Open this publication in new window or tab >>2019 (English)In: Environmental Education Research, ISSN 1350-4622, E-ISSN 1469-5871, Vol. 25, no 4, p. 508-531Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
This study applies a model of school organisation developed by one of the authors to investigate school improvement processes leading to a whole school approach in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) literature. The model is operationalized to a survey instrument and distributed to Swedish upper secondary teachers. The instrument provides empirical indications of teachers’ perceptions of their schools in terms of four major dimensions of an ESD whole school approach, the importance assigned to a holistic vision, routines and structures, professional knowledge creation, and practical pedagogical work. The aims of the study are to compare the teachers’ perception of their school organisation. We compare perceptions of teachers working in schools actively implementing ESD and teachers in comparable reference schools. Comparisons are also made between teachers from schools applying different strategies and quality approaches in implementing ESD. The results indicate that, relative to teachers in ordinary schools, those in ESD schools perceive their school organisations to have higher quality and coherence, with greater potential to support teaching and pedagogical work in practice. However, there is substantial variation in perceptions of teachers from different ESD schools. The model’s robustness is validated by coherence of earlier results in the same schools.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Taylor & Francis, 2019
Keywords
Whole school approach, school organisation, ESD implementation, visualising ESD, ESD quality
National Category
Didactics
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-67310 (URN)10.1080/13504622.2018.1455074 (DOI)000475360700004 ()2-s2.0-85046032288 (Scopus ID)
Funder
Swedish Research Council, B0589701
2018-05-112018-05-112022-11-25Bibliographically approved