a turning point. Sooner rather than later, and certainly within the next generation, the conditions which allowed human ingenuity to flourish unchecked over the past two hundred years will undergo inevitable change, and the emerging conditions will require that we exercise that same ingenuity if we are to respond in ways that will allow us to continue to create prosperous, equitable, and sustainable communities (Ackerman-Leist, 2013; Englander, 2012; Hopkins, 2009). Among the most urgent issues to be faced in the next decades are the diminishing access to affordable fossil fuels, food and water. Longer term but no less important issues that demand future thinking are climate change with its accompanying effects of increasingly disruptive climate events (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013), the geometric increase in population, projected at 9 billion by 2043 (UN Population Division, 2013), and the accumulated pollution caused by the ‘take-make-waste’ society (Unruh, 2010). These and other emerging critical factors indicate increasingly clearly that there is a need for profound change in how we create and operate human systems and institutions. In this context, the critical role of education in general and of leaders in education in particular cannot be overstated. An evidence-based understanding and conceptualization of the developmental processes that exemplary school leaders have undergone in their own shift towards a regenerative or sustainability mindset and practice in their schools may serve as a roadmap that others may take in transforming themselves, their schools, and their communities. In this context, the study should provide clear additional insights on how to scale up sustainability initiatives throughout all schools and their communities.

Research Questions

The main research questions the study sought to answer were:

1. To identify, describe and compare the developmental process of sustainability leaders across different school types and levels; and

2. To identify, describe and compare the most effective change strategies they have implemented to move their schools towards greater degrees of sustainability, and how they have identified and capitalized on positive drivers while overcoming internal and external challenges.

Definitions

The multiplicity of available meanings of the terms cited here requires that they be

defined as understood in this study. Sustainability is defined following John Elkington’s notion of the triple bottom line, which he coined in 1994 (personal communication with the

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author, 2009), which he considers as the need to integrate environmental, social, and economic concerns in order to envision a viable present and future. AtKisson (2008) adds the idea that sustainability is an endpoint and not a process, whereas sustainable development is the process we engage to reach sustainability. The most repeated definition of sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the capacity of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland Report, 1987). This report, commissioned by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, includes two important concepts that served to broaden the prevailing concern for environmental sustainability to include the notion of equity, social justice, and poverty eradication, These were:

the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and

the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs (p. 54).

Regeneration is defined by Hardman (2012) as the need to restore damaged natural and human systems before or as we engage in sustainable development efforts, and that this healing process will occur proactively if and when we are willing to shift our attention to developing higher levels of human consciousness. Expressed briefly, we must first redefine who we are before we can redesign what we do. This shift can lead to breakthroughs in how we perceive and act on reality, as in the development of regenerative technologies that are not only carbon neutral, but can “actively suck carbon out of the atmosphere” (Elkington, 2012, p. XIX). From the perspective of these definitions, the three concepts can be seen to follow a developmental continuum. Other overarching contextual issues that need to be considered are climate change and peak oil, the latter understood as the decreasing availability of cheap fossil fuels. These factors have very real implications for the future of local resilience, defined here as the capacity of communities to thrive through the development of sustainable and secure local food and energy systems (Hopkins, 2009). At the time of writing, the role that schools, districts, colleges and universities, and state systems of education can and must play in this transition through curriculum reform, teacher and leader preparation, and physical systems management needs is gradually becoming clearer.

Study Background

This study sought to build on the researcher’s previous study of regenerative leadership in business, education, and community (Hardman, 2012). At the time of the original doctoral research (2007 - 2009) that led to the development of the regenerative leadership framework, it was not easy to find K-12 school leaders who could demonstrate effective engagement in sustainability issues at their institutions for a period of at least three years, which constituted one of the sampling requirements for participation in the study. Since that time, the green schools movement has expanded significantly, taking on a much greater presence in mainstream education through nationally recognized associations such as the Green Schools National Network and the U.S. Green Building

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Council’s Center for Green Schools. In 2012, the US Department of Education (USDOE) instituted the first Green Ribbon Schools’ Award, followed in 2013 by the Sustainable District Awards. In May 2013, the USDOE recognized over 50 schools in 32 states and 14 school districts with these awards. One of the districts and one school in this study have received the Green Ribbon Award. It is the hope that this study will serve to expand our growing understanding of the critical role that public schools and systems play in educating generations of young people to embrace the principles and practices of sustainable development and regeneration in order to grow prosperity, celebrate community, and enhance the health of all species for all time.

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METHODOLOGY

Introduction

A phenomenological approach was considered appropriate to understanding the developmental process of sustainability leaders and their efforts in the complex educational environments in which schools operate. Creswell (2013) defines the phenomenological approach as describing “the common meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or phenomenon” (p. 76). Informing the choice of methodology was the assumption that sustainability leaders are evolving both subjectively as well as objectively in ways that are building their understanding of how their leadership styles and organizational practices are seen to integrate ever more effectively environmental, social and economic considerations into their work, and how this process is informing governance, policy, curriculum and assessment, facilities management and operations, and community engagement. From this perspective, the subjective dimension of these leaders’ experience could be as valuable to the research as the visible outcomes of this invisible process. This would require a suspension of attitudes and beliefs about work and everyday activities, so that consciousness itself could become the object of study, rather than examining the external world upon which consciousness focuses its attention (Merriam and Simpson, 2000).

A second assumption of the researcher was that this reflective process may have led to a rethinking of personal and professional beliefs and values, the acquisition of new knowledge, skills and behaviors, and a retooling of organizational practices which could be a phenomenon shared in varying degrees by the study participants. Evidence of this transformative process could be considered to offer valuable insights for other school and district leaders seeking to incorporate sustainability as a core operating principle in their respective organizations.

Research Setting and Sampling Procedure

The project consisted of a pilot study involving 8 – 10 sustainability leaders in two public school districts in Southeast Florida. The study used purposeful critical sampling (Miles & Huberman, 1994), since the participants were drawn from the ten schools that had received the School of Excellence Award of the regional Schools Green Recognition Program (initiated in 2009), and that had achieved this top award for the past three years. District officials who had led the district to earning the 2013 USDOE Green Ribbon District Award were also considered to be qualified to participate if they could supply evidence of having been engaged in successful sustainability efforts for at least three years. Qualifying participants were contacted by the researcher either by telephone or by email (see draft invitation included in Appendix A). The participants were allowed to choose the interview setting and a time and date most convenient for them.

Now that this initial study has been completed, it is researcher’s intention to expand the study to include sustainability leaders in schools and districts throughout the United States.

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Data Collection and Analysis

The purpose of the study’s data analysis was to identify and describe the developmental process undergone by leaders in schools who have engaged in infusing sustainability in their institutions, and the manner in which they have addressed the challenges and drivers encountered in this intent. Data was collected in two ways, through a semi-structured interview with the participants, and a review of institutional documentation on best practices related to governance, curriculum, facilities operations and management, and community engagement, requested from the participants by the researcher.

The semi-structured interviews consisted of a 45 – 60 minute interview with the sustainability leaders that qualified for the sample. The main research questions are listed below and the interview protocol can be found in Appendix B. The final source of data consisted of a review of institutional documentation describing sustainability initiatives infused in the areas under investigation: governance, policy, curriculum, facilities management and operations, and community engagement (see document analysis protocol in Appendix C).

Research Questions

The principal questions guiding the research sought to:

1. Identify, describe and compare the developmental process of sustainability leaders across multiple school types and levels; and

2. Identify, describe and compare the most effective change strategies they have implemented to move their schools towards greater degrees of sustainability, and how they have identified and capitalized on positive drivers while overcoming internal and external challenges.

The interviews were transcribed by the researcher and submitted to the respondents for member-checking purposes. Applying a specially designed and previously tested coding process using Microsoft Excel ™, the researcher conducted a systematic comparative analysis of the participants’ responses. The process of the analysis sought to cluster emerging findings into themes or categories (Merriam, 2009) by applying an iterative process beginning with first cycle coding leading to ‘themeing of the data’ (Saldaña, 2013, p. 59). This was accompanied by the researcher’s analytic memos that served to acknowledge and begin to understand repeating concepts and phenomena. This was followed by second cycle coding designed to generate ‘a coherent metasynthesis of the data corpus’ (Saldaña, 2013, p. 207). These categories and themes are described in detail in the section on findings.

Document Analysis

The researcher collected documentation related to the schools’ sustainability efforts from two sources:

a. The schools’ application submitted to the regional Green Schools Recognition Program. These applications are evaluated by a diverse and objective panel of judges for the award of the three levels of recognition: Schools of Promise, of Quality, and of Excellence. As indicated, only leaders from the Schools of Excellence

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who had been recognized as such for at least three years qualified to participate in the study.

b. The researcher conducted a document analysis of the school and district’s sustainability-focused best practices as reported on their websites and their applications to the USDOE’s Green Ribbon Award.

Unit of Analysis

The principal unit of analysis was the participants’ perceptions with regard to their developmental processes as educational leaders for sustainability, sustainable development, and regeneration.

Validity and Reliability

The decision to use a phenomenological approach as appropriate to the topic under investigation raised the need for the researcher to identify any prior assumptions and concerns that might affect the objectivity of the data collection process, and the generation of any findings, conclusions and recommendations. In order to diminish any potential bias, the researcher felt the need to bracket (Moustakas, 1994) his prior research into what he came to define as regenerative leadership in business, community, government, and higher education. At that time, the researcher did not interview sustainability leaders in K-12 settings, but it was felt that there could be a risk that the researcher’s prior assumptions could contaminate the integrity of the interview process and, in consequence, the data analysis. Moustakas defines bracketing as the requirement that a researcher disclose any prior work that may have the potential to affect his or her objectivity in collecting data and reporting new research findings. Through this process, it becomes possible for the researcher to share with participants any prior assumptions and attitudes he and they may hold with regard to a topic being studied in order to avoid having them affect the validity of new data. To minimize any potential bias even further, the researcher used member checking, which consists of sharing the verbatim transcripts of all interviews with the participants before initiating the data coding procedure (Miles & Huberman, 1994). This procedure allows interviewees to edit and amend any responses that do not represent their views as precisely as they would like, and to correct any errors and perceived omissions by the researcher.

A second concern related to the value of the iterative process of the research methodology itself in leading to valid and reliable findings, and particularly to the procedures involved in data coding and theme development. The researcher sought to ensure the reliability of the process through horizontalization, which Moustakas (1994) defines as the need to consider every response of the participants to contain equal value and importance. Additionally, the use of the researcher’s method of systematic comparative analysis using Microsoft Excel ™ provided an objectively reliable procedure intended to ensure that the researcher truly captured the ‘essence’ of the participants’ experience (Creswell, 2013).

A third concern related to the participants’ willingness to offer truthful responses, particularly where interviewees may have felt anxiety about revealing information challenging the prevailing status quo. The researcher addressed this issue by explicitly offering to preserve the participant’s anonymity and/or to maintain any information shared in strict confidence (see Consent Form in Appendix D). Participants were also

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informed that their written consent would be secured should their identities and that of their institutions be considered of sufficient importance for public dissemination through publications and/or conference presentations.

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DATA ANALYSIS

“Sustainability has grown from a fringe issue in the 1970s to a central issue in the global

consciousness today” (Stead & Stead, 2014, p. 6)

Sample Breakdown

This initial study consisted of ten participants. Nine of these, two principals and seven

teachers, came from five schools recognized by the Green Schools Recognition Program’s

top award of Green Schools of Excellence in two public school districts in southeast Florida.

The tenth participant was the Sustainability Coordinator of a large public school district

serving over 180,000 students in 175 schools. This district earned the US DOE Green

Ribbon District Award in 2013, along with 13 other districts to be so recognized as such for

the first time.

The study sites consisted of two elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high

school. Of the respondents, two were Principals and the remaining seven were teachers

identified by their Principals and peers as having played a leading role in championing

sustainability at their schools over a period of three years or more. Demographically, all the

participants were white. One Principal was male while the other was female. Regarding the

teachers, two middle and the two elementary school teachers were female, while the

remaining middle and the two high school teachers were male. All schools were high-

performing at or close to Grade A in the State Accountability Report, and reported a range

of student demographics with regard to income level and diversity (see Table 1).

Table 1

Study Sample Breakdown

School Participants School

Grade FRL

Student

Diversity

Elementary School A Principal, two teachers A 74% 77%

Elementary School B Principal A/B 55% 23%

Middle School A One teacher A 39% 38%

Middle School B Two teachers A 23% 54%

High School Two teachers A 23% 74%

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School District Sustainability

Coordinator N/A N/A N/A

Elementary School A was the only school to have been founded purposefully - in 2008 - as a

green school, whose mission it is ‘to develop a community of environmentally

conscious learners who value and respect themselves, others and the world we share

through integrating science, technology, nature and art. This mission is accomplished

through collaborative efforts between our school, our adjoining Environmental Education

Center and the local Public University.’ Since its inception, the school has engaged in a

highly integrated approach to sustainability education, including a comprehensive K-5

environmental education program that incorporates fieldwork in the school’s 135 acre

natural preserve. It also incorporates the management and operations of its facilities in the

curriculum in numerous ways. The school buildings are certified at the LEED Gold level by

the US Green Building Council. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental

Design, and certifies the extent to which environmentally sound practices have been

incorporated in building design, construction, and operation. Gold level is the

organization’s second highest certification after Platinum. Finally, a highly successful

community outreach program provides a broad range of opportunities for the school’s high

needs constituency to be actively engaged in environmental and social inclusion efforts.

At the time of the study (fall 2013), the Principal of Elementary School B had been in the

position for over eight years and, as will be seen, had been closely engaged in an

increasingly integrated approach to her school’s sustainability initiatives. While the school

has made significant improvements in green site management, the buildings themselves

are not LEED certified. This also was true for all the other schools in the sample.

Interview Process

The interviews with the ten participants were conducted over a period of 90 days in the fall

of 2013. Once transcribed, the interviews were returned to the participants for their review

and amendment or confirmation. In order to conduct a systematic comparative analysis of

the interview responses, the researcher then loaded the final interview transcripts,

sentence by sentence for a total of 1710 lines of text, into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

(see sample in Figure 1).

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Figure 1:

Data coding spreadsheet fragment. .

To the left are the data on the participants’ and their schools, followed by the interview

questions. Once all these data had been loaded, the researcher conducted the coding

process as described in the methodology, allowing the data to “speak for themselves”

without the imposition of a preconceived hypothesis (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). The findings

of the coding process can be seen to the right of the interview transcripts. These consist of

a key word or phrase (a code) placed as a header in columns (e.g. nature, society,

economics, etc.). The key words were extracted from the participants’ responses to the

interview questions. Each time one of these codes is referred to in an interview, the

number 1 is placed in a cell in the column assigned to the code that is horizontally aligned

with the transcript fragment. As the analysis advances, it becomes clear to see which

themes are most often repeated by the respondents, leading to reliable, cumulative

findings. For example, the term ‘passion’ emerged 24 times in different contexts with no

prompting from the researcher (see sample in Figure 2).

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Figure 2:

Coding process

Using the Excel filter function, it became possible to select and cluster the responses to

each question from all respondents, facilitating the systematic search for and analysis of

the key words and phrases - the codes - as expressed in the transcripts. This aided in

understanding the differences and commonalities of the interviewees’ perspectives

contained in each of their responses to the interview questions. This procedure was

important in that it promoted objective analysis of emerging categories and phenomena,

and it served to insulate the analysis from assumptions and potential bias that the

researcher may have held with regard to the topic under study. The selective coding

process then allowed the researcher to group the findings in categories, which were

subsequently collected into general sections as described in the findings.

Findings

Personal Journey to Sustainability Leadership

The first three interview questions were directed at identifying and describing

sustainability leaders’ definitions of sustainability, their leadership mindset, and their

current understanding of the qualities and skills of sustainability leaders.

Defining sustainability.

The analysis of the responses to the question on how the participants defined sustainability revealed a range of understandings of the term. As the interviews progressed, it became increasingly apparent that principals and teachers defined the term quite differently. From

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their responses, it was clear that principals had a more encompassing and more sophisticated understanding of the term. They showed familiarity with the history of the term, and were able to articulate an abstract definition. The same was true of the district official, who had formal studies related to the field of environmental education. This was revealed in the way they resorted to describing concrete initiatives at their schools or institutional roles to help define the concept. For Principal B, for example, sustainability was clearly linked to the role of the institution:

Sustainability is the ability of an organization or an environment to be able to carry on at the level in which you would hope it would be successful, when a member of the organization or aspect of the environment has either left or been hindered. For our school, when we speak of being focused on sustainability, it’s being good stewards of our natural resources and environment, reducing our carbon footprint and educating students, parents, staff, and community members of this way of life. The idea of protecting our environment and resources so that future generations will have them is a central theme at our school.

Principal A had a similar perspective, and added the notion of the rights of future generations, a notion embedded in the definition of sustainable development of the UN Brundtland Report (1987) summarized earlier. In this case, he also emphasized the importance of integrating sustainability in the curriculum and “to everything we do at” the school, including recycling, green purchasing, art events, organic gardening, among many other activities:

Our goal is to educate children through example and through experiential learning that sustainability is an extremely important part of life. In order to instill these important lessons, they are integrated into daily lessons. The idea of protecting our environment and resources so that future generations will have them is a central theme at our school.

Interestingly, it was notable that she also emphasized the importance of educating by example and through experiential learning, two dimensions of schooling that would be repeated often, as will be seen.

The district sustainability coordinator also defined sustainability in the conventionally accepted way by saying that:

I define sustainability probably in the most common or understood way, the fact that there is this underlying three-part goal of environment, economics, and social equity.

She then tempered her theoretical definition with the more pragmatic dimension of District reality:

There’s sort of an academic way of looking at it and then there’s the reality of it…where the rubber meets the road, like it does here at the District, unfortunately, some of those of things might be lost, some of the equity might be lost, and economics may take precedence.

Teachers tended to express their definition more generally and more pragmatically. Middle School Teacher A considered that:

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I guess it’s keeping things running without having a big impact on the environment. Just reusing things, repurposing things, always having the environment in mind. Making sure that the resources we have are still available for all the generations in the future that will need them and want them. I would think of it as making wise choices to ensure that our natural resources are there for the future, and protected and enhanced.

It was interesting to note, however, that she also referenced the idea of the needs and wants of future generations, demonstrating direct or indirect familiarity with the Brundtland Report’s affirmation to that effect. This was reinforced by her statement that sustainability was about “making wise choices to ensure that our natural resources are there for the future.” Another middle school teacher had a more limited perspective, as her understanding of sustainability related to her school environment and the more direct connection with the recycling efforts over which she and others at the school had some control:

Specifically, to what we’ve created here, with regard to the sustainability of the resources we have control over, it has primarily been a recycling program and then education through community activities and in the classroom and trying to teach the kids about the process on what we are using, what we are doing, what we can do about it and how it can be changed.

The Mindset Shift

One of the more important findings of the study related to the evolutionary process that the participants had experienced in their own lives as they became more aware of the concept of sustainability and its importance. While they did not all have the same experience, once they accepted its importance, sustainability became a core value for their work as educators. Some of them grew up with conservation and a ‘social conscience’ as a natural component of their family life, as in the case of one of the Principal A.

I think I grew up with sustainability in mind. My parents lived through the Great Depression. They were both very poor and as children, and they both had the experience of going to bed hungry. Through necessity, they learned to never waste anything. They passed many of those lessons on to me and I am very grateful that they did. I enjoyed hearing many stories of how they had to do without and how they had to be creative when making food, clothing and the importance of helping those less fortunate. At that time, the community and neighbors really helped each other through those tough times.

I believe that their generation, and my parents, mostly my father, were very green – before green was popular. My dad hated to throw things away, he always felt there was another purpose or possibly other people could use things that we wanted to discard.

He always tried to use everything. My mother and father had significant gardens when growing up and that continued through my childhood. My father always composted. He did not like to throw any compostable items in the trash. As a child, I believe that many of these things helped to form my opinion on the environment. And I think that wit had a pretty big impression on me, and I can see myself doing

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things like that, now that I’m older, “do we really need to throw that away or can we use it for something else.”

Principal A made a direct connection between his awareness of sustainability issues growing up and his work as a school leader:

I think that it’s made a nice tie to this school, because we have a very strong agricultural program, we compost a lot of our leftover lunch food. We’re trying to show the students the importance of doing that, over just convenience.

A high school teacher shared a similar experience:

I’ve been ecological in my way of thinking for as far back as I can remember, fourth grade. I’ve always been happier outdoors studying nature than anything else that I had thought to do. And the idea of sustainability per se didn’t get into my vocabulary until 20 years ago. But the idea of conservation and of hanging onto our natural world has always been part of me. And I’ve been convinced that a world that is good for manatees and howler monkeys is good for us, and any world that won’t support them is diminished in its ability to take care of us. So my focus has been the natural world, but I know that this reflects back to the human world and what kind of future we are all going to have. So it’s been integrated with me for as long as I can remember.

On a more pragmatic level, one of the middle school teachers grew up with a more practical perspective that related to home economics:

I grew up in New York, outside of Buffalo, and so growing up in New York recycling was just a part of life, because you had the 5c deposit and the cans. So as a kid, that’s how we made money, we’d return our recyclables to the store and get the change and go buy an ice cream cone or whatever. And so I just always grew up thinking that everyone recycled and that was just a part of life. And so I never really thought about it, I never even thought about its full impact growing up because it was just something that we did.

This experience growing up transferred into her college life and then into her current work at her school, beginning with simple recycling, and then evolving towards a more comprehensive mindset that considered all aspects of schooling:

When I started working in the school I thought, ‘oh my gosh,’ and I moved to Florida and I couldn’t believe recycling in Florida. And even in college, I went to school in Pennsylvania I thought, ‘Why are these cans going in the garbage?’ That blew my mind, so I started becoming more aware of the situation and just thinking it was strange. And then when I got settled here, and actually I started having my own children, I thought this was ridiculous, we need to do our part, we did it in New York, growing up. So I started the recycling program. It seemed like the place to start. It didn’t

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make sense to me that schools weren’t being a part of this. Little steps to help the environment. Then getting involved in the Green School application made me realize there’s a lot more beyond recycling and I really like the green school because it broadened my mind about everything. At first it was all about recycling and the sustainability at school, but then the green school application has the curriculum part, and the field studies and this and that, and I realized there’s even more to this that we have to work on.

On the other hand, other participants came to sustainability later in life, some only very recently, even when they had been involved in public education for many years. As Principal B expressed it.

Prior to coming to this school, my focus on sustainability was in regard to recycling only. I had been teaching for 19 years, I’ve been an administrator going on 9 years. So in previous schools sustainability wasn’t a strong area of focus. When I came to this school 8 years ago, I was immediately immersed in what I initially thought of as excessive attention to such focuses of: using only native plants on the new campus, curricular work around quarterly environmental themes, recycling projects, gardening….

The school was designated as the first Audubon International School about 20 years ago, and had a team in place that was very focused on sustainability. I learned a lot over the years.

Principal B clearly believed in the value of sustainability to the school and education as a whole, as she stated:

How has my journey been? I was a little skeptical when I first came here. I didn’t really understand the full impact of sustainability on an entire school community and how that could change all aspects of the school environment. It’s been a very valuable change agent for me as a school leader and as a person.

And why is it valuable? We are growing our future leaders, our citizens of the world. If we’re not teaching them to be stewards of the environment we are only teaching them to be consumers, and eventually there will be nothing left to consume or anything that you would want to consume.

So really, it’s our role, ethically and morally as educators, whether we are custodians, or bus drivers, or principals, or teachers, or working in the cafeteria, or parent volunteers, or local community people, we all have an obligation to live in a manner that is sustainable, and to model that for our children and help our children.

Another high school teacher brought the dimension of physical health as a starting point to foster sustainability awareness in the students:

This environmental program kind of got me thinking that way. My background is Physical Education. So I started teaching students about healthy body. But healthy body will get you so far; healthy environment is imperative to go along with that.

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So when the idea came up that we need to have an environmental program that focuses on research and development of students’ environmental knowledge I thought, It would be pretty cool if we can help students improve our environment, take care of the environment, learn ways of enhancement, conservation, sustainability as we say know, and so forth.’ It seemed to me to be a good marriage between healthy body and healthy environment kind of thing.

Leadership Qualities and Skills

All of the participants had clear ideas with regard to the leadership qualities, skills, values, and behaviors that had worked best for them in successfully infusing sustainability principles in their schools. Some of these were common across the majority off the respondents.

Passion

The most repeated quality shared by the respondents was passion, and the power that they

had found in passion to motivate others to become engaged in sustainability efforts. The

question one of the teachers asked was, ‘When you are a passionate school about

sustainability or anything else, how will you fit that in to what you are already doing? And

it’s not really about fitting in, because really that drives a lot of our work.’ As another

teacher said it, quite simply, ‘Passion is what drives us.’ Passion also was seen to work as an

attractor for like-minded prospective teachers, which added to a school’s overall synergy.

As Principal B stated it, ‘A lot of people come here because they read on our website that

we are passionate about our work with the environment. That kind of helps as well.’

It was also interesting to see that passion was connected by some of the participants to

different sustainability-related causes that interested them. One teacher preferred to focus

on issues of health and nutrition, as her ‘passion is to help with the child obesity issue of

our nation.’ Another teacher was keen to support her students in their ability to make good

decisions, because she had ‘a passion for teaching, not just curriculum subjects to children,

but how to make decisions when they have choices.’

Another quality that teachers flagged up as very important to becoming a sustainability

leader was credibility. Without sincerity and integrity, it was impossible to get buy-in from

teachers, students, or the community. As one of the high school teachers expressed it,

I’ve been a bird watcher and a flaming liberal, and a tree hugger, my entire life, and

the kids know that this is us, this is who we really are. They know they aren’t being

faked or being directed by someone who doesn’t say and believe it and live. So that

ties back to what Neal was talking about. It’s the sincerity that we bring to the table,

that the kids know it’s real.

Purpose and Meaning

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The second most important quality respondents highlighted was that of connecting

sustainability to a strong sense of belief in the meaning and purpose of their work, and how

this influenced others. This was complemented by other qualities such as excitement,

commitment, and being seen as a model for a better way of life, and by a particular skill,

that of the ability to build strong coalitions around the notion of sustainability. As Principal

A described it:

I’m very excited over the whole program, and I think that when you show that excitement, that helps to breed excitement. And I think that the teachers noticed my commitment and they realized that this wasn’t something that was added to a meeting agenda. They knew that it was much more than that, that there was a deep sense of responsibility to sustainability. And this led to what I realized was an ability to move a group to action. I think that I relayed a deeper meaning for what we’re doing here. We are not doing this to be a green school. We are doing these things to make a better life for our students and for all those people who they touch. We are doing it because it matters and we want to make a difference.

Leadership Strategies

Recycling as a Starting Point

Among the leadership strategies that served to move their organizations, and the district,

towards greater degrees of sustainability, the majority of the respondents clearly identified

recycling as a strong starting point, or ‘low-hanging fruit,’ as one teacher described it. All of

the schools had initiated recycling programs involving faculty, staff, and students in

different degrees. To a good extent the district office had provided external incentives to

support these programs through the establishment of a partnership with the local Solid

Waste Authority, which had generously donated colorful bins, training seminars where

needed, and had become a sponsor of the local annual Green Schools’ Recognition Program.

Among the strategies themselves, respondents highlighted different aspects of recycling,

such as purchasing of recycled products and office supplies, composting of food waste, and

repurposing of school supplies such as art materials. Among the impacts to emerge from

these practices were the indirect effects on the school community as students began to

bring what they had learned about recycling and sustainability to their homes. As Principal

A phrased it:

Our children become like pebbles thrown into a pond. They are ripples that move

outward to make an impact on others throughout our community. We always hear

from parents who say ‘my child takes something out of the garbage because it needs

to go in the recycle bin. And they tell us, Mom or Dad, you’re not doing that right,

you can do it this way.’

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But for many, recycling was just an initial phase, which was followed by progressive

incorporation of different aspects of sustainability inside and outside the school building.

As one middle school teacher stated: ‘Then getting involved in the Green School application

made me realize there’s a lot more beyond recycling and I really like the green school

because it broadened my mind about everything. The green school application has the

curriculum part, and the field studies and this and that, and I realized there’s even more to

this that we have to work on.’

Communication

Another strategy that respondents highlighted as important was effective communication

of sustainability efforts. This led them to ensure sustainability was communicated in a

variety of ways and means. This included getting out the school’s vision and mission in

public appearances, in all print and digital media such as the school’s website, in the daily

public announcements of major and minor accomplishments, in relevant signage

throughout the school, and in the nature of student artifacts. Principal B clearly understood

the value of this when she stated that, ‘You need to specifically communicate vision, it

needs to be in your handbook, on your logo, on the sign of your school that you are a green

school; this is what we believe in.’

Education, Training, and Going to Scale

In the more advanced schools, internal communication of sustainability efforts had

progressed naturally to include sharing lessons learned with other schools and districts.

Both Principals and teachers in the study stressed the value of disseminating best practices

to their sister institutions in order to facilitate their own transition towards greater

degrees of sustainability in order to scale up efforts across a district. As Principal B

indicated,

I specifically did training for our other administrators so that they were aware of the

opportunity to focus on sustainability within their own school. That was very

strategic last year in training all the elementary administrators, and having district

leaders participate. So that was a strategy in being able to open up the thinking to

other schools. Not just going and saying, hey we’re a green school, we’re this, we’re

that, but this is an opportunity for all of us to learn and travel on this journey

together. This has been a really strong strategy that enabled great success in our

district, by supporting other administrators with training and providing workshops

at our school so that others good learn.

Principal B described show she had established a partnership with the local university’s

environmental education center in order to provide training before the beginning of the

school year,

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About an hour and a half long for all the elementary school principals, and we

showed the website for green schools, we had handouts, we went over the whole

process that has been in place in the district for a number of years. I feel that there is

a commitment to others, just like last year, I felt committed to share this with other

elementary administrators.

This initiative was followed by further training for the elementary schools in the districts

later in the fall of that year, with the idea for future development to be offered to the high

schools.

In October our school had a training after school for any elementary school green

team, to get detailed best practices, and to share that with others. There were about

four schools that came to that training. We shared best practices, and had someone

from the department of transportation talking about school pool and carpooling,

and reducing your car line, having your kids bike and walk to school, try to reduce

your carbon footprint of automobile traffic. It was a great opportunity to build a

sense of collaboration and support between the elementary schools. Now I feel the

commitment to do the same with our secondary. In the summer, our administrators

are in training, and we want to make sure that we replicate with them what we did

with the elementary administrators last summer.

As a result of this training, schools that had previously had little awareness of sustainability

not only became committed, but began to adopt their own strategies, including the training

of custodial staff in waste, energy, and water management practices. As a teacher in

Elementary School A described it,

There was training going on for our custodians, which was a big issue, and I know at

other schools they could put in a recycling bin, but everything would end up in the

regular trash. So, everybody has to be educated. So I know our Principal had

meetings with the different groups, the cafeteria people, the custodians, everybody

has to buy in and he trained them, “This is what we’re going to do,” and that’s where

the leadership comes in.

As Principal A viewed it, this process of educating the community was a moral imperative

for all members of the community rather than a choice.

So really, it’s our role, ethically and morally as educators, whether we are

custodians, or bus drivers, or principals, or teachers, or working in the cafeteria, or

parent volunteers, or local community people, we all have an obligation to live in a

manner that is sustainable, and to model that for our children and help our children.

Drivers

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Faculty Buy-in and Ownership

Among the greatest drivers of successful infusion of sustainability in schools, according to

the Principal of Elementary School A, is faculty ownership, ‘I think the key driver is to get

faculty buy-in and faculty ownership.’ While this may sound obvious, Principal A went on to

explain how buy-in is accomplished, asserting that ‘you get ownership through engaging

and empowering teachers to bring forth ideas and recognize staff for doing so.’

Engagement and empowerment again might seem abstract concepts, illustrated by both

Principals and teacher respondents in more practical terms, stating that in the following

ways:

- Principal A: And so we constantly get input that we use, and I recognize staff

members for bringing things forward, so recognition is a big part of it.

One of the positive unintended consequences of empowerment of teachers has been

increased loyalty at the school, as Principal A indicated, ‘Currently, we have one of the

lowest turnover rates in the County for teachers. We have very few teachers who leave.’

Another source of empowerment and gratification has been the freedom afforded to

teachers to engage students in study and activities that were relevant to both. As a high

school teacher put it,

When you take a bunch of kids who have a common interest, and you gear education

toward that interest, and help them blossom in that area, and make it a small

community of kids within that school who work together, who know each other,

who know the teachers who have common goals and common interests, and all that

kind of stuff, it has been incredibly gratifying for me to have that experience, of

helping pull that kind of thing together.

Community Involvement

For the majority of the schools in the study, though particularly for Elementary School A

and the high school, community involvement has become a clear factor in the success of the

schools’ sustainability efforts. The high school, which as mentioned previously had begun

its environmental program in 1993, collaboration, partnerships, and community

involvement in general have become an integral component of the program culture. One of

the most important activities has been a long-standing fish study. As one of the high school

teachers reported,

And the Teacher takes his kids to the river, and they identify juvenile fish, they

measure them, and keep numbers of them, and it’s the longest fish study in the

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Indian River Lagoon that exists. And all those data are then accessible to scientists

to use, and some of our students have used them for their projects.

The teacher indicated that this was one of a series of programs that students engaged in on

a rotation, which brought them into contact with multiple agencies dedicated to a range of

environmental causes. The unintended benefit has been the response of the agencies, as he

put it,

And so the students get a taste of what different aspects of environmental and

science research work is like, they make contacts with these agencies, and then, on

the other side, the agencies are there to stand up for us. If we’re ever in a politically

slippery place and we need support, they’re there, because they depend on us. So

that’s been a really important community connection. And we’ve been making those

connections with lots and lots of agencies for the entire time we’ve been working

here.

Other benefits of these partnerships included the establishment of the school’s reputation

in the community:

So we have a very solid reputation within the community. Everybody knows us, and

I tell the kids before a field trip, “The reason I want you in that academy shirt is

because as soon as people see that shirt on you, they say ‘Oh, it’s those guys, we

don’t have to worry about them, they’re not going to get lost, they’re not going to get

in trouble, they’re not going to do anything they shouldn’t do, you can count on

them, you can depend on them.’”

Without these partnerships, he indicated, many of the school’s outdoor activities would not

have been possible.

Additionally, the high school teachers were able to point out another very significant and

unplanned side-benefit of the program, that of the increased academic success of students

with exceptionalities.

This is a very successful program, and our kids are way more successful than you

could hope for them to be. We don’t just deal with the academically gifted. There are

kids who come into this program who have learning disabilities who have a number

of roadblocks in the way, and those kids are way more successful through high

school than they could possibly have been if they had been in any other setting. Test

scores, we set the curve for the school, over and over again on everything we do.

There’s no question that kids who are in our program, are successful every step of

the way.

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The high school teachers also had something of value to say not only about activities in the

school, but about the program’s impact after graduation. As one of the teachers described

it,

And hearing of what our kids are doing with this and where they go with it. I’ve lost

count of how many environmental lawyers graduated from this program. And how

many folks work with United States senators, and in the Governor’s office, and

places like that who are giving advice on environmental policy, and how many work

with the Game Commissioner, and how many work in forestry, and those kinds of

places. It’s really astounding to have that many people out there in leadership

positions that you had a chance to kind of nudge along the way.

The Natural Environment

Principal B highlighted the power of the natural environment to motivate sustainability

behaviors, coupled to the importance and value of the collaboration between committed

school personnel and community partners, including the Audubon Society. She indicated

that,

We have the most beautiful campus because of the team that was in place when the

new school was designed. It was the assistant principal at the time, who is now the

Director of Elementary Programs, huge leader, and a school parent, who was very

passionate in Audubon programs. The two of the made a huge difference with our

site, to make sure that our site was developed to embrace sustainability learning.

We have a nature trail, a community group, a local landscape design company, they

helped us with our nature trail, they donated plants, and they made a beautiful

rendition that they drew for us. If you go through the woods, there’s the nature trail

and then there’s the intra-coastal, so we’re a waterfront school. And the butterfly

garden. When the school was designed, they made that it had these features to

support the learning. The construction company and its project manager for the

school were champions for our work. I’ve been connected with him since the

construction of the school. I came here when the school was just almost ready to

open its doors, that summer I was hired. The AP was transferred to another school

and so I got to know the PM, and he is passionate about green schools. They actually

came and they had a grand opening for the butterfly garden, they released

butterflies. It was wonderful. Having all those key pieces in place enables facility

settings which support sustainability. They’re the linchpins that hold everything

together.

External Incentives

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Teachers and Principals strongly agreed that a number of external incentives had acted as

drivers for their sustainability initiatives. Teachers at Elementary School A highlighted the

beneficial influence of participating in local, state, and eventually national ‘green’

conferences. They were especially proud of the occasions when their school, and Principal,

had been invited to showcase their school’s sustainability efforts at the National Green

Schools Network conferences, the largest association of green schools in the country. They,

and teachers at other schools, also highlighted the positive value as a driver of the Pine Jog

Green Schools Recognition Program. In this case, they indicated that the program had not

just acted as an incentive but also as a valuable learning experience for the school as a

whole. This experience served to expand the school community’s understanding of the

broader dimensions of sustainability beyond recycling and isolated learning activities to a

deeper integration of sustainability in all aspects of schooling. As a result of their

engagement in the program, all of the schools in the study had reached the top recognition,

that of Schools of Excellence. The two elementary schools in the study had also earned the

program’s Green School of the Year award.

Teachers and administrators also recognized the importance of different kinds of support

of the District Office in advancing their schools’ sustainability goals. Among the most

important of these was the provision of recycling bins as part of a partnership created with

the county Solid Waste Authority. Thanks in part to the attractive, colorful nature of the

recycling bins, this highly visible program helped significantly in shifting behaviors at the

classroom level by providing opportunities for students and teachers to engage in a

systematic approach to waste management that had not previously existed in the school

district.

Money was another incentive recognized by administrators and teachers alike as a driver

of sustainability efforts. During the study, two examples emerged to illustrate the point.

The first had to do with the District’s payback program for energy savings. As one

elementary teacher put it, ‘We got kickbacks for the electrics.’ When coupled with data on

energy consumption generated by the District, the payback program had other positive

effects on energy saving behaviors at the school level. As a teacher described it,

And of course now we have data. Sometimes when you see the data for a school

we’re not as good as we think we are, so sometimes you have to push and make it

better with regard to electricity that first week, and it was really high. And now we

shut off our computers at night, we make sure the lights are off, the copy machine is

put into energy saving mode. There’s a lot of little energy savers that we weren’t

doing when we first got here. So district people help in that way.

An additional financial incentive came from the sale to the parents and community of

organic vegetables grown at two of the schools in the study. The proceeds from the sale

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was then reinvested in the schools’ organic gardening programs, thereby allowing for the

program to scale up and progressively involve more people.

District personnel also encouraged schools to publicize their sustainability initiatives in the

local media. This led to new opportunities, as in the case where one teacher reported with a

degree of pride, ‘and recently Channel 25 Weather Man was going to do Weather School

and they came here and did it here.’

Also recognized as an important driver was Elementary School A’s partnership with the

local university’s environmental education center. The center supported the school by

coordinating its summer and after school programs, which Principal A considered to be

‘very important,’ because,

Our afterschool program has environmental topics taught by the counselors, so

that’s an extension activity for our students. Students get a real appreciation for the

environment through the school, then into the afterschool and the summer camp.

They are constantly doing outdoor activities. They run field trips, they have a

gardening club, and they teach great lessons on environmental awareness.

These programs were complemented by the center’s ‘backpack program.’ As Principal A

described it,

That’s another method to get kids and teachers out of the classroom. Each backpack

has a self-contained lesson, a grab-and-go kit for each grade level. You go outside,

and your lesson is in there. You do your lesson outside. Each backpack program has

a literacy component. So there’s a book in there that they read to the kids that’s

related to the actual hands-on lesson.

Challenges

Principal Turnover

A significant finding of the study was that Principal turnover and lack of succession

planning in the larger district turned out to be a major issue when seeking to identify

school administrators who could qualify and participate in the study. This is a district level

practice that leads to the transfer of administrators each year from one school to another

for a number of reasons, among them the ‘repurposing’ of struggling schools, or

appointment of Principals to senior positions in the district offices and vice versa. While

there may be the best of intentions behind these transfers their impact, particularly when a

Principal has not been long enough in the position to institutionalize important school

improvement strategies, can be detrimental to sustainability efforts. As found in the multi-

district study on the effects of school leadership on student achievement of Seashore-Louis,

Leithwood, Wahlstrom & Anderson (2010), “Unplanned principal succession is a common

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source of adverse effects on school performance, regardless of what teachers might do” (p.

11).

When contacting the Principals of the six schools identified as the top performing green

schools, four of them had been in position for less than two years, and two of these for less

than a year. These Principals indicated that they were unable to respond to the research

questions, and referred the researcher to teachers who had been responsible for the

school’s sustainability efforts. In fact, based on the selection criteria for the study sample

that required that sustainability leaders be in position for at least three years, these

Principals could not have qualified as participants.

Only the two elementary schools in the study had Principals who had been in the position

for three years of more, and their interviews would reveal that both of them were deeply

committed to embedding sustainability in their schools. In fact, one of them was the

founding Principal of a purpose-built green elementary school that opened its doors in

2008, the first Green Ribbon School in the state of Florida. This Principal had been

appointed to the position by the former Superintendent on the grounds that his

background in Science and environmental issues singled him out as an ideal candidate,

despite the fact that he had never held an administrative position, and that his background

was not elementary education, but secondary Science. As the study revealed, these factors

have not impeded this school from becoming a leading green school not only in the district,

but in the nation. The second Principal had been in position for over eight years, and had

played a key role in infusing the school with a sustainability mindset, and with

disseminating the principles of sustainability throughout her district.

Another major finding derived from the first, and this was that the ‘sustainability torch’ has

been carried in great measure by elementary, middle, and high school teachers who have

taken upon themselves the role of sustainability champions in their schools, often against

significant challenges. The challenge of working to sustain greening efforts over time in

schools whose Principals showed differing levels of commitment to the initiative was

illustrated by another teacher leader in the Environmental Education High School Magnet

Program. If one were to categorize these three types of principal, they could be termed

respectively, as strongly keenly supportive, self-interested non-obstructive, and reluctantly

compliant.

Our first principal was a hunter, and a camper, and a fisherman, and an

outdoorsman for his whole life. And he got it, from day one. He knew exactly the

kinds of things we had in mind to do. And we would come to him with these

outlandish things that high schools don’t ask to do. Having kids off campus as

frequently as we do. And having on an overnight field trip where they’ll be handling

firearms and taking on a safety course. And he was cool with it. Because he

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understood the place of all of that. And so he offered no roadblocks. Year four, he

retires.

The next principal that we got was one who was very different. A total city slicker.

Very, very different. But she respected success. And she knew the reputation of our

program. She couldn’t see that we’d ever had any issues. And she presented no

roadblocks that I ever saw, in the entire time that she was. And we had her for four

blissful years. And then she went on higher in the county office, assistant

superintendent.

And we’ve had new principals since then. And we’ve had a couple who know that

we’re successful, they know what kind of parental grief they will get if they cause us

too much difficulty, but they don’t make things easy for us at all. They appreciate the

success of it, they cash in on that because it elevates the reputation of the school, but

they don’t just seem to any sense of how to make it easy, or how to keep things from

getting in our way, and there’s one obstacle after another after another, such as a

total unwillingness to budge on any administrative rule.

It was noteworthy that teachers reported that they had developed alternative strategies to

counteract the lack of support by principals or what they perceived as the burdensome

bureaucratic procedures placed on them by the district when seeking to develop new

projects, organize and coordinate sustainability-focused field trips. One middle school

teacher called what she did, ‘playing the oops card,’ which meant to say that it was better to

do what she knew was right when authorization was being delayed because, as she

expressed it, in these cases she was willing ‘to ask for forgiveness than permission.’

District Policy and the Critical Role of Building a System-wide Culture for Sustainability

The interviews revealed a number of challenges that these districts and their schools faced

when attempting to go ‘green.’ Among the most important was the difficulty in scaling up a

school and district-wide culture of sustainability, which was seen to be compounded by

several factors. As stated by the Principal A, of the LEED Gold certified Green Ribbon

School, ‘if you don’t have a school culture of sustainability, it really doesn’t matter what

your actual building is like, you are just another school.’ Several factors were associated

with this. First, at the district level, principals and teachers indicated that they were

experiencing increased pressure from their district to comply with a centralized approach

to implementation of the Common Core State Standards, in addition to the need to continue

working towards the existing state testing system, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment

Test (FCAT). This general trend over time towards greater centralized control by the

district was confirmed by other participants. Reportedly, this control was exercised most

significantly to ensure compliance with state and district standardized testing

requirements. In the larger district, the spring semester is designated as a blackout period

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leading up to the state tests, which affect all students in grades 3 – 11. During this time,

school time is highly constrained to test preparation. The participants highlighted a

number of adverse outcomes of this policy. Among them, was the inability to develop

organizational cultures supportive of sustainability, and in consequence, the fragmentation

of the efforts undertaken at the school level. Other unintended consequences reported

included increased teacher apathy, burnout, and turnover, diminished funding for

sustainability efforts, a tendency towards short-term rather than long-term thinking, and a

dropping off in community engagement.

This pressure, translated in two of the most ‘sustainability advanced’ schools as an increasingly prescribed approach to the curriculum, appeared in the participants’ minds to limit the school’s freedom to identify and respond effectively to its students’ learning needs within the context of a sustainability-focused curriculum. This required in Elementary School A, for example, that all 4th grade teachers teach a new 454-page writing program to ensure that all students were able to write a five-paragraph essay by the time of the FCAT Writing test in March. This manual gave teachers no flexibility to adapt the content to their curriculum focus, such as environmental issues, but took over a block of time every school day for the remainder of the year up to the day of the exam. As one teacher put it,

I feel that it’s a good thing, the Common Core. The thing is how it’s being rolled out for experienced teachers. I can see inexperienced teachers having everything laid out, every word told and how you teach a lesson, whatever, but for teachers that have been around it just seems that we are coming back around the circle like the third time. The thing I see different is the amount of paper and trainings and things like that the district is putting on us. And that takes up a lot of time, and like I told the Principal, “You don’t know what to eliminate, because you don’t know if there’s something in here that I didn’t know, I have to read it all, and it’s so time consuming, it’s sad.”

This feeling, despite their decades of experience and the success of their environmental

program, was corroborated by the high school teachers, one of whom affirmed that,

Mostly we bring the very best out of these kids all the way through and yet the

administration of the school and the district treats every one of us like we’re a

beginning teacher with low level skills. We have to go to the same trainings, we have

to fill out the same paperwork, we have to do all of the same stuff, when there is no

question that we as teachers, and as professionals, and that our kids, there’s no

question that they are successful.

In addition, increasing concern with liability issues had led to an exponential increase in

the paperwork required to secure authorization for fieldtrips. As reported by one of the

high school teachers, a co-founder of the schools highly successful Environmental

Education Magnet Program, established in 1993, “There was a fieldtrip packet. By the time

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we got it all through the network it was almost 90 pages worth of paperwork, to do

something that used to be a note, a line on a piece of paper saying we’re taking these kids to

this place on this date.”

Fragmentation of Efforts

As the interviews at these schools revealed, the teacher leaders reported significant success

in those efforts over which they had a good degree of control or autonomy. However, in

those schools where they could not count on the explicit support of their administration, it

had not been possible to scale up efforts to involve the whole school, and that efforts in

general tended to decline after the initial enthusiasm had waned. This revealed the

existence of differing degrees of commitment to sustainability and ‘green’ practices based

rather on individual interests than on a shared culture of sustainability. These practices

ranged from recycling and energy saving efforts with low emphasis on sustainability

education or community engagement, to a highly-successful self-contained environmental

academy - launched in 1993 - in the case of the high school.

Conclusion

Through a qualitative approach using interviews as its principal method for data collection,

this small-scale study sought to identify and describe the leadership qualities, skills, and

behaviors of administrators and teachers identified as effective sustainability leaders in

their schools and districts. The study also sought to identify and describe the strategies

these champions have used to move their organizations towards greater degrees of

sustainability, and how they have capitalized the drivers and overcome the challenges that

they have encountered along the way. While they have faced significant challenges at both

the school and district level, the study participants show clearly that with the right mindset

and skills, infusing and integrating the principles of sustainability in all aspects of schooling

is entirely possible.

It is the hope of the researcher that this study may contribute in some measure to raising

awareness of the importance of sustainability as a 21st century issue of critical importance

for present and future generations. It also hoped that educators and policy makers at all

levels may extract some of the lessons learned and shared here that may serve to spread

the principles of sustainability and regenerative practice to schools and districts across the

region and the country.

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Appendix A: Draft Email Invitation to Participants

Ref.: Leading for regeneration and sustainability in schools

Dear (Name of Participant),

I am writing to invite you to participate in a study intended to further an understanding of school leaders’ developmental processes as they relate to sustainability efforts in their schools. It is also designed to describe how these leaders have addressed the challenges they have faced in the process, and how they have capitalized on the drivers they have identified that have helped infuse the principles of sustainability in the school’s governance, curriculum, facilities management and operations, and community engagement.

Your school has been a recipient of the Palm Beach Green Schools Recognition Program’s Green School of Excellence award for the past three years (2011-2013). Ms. Susan Toth, Director of Education of the Pine Jog Environmental Education Center, the person responsible for the development of the program, has identified you as one of the people who have played a leading role in this significant accomplishment. This information identifies you as eminently qualified to participate in this research project.

It is for this purpose that I would like to request an interview with you, at a place and time of your choice. In addition to the interview, I also would like to request electronic copies of the application you submitted to the Palm Beach Green Schools Recognition Program, if possible for the past three years, and any supporting evidence you may provide.

I will gladly respond to any questions or concerns you may have about participating in the study, and I look forward to hear from you at your convenience.

Yours sincerely,

John Hardman

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Appendix B: Interview Protocol

INTENT:

1. Identify and describe the developmental experiences of leaders committed to sustainability/sustainable development in schools

2. Identify and describe the leaders’ role in the organization’s process of change, in policies, strategies, and practices, and in its commitment to sustainability/sustainable development

WHO: Sustainability leaders in the organization (in formal/informal sustainability positions) who have been working with sustainability efforts for three years or more

AMOUNT OF TIME: 45-60 minutes

Introduction:

This study is designed to explore the developmental processes of leaders who are committed to sustainability in their schools and districts, and the challenges and drivers they have faced in developing the strategies, policies and practices that they have implemented to move their school by degrees towards greater sustainability.

Thank you very much for agreeing to discuss this issue with me, as your views will contribute to our understanding of sustainability leadership in theory and practice.

We have agreed to meet for 45 – 60 minutes, and at the end of that time I will bring the interview to a conclusion. I have with me the consent form outlining this procedure for your signature. Please read and sign the form, confirming that you understand the nature and procedures of the study and that you are a willing participant.

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Interview Questions

Understanding/defining developmental experiences for sustainability or sustainable development and strategies for change in schools committed to sustainability and/or education for sustainable development

DATE:

RESPONDENT CODE/ID:

POSITION:

DISTRICT/SCHOOL TYPE:

SCHOOL GRADE:

FRL: W: B: H: NA: A: Mixed:

PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS, EDUCATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND (Optional):

Race/Ethnicity and/or Culture:

Education:

Experience:

PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS

Personal Journey to Sustainability Leadership

1. How do you define sustainability?

2. Can you describe your worldview or mindset before and after you became interested in sustainability, and how this came about?

3. What leadership qualities, skills, attitudes, values and/or behaviors have you identified as most valuable in driving successful sustainability efforts in school(s) and why?

Challenges and Drivers in the Journey to Sustainability

4. Describe the strategies you have implemented that have been most effective in moving the school to greater degrees of sustainability, and how these strategies have been translated into a. Policies and Procedures; b. Processes for sustainability; c. Best practices (e.g. curriculum, community engagement, facilities operations and management, school leadership, etc.)

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5. What were the most important challenges you have faced and how did you overcome them?

6. What were the most important drivers you found and how did you apply them?

Further Considerations

7. What are the key priorities of your current sustainability agenda?

8. With regard to sustainability, what future directions should schools in the United States be considering as most important at this time?

9. Is there anything we haven’t discussed that you feel is relevant to understanding sustainability in schools?

10. Would you be willing to have me contact you for a follow up interview if this became necessary?

11. In what ways does sustainability connect with the Common Core State Standards?

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Appendix C: Document Analysis Template

Title

Author

Type (physical, digital)

Focus (Governance, policy, curriculum, facilities, community engagement)

Date produced Date reviewed Location Content (Key points)

Researcher’s notes

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Appendix D: Consent Form

ADULT CONSENT FORM

1) Title of Research Study: Leading for Regeneration and Sustainability in Schools

2) Investigator(s): PI: Patricia Maslin-Ostrowski (Department of Educational Leadership & Research Methodology, College of Education); Co-PI: John Hardman (Department of Educational Leadership & Research Methodology, College of Education).

3) Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study is to investigate school and district leaders’ personal journeys from their initial awareness of the broader importance of sustainability as a core principle to the processes and strategies they applied most successfully in their respective schools. The study also seeks to explore how these leaders have been able to overcome internal and external tensions and challenges, and to identify the most powerful drivers that enabled them to generate the necessary momentum to implement these best practices in their schools. Finally, the study seeks to assess the extent to which these best practices have taken root in the collective culture of schools and districts, by evaluating the infusion of the principles of sustainable development, sustainability, or regeneration in policy, curriculum, community engagement, and facilities operations and management.

4) Procedures: Participation in this study involves sitting for one 45 – 60 minute semi-structured interview, with a potential follow up interview should this be deemed necessary. The researcher will request access to institutional documentation directly related to the purpose of the study under the respondent’s charge. Participants may deny access to this documentation and may withdraw from the study at any time.

5) Risks: The risks involved with participation in this study are no more than you would experience in regular daily activities. It is unlikely you will experience any harm or discomfort.

6) Benefits: Potential benefits to you include a greater understanding of the leadership knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors that are most effective in fostering sustainability or sustainable development in schools. It is the intention that this will contribute to capacity building for leadership and organizational change for sustainability.

7) Data Collection & Storage: With your authorization, this interview will be recorded and transcribed. All of the results will be kept confidential and secure and only the investigators working with the study will see your data, unless required by law. The data will be kept for 5 years in a locked cabinet [or password-protected computer] in the investigator’s office. After that time, paper copies will be destroyed by shredding and electronic data will be deleted. We may publish what we learn from this study. If we do, we will not let anyone know your name/identity unless you give us permission. Without prior written consent (see item 10) Consent Statement (2)), your identity will not be disclosed in this study or in future publications.

8) Contact Information: For questions or problems regarding your rights as a research subject, you can contact the Florida Atlantic University Division of Research at (561) 297-0777. For other questions about the study, you should contact the principal investigator(s), Patricia Maslin-Ostrowski at pmaslin@fau.edu, (561) 297 3550; or John Hardman at whardma1@fau.edu, 561 789 9418.

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ADULT CONSENT FORM – Leading for Regeneration and Sustainability in Schools

9) Consent Statement (1) I have read or had read to me the preceding information describing this study. All my questions have been answered to my satisfaction. I am 18 years of age or older and freely consent to participate. I understand that I am free to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. I have received a copy of this consent form.

I agree ____ I do not agree ___ to be audiotaped

Signature of Subject:______________________________________ Date: _____________________

Printed name of Subject: First Name ___________________ Last Name_______________________

Signature of Investigator: ___________________________________________ Date: _____________________

10) Consent Statement (2):

I freely consent for my name, school and district to be cited by the researcher in conference presentations and professional publications, provided that this disclosure does not reflect negatively on any of them.

Signature of Subject:______________________________________ Date: _____________________

Printed name of Subject: First Name ___________________ Last Name_______________________

Signature of Investigator: ___________________________________________ Date: _____________________

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