The previous section made considerable use of documents produced by
government and other official agencies. However, this section draws on a
rather different body of literature including studies undertaken by NGOs. In
England, a great deal of the recent work on sustainability in secondary schools,
where it has focused on the experience of school members and the actual
practice of sustainability at the school level, has been done by NGOs.
Generally speaking, these organisations are ones with an interest in the
environment (WWF, for example) and an educational side to their operations, or
those explicitly organised to campaign for a greater focus on sustainability and/or education (see Symons’ (2008) work for SEEd below, for example).
There are advantages and disadvantages to using NGO literature: their
independence from government and their close work with schools gives them a
more objective viewpoint, or at least a different viewpoint from government
sources, while keeping them very close to actual practice. It is also worth
pointing out that many of the authors of these publications are academics in
their own right, working for an NGO. Of course, NGOs have their own agenda,
and bias, which also needs to be recognised: all the documents discussed in
this chapter were published with a view to raising the profile of ESD in schools
or even to promote changes in government policy and finance in that area.
However, where theories are expressed in this body of work, they are based on
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Section 2.4 discusses documents in this vein, but I start with an exception to the
rule.
Gillian Symons reviewed the literature on Environmental Education (EE) and
ESD research, in 2008, for Sustainability and Environmental Education (SEEd),
an umbrella NGO, working with government, educational institutions and
educators, and with other interested NGOs. Symons aimed to identify factors
that enabled or hindered the implementation of ESD, and, in doing so, was able
to comment on the situation regarding ESD in the NC and primary and
secondary schools in the UK. She notes the benefits of schools embedding sustainability, with examples (e.g. making lessons ‘real’ for pupils, and
motivating them), but she states that the majority of schools are not engaged
with this process, noting that:
“…the research evidence suggests that there is a big difference in practice between those schools identified as actively engaged with sustainability and the majority of schools for whom it is not a high priority.” (Symons, 2008, p.13)
Symons describes National College of School Leadership (NCSL) survey results that show that all of the eight ‘Doorways’ were being addressed in the
1739 participating schools, with ‘Water and energy’ covered by the highest percentage (80%) and ‘The global dimension’ covered by the fewest schools
(40%). Approximately 10%-20% of schools said they had the various aspects of the SSF “satisfactorily in place”, with the percentage tending to be lower in
secondary schools (Symons, 2008, p.19). She also notes that there is a large
gap between what was claimed about sustainability and what was actually
being done (Symons, 2008).
Symons was also able to list factors that are common among schools
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They take a whole-school approach, embedding sustainability in policy and curriculum;
They involve students in meaningful decision-making, often via a Student Council;
They have a broad understanding of sustainability, including social, economic and environmental aspects rather than focusing just on
environmental ones as is often the case in schools less successful in this
area13;
They tend to use a distributed leadership model;
They tend to be outward-looking, involving the local community to provide context for active learning and citizenship – and to look beyond the NC;
Some have a sustainability co-ordinator, use appropriate pedagogy, and include sustainability in Continuous Professional Development (CPD)
(Symons, 2008).
By way of contrast, teachers’ perceptions of barriers are also listed:
Insufficient time and money dedicated to sustainability, a problem related to the over-emphasis of examination results;
The low priority given to sustainability (related to a lack of time);
Confusion over priorities: between government guidance on sustainability and the NC; and between sustainability and literacy and numeracy targets
and grades;
The rigid curriculum;
The lack of enforcement of sustainability policy;
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A lack of awareness that sustainability was considered a priority, and a perception that Local Authorities and senior management did not see it as a
priority;
The cross-curricular status of sustainability in the NC;
A knowledge gap: sustainability was seen as a complicated, controversial and contested topic that teachers did not feel able to deal with;
Lack of training: sustainability was not a CPD priority for the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), and was covered only patchily in
Initial Teacher Training (ITT);
Inefficiently overlapping initiatives and NGO support;
Problems with old or inflexible buildings and estates that needed to be run sustainably to avoid undermining sustainability teaching;
Lack of evidence of impact on students’ values and behaviour (Symons, 2008).
Thirdly, Symons noted the things that teachers felt helped them to include
sustainability:
Time to create a shared vision within the school (and time to see change, perhaps five years);
A joined-up approach, linking sustainability with other key initiatives;
Support from various levels and locations within and outwith the schools;
Distributed leadership, which also helps to minimise the problem of time;
Using formal school structures, to give sustainability work formal status;
Local Authority support is crucial but mostly lacking: it is key in bringing schools together to support each other in sustainability work;
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Student participation and leadership, with genuine involvement and a high profile;
Active citizenship work (Symons, 2008).
This sets out a very detailed picture of the perception of sustainability in
schools; of course a barrier is very often caused by the absence of an enabler,
and there are many similarities between the lists above. I do not disagree with
any of the conclusions Symons comes to, but it is my experience that almost all
schools are not yet ready to put her recommendations fully into action. I
expand upon this theme in Chapters 4-7 and return to it in Section 8.3.
Birney et al. (2006), writing for WWF-UK, focus on one central area, the idea of
a whole-school approach to sustainability, and it is worth noting that they begin
by making a good case for education being essential in dealing with such a complex idea. Drawing on Vygotsky’s (1978) ideas about the efficacy of social
learning, Birney et al. argue that sustainability is too complex for individuals to
deal with alone: having an expert to lead an effort towards sustainability in a
school does not work because they need the help of others, but are separated
more by their expert status. Instead, they assert that “sustainability is a social
process” (Birney et al., 2006, p.3).
Birney et al. (2006) also discuss the purposes of education, arguing that a key
aim is to enable individuals to become effective learners, by helping them to
understand how they learn so that this can be a conscious process (Birney et
al., 2006). Secondly, they suggest that social learning is necessary for
sustainability, as is whole-school involvement, because this results in a
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suggest that, before sustainability can be mainstreamed in society, it “needs” to
be mainstreamed in schools (Birney et al., 2006, p.5). Thirdly, Birney et al.
make recommendations that should be followed if a whole-school approach is
to succeed: focus on an action learning approach, and involve pupils and the
wider community in decision making; provide time and space to formulate a
long-term but flexible plan, and share it.
Birney et al. (ibid) looked at activities in 33 case-study schools, but the 2009 WWF Report ‘Primacy of the Personal’ focused on the experiences of a wide
range of education professionals (“a number of stakeholders in the English
education system”, WWF-UK, 2009, p.3) around ESD. Six themes emerged,
including many which are familiar in the context of this chapter:
The NC is more focused on perceived economic needs (underpinning the national economy) than on SD; it is ‘siloised’ and restrictive, and stifles
creativity; assessment and examination results have too much influence in
schools;
Systemic change is needed in education, working from within; there are many barriers to change, including initiative fatigue, isolation of ESD
practitioners, over-emphasis on the economic aspect of sustainability and on
assessment;
Sustainability is perceived as failing to bring real change, is not supported by school leadership, and is not focusing enough on ‘the local’;
New ways of learning are required for sustainability in schools, emphasising relationships; teachers need support and are not covering sustainability in
their Initial Teacher Training (ITT);
Primary schools have more flexibility in learning, which partly explains their greater engagement with sustainability compared with the secondary sector;
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The need for real-world and experiential education, empowering young people who are worried about the current situation and want to do
something about it but feel unable to do so (WWF-UK, 2009).
Harris (2008), writing for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT),
focuses on leadership in sustainable schools, repeatedly emphasising leadership’s crucial role in school development and change. She states that
becoming a sustainable school has to be set as the main priority by school
leaders, reinforced through development planning, embedded in teaching and
learning and school development policies. Harris (2008, p.41) agrees that it is impossible for one person to lead the process on their own: “By definition it has
to be a collective and distributed form of leadership activity.” Of course,
establishing that all have responsibility helps to avoid a situation where no-one
takes responsibility.
Birney & Reed (2009) also focused on leadership, again selecting this as the
key to schools developing sustainability successfully. They studied 56 primary
and secondary schools, identifying leadership qualities and characteristics of
sustainable schools. Like Harris, they found that successful sustainable schools had sustainability fully embedded, and “the responsibility of everyone rather
than the personal commitment of a few” (Birney & Reed, 2009, p.4) in a whole
school approach. Among the characteristics Birney and Reed found to be
common in sustainable schools were: an outward-looking attitude; a culture of
sustainability, communicated to all members of the school community; positive
benefits to pupils in terms of engagement, participation, leadership, attainment
and behaviour; connection with other educational initiatives; a specific focus on children’s learning via real-life contexts and practical, hands-on activities;
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changing the curriculum, embedding sustainability across the whole curriculum
so that it is viewed differently (Birney & Reed, 2009).
In order to do this, Birney & Reed recommend:
Establishing the situation regarding sustainability in a school, via an audit; identifying and developing leaders; celebrating success;
Leaders demonstrate a full commitment to sustainability: this may involve a change to a more devolved style of leadership;
Leaders delegate to capable deputies, involve students and network within and outwith the school;
Identifying a clear vision, and putting it in the school development plan
Being patient, flexible and creative with change; evaluating and reflecting on progress; making resources available;
Making connections with other issues and initiatives and extending learning (Birney & Reed, 2009).
All of these steps are also recommended by Jackson in her report for the WWF
and NCSL. She adds that she found that schools generally said they knew that
sustainability was very important, but had not put it in place, citing familiar
problems: lack of time, support, money and flexibility (Jackson & WWF, 2007).
Jackson is firm in criticising an over-emphasis on exam results:
“…schools which have opted for a sustainable ethos are often looking for achievement in broader areas such as effective socialisation of pupils rather than improved SAT scores.14” (Jackson & WWF, 2007, p.47)
Two more findings stand out from Jackson’s work. Surprisingly, given the broad
consensus that schools over-emphasised the environmental aspect of
14
Standard Aptitude Tests (SATs) are taken by students in England at the ages of 7 and 11: these tests establish student attainment and progress.
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sustainability, Jackson identifies the environmental aspect of sustainability as
the area of greatest weakness in schools (Jackson & WWF, 2007). Secondly, Jackson describes as “clearly an important finding” her conclusion that:
“pupil engagement was the least significant barrier which, coupled with their potential influence, indicates the value in enabling them to actively participate, and even lead, aspects of sustainability…this must be considered to be the case for both secondary and primary pupils” (Jackson & WWF, 2007, p.41)
Gayford (2009), also writing for WWF-UK, focused his research on the
perspectives of school pupils: as such, his study provides an interesting
contrast with reports focusing on school leadership and staff (Harris, 2008;
Birney & Reed, 2009). Gayford found that most of the pupils he spoke to
thought that sustainability was important, and all wanted their schools to
demonstrate that they valued sustainability and took it seriously. He noted a
difference between primary and secondary pupils, surmising that secondary pupils’ lower level of support for sustainability might be explained by the
increasing peer pressure and economic responsibilities they felt, as older
children. He also states that primary school children were more likely to conform to “the received attitudes of the school/staff” (Gayford, 2009, p.14).
Working with school-children over a period of time, Gayford attempted to
identify changes in pupil knowledge and competencies around sustainability,
and factors that affected them. He asserts that both knowledge and
competencies improved over the three-year period he looked at, and lists
aspects of the schools associated with these improvements. These aspects
include themes familiar from other literature already discussed (explicit links to
sustainability in the school curriculum and the school ethos; integration between
the formal and informal curriculum; events and activities involving the local
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also the need for concordance between school and home, in terms of attitudes
towards sustainability (Gayford, 2009).
Gayford’s work also includes other key findings. He notes that, although other
literature has criticised schools for only addressing sustainability through one-off
events, pupils actually like this sort of activity. He also suggests that the most
successful student councils are ones where students themselves run the
meetings, and that students feel disillusioned if they do not see the results of
their efforts before they leave their schools, which can be a relatively short time.
Gayford does, however, note:
“It is apparent that pessimism can turn to hope when young people are given knowledge about how to act, and when what might be described as ‘unfocused fear’ is replaced by factual information and practical strategies for addressing issues.” (Gayford, 2009, p.5).
In addition, Gayford suggests that the term “‘sustainability’ could be problematic
[in home-school communication], as it could cause confusion over what the school was trying to achieve” (Gayford, 2009, p.18), presumably because many
parents will not be aware of its meaning15. Finally, he includes many young people’s comments, covering their concerns, in this report, but tellingly, he
concludes that, “There was a sense among young people that adults did not
take these matters sufficiently seriously.” (Gayford, 2009, p.8).
Certain messages seem to have appeared several times in the literature
reviewed in this section. There is a broadly agreed body of advice that schools
can try to follow if they want to focus on sustainability and common barriers
identified, which might also help this process. The barriers identified in NGO
literature seem to tie in with one of the themes in Section 2.3: government
15
I found the same thing with students, when trialling a questionnaire at my pilot school (see Sections 3.6 and 7.2.1).
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policy leads to a far greater emphasis on examination results, rather than
certain other aspects of schooling such as ESD16. Consequently, the majority
of schools do not see ESD as a priority and it is not dealt with effectively,
despite its (admittedly limited) presence in the NC.