The Role Of Sustainable Schools Programs In Building A More Sustainable World: Matters Of Argument, Evidence And Influence

Author(s):

Alan Reid(presenting / submitting)Mark Rickinson Matthew Hall

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 13, ESE Implementation and Schools

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-11

11:00-12:30

Room:

X. Előadó [C]

Chair:

Leif Östman

Contribution

Through this paper, we share reflections on findings and ideas emerging from recent research into the impacts and effectiveness of the ResourceSmart AuSSI program for schools in Victoria, Australia. In addressing the network call theme, What Does Research Tell us about Education’s Role in Building a More Sustainable World?,  we link this to the range of expected and actual roles of sustainable schools programs in building a more sustainable world, with a particular focus on how these relate to matters of argument, evidence and influence (Majone, 1992).

In detail, we consider: many sustainable school-type initiatives have taken place in Australia and internationally - how, and on what basis, might ResourceSmart compare? For example, is it conceived in similar ways with similar expected outcomes? Does it deliver the same range of benefits, and how do the barriers it faces compare? Where are evaluation frameworks, development and strategic priorities focused, and where might they be refocused given the outcomes and learnings gained from such work? Moreover, how do we know and reason this well, and apply this to sustainable school program activities more broadly?

The proposed paper explores and reflects on the influences that sustainable school programs can have in schools. It draws upon our experiences of evaluating a contemporary Australian sustainable school initiative (the ResourceSmart program in Victoria) during 2014, and associated questions about how the influence (as distinct from the impact) of sustainable schools programs can be conceptualised, investigated and evidenced. In other words, it contributes to the call in terms of both the mapping of the research base in ESE, and understanding the achievements of ESE research in this area.

In terms of understanding the remit of a sustainable school, we take the following summary as a starting point (DCSF, 2008, p. 6), to which many sustainable schools initiatives allude:

A sustainable school prepares young people for a lifetime of sustainable living, through its teaching, fabric and its day-to-day practices. It is guided by a commitment to care:

• for oneself (our health and well-being);

• for each other (across cultures, distances and generations); and

• for the environment (both locally and globally).

In brief, the ResourceSmart program is a Victorian Government initiative that ‘helps schools benefit from embedding sustainability in everything they do’. According to the program’s official history, it has had more than 1000 schools sign up since the pilot initiative in 2003 (SV, 2014, §1.2.1). Our program evaluation sought to examine two main issues: (i) the impacts and effectiveness of the program within participating schools; and (ii) the role and contribution of the program, as opposed to other influences, in bringing about such impacts. In this paper, we reflect upon the two issues in terms of the construction and presentation of argument, evidence and influence.

We start by acknowledging that there is a growing body of empirical and conceptual research around the development of sustainable schools, focused either on individual initiatives (e.g. through case studies of schools), or as part of a broader initiative or network (e.g. through program evaluation across a range of schools and sites). Prominent examples of research, development activities, and evaluations of sustainable school initiatives in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK that illustrate such work, include:

Method

• the work of the UK government inspection system, Ofsted (2003, 2009), which tracked and evaluated the embedding of sustainability in primary and secondary schools, over 3 year cycles, positing that improving the attention and systems that fostered sustainability in schools would have tangible outcomes that improved the learning and lives of students, and the broader life of the school. A key outcome of this work was to reinforce a focus on evidence of impact on management, curriculum, teaching, learning, decision-making, specific projects, general environmental indicators, purchasing, grounds and learning environment; • models for self-evaluation, such as WWF’s S3 model (DCSF, 2008), which underpinned aspects of the Ofsted work and the ‘commitment to care’ model, while also including a strong focus on the culture and ethos of the school, policy statements, professional development, the international dimension to the curriculum, school subject leadership, and how the school involves, and makes use of, the wider school community to enrich learning and students’ personal and social development to support their work in developing the sustainability agenda; • Eames et al.’s (2008, 2010) evaluation of 3 EfS schemes in New Zealand schools (Enviroschools Programme, the National EfS Team and Mātauranga Taiao), which argues that evaluative work focuses on intentions, processes and outcomes of an initiative, and puts greater emphasis on teaching style than the approaches mentioned above, alongside raising challenges about scalability of initiatives, constraints peculiar to larger schools, the strength of a local knowledge base about EfS, and the coherence of the wider education strategy within which EfS is nested, within the school, and for example, as part of a national curriculum, common core or standards framework (cf. Goodfellow & Andrew-Power, 2007); • Barrett-Hacking et al.’s (2010) analysis of the educational and social benefits to young people of learning in a sustainable school (DCSF, 2010), written for school leaders; which highlights participatory approaches (cf. Shallcross & Robinson, 2008) and the modeling of sustainability practices, thinking and planning (cf. Higgs & McMillan, 2006), amongst a range of other themes, all within a broader context of ‘raising standards’, ‘enhancing well-being’ and ‘advancing community cohesion’ (cf. Smith, 2006, Harris, 2008); • framing and evaluative models offered by Ferreira et al. (2006), Scott & Gough (2003a, b) and Scott (2008, 2010), and Gayford (2009) and Harris (2009) that advance: whole-school approaches; conceptual analysis for capacity building; and the pupils’ perspective and practitioner research, respectively.

Expected Outcomes

Our full paper shows how this body of work has emerged in parallel with a growing interest in how education programs are understood, evaluated and researched in this field, although this has often been in isolation from critical discussion about what is appropriate, timely, possible, and worth evaluating, researching and communicating to others about a particular program (see, for example, Stokking et al., 1999; Simmons, 2004; Fielding, 2005; Thomson et al., 2005; Heimlich, 2010; Stanwick & Hargreaves, 2012; Stern et al., 2013; Russ, 2014). In sum, we consider how such work might lead to richer and more powerful understandings of various aspects of school sustainability, including ‘intervention’ and ‘change’ processes. In particular, we consider how research and evaluation may contribute more nuanced appreciations of the different dimensions of school sustainability that can be modelled and evaluated (e.g. the ‘campus’, ‘curriculum’, ‘community’ and ‘culture’, and their interactions, after Ferreira et al. 2006), and the different stages of school sustainability that help articulate understandings of the various journeys and relative progress pathways and milestones that schools experience (e.g. ‘initial exploration’, ‘some assimilation’, ‘more strategy’ and ‘towards restorative’, after Webster & Johnson, 2010). Finally, within the full paper, we conduct a ‘deliberative inquiry’ about our own priorities, practices and experiences with program evaluation, using the ResourceSmart initiative as a touchstone to our dialogue and reflexive knowledge claims. We expect the presentation and paper to contribute to ongoing development and debate about the range and foci of program evaluations and research design in the field of ESE, and in particular, discussions about the role and value of focusing on argument, evidence and influence, reflexivity amongst research teams, and the connections between field specific and wider education research concerns.

References

Barratt Hacking, E. et al. (2010). Evidence of Impact of Sustainable Schools. DCSF (2008). Planning a Sustainable School. DCSF (2010). Evidence of Impact of Sustainable Schools. Eames, C. et al. (2008). An evaluation of characteristics of environmental education practice in New Zealand schools. Environmental Education Research, 14(1), 35-51. Eames, C. et al. (2010). Education for Sustainability in New Zealand schools. Ferreira, J. et al. (2006). Whole-School Approaches to Sustainability. Fielding, M. (2005). Factors Influencing the Transfer of Good Practice. Gayford, C. (2009). Learning for Sustainability: from the pupils’ perspective. Goodfellow, M. & Andrew-Power, K. (eds.) (2007). Raising Standards: making sense of the sustainable schools agenda. Harris, A. (2008). Leading Sustainable Schools. Harris, F. (ed.) (2009). Letting Students Lead: sustainable schools in action. Heimlich, J. (2010). Environmental education evaluation. Evaluation and Program Planning, 33(2), 180-185. Higgs, A. & McMillan, V. (2006). Teaching though Modeling: four schools’ experiences in sustainability education. Journal of Environmental Education, 38(1), 39-53. Majone, G. (1992). Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process. Ofsted (2003). Taking the first step forward...towards an education for sustainable development: Good practice in primary and secondary schools. Ofsted (2009). Education for Sustainable Development: Improving schools - improving lives. Russ, A. (ed.) (2014). Measuring Environmental Education Outcomes. Scott, W. (2008). Raising Standards: making sense of the sustainable school. Scott, W. (2010). Developing the Sustainable School: thinking the issues through. Scott, W. & Gough, S. (2003a). Categorizing Environmental Learning. NAAEE Communicator, 33(1), 8. Scott, W. & Gough, S. (2003b). Rethinking relationships between education and capacity-building. Applied Environmental Education & Communication, 2(4), 213-219. Shallcross, T. & Robinson, J. (2008). Sustainability Education, Whole School Approaches and Communities of Action. In: A. Reid et al. (eds.), Participation and Learning, pp.299-320. Simmons, B. (2004). Designing Evaluation for Education Projects. Smith, S. (2006). Sustainable Schools. In: D. Tilbury & K. Ross (eds.), Living Change: Documenting good practice in Education for Sustainability in NSW. Stanwick, J. & Hargreaves, J. (2012). Measuring and Maximising Research Impact in Applied Social Science Research Settings. Stern, M. et al. (2013). Environmental education program evaluation in the new millennium: What do we measure and what have we learned? Environmental Education Research, 20(5), 581-611. Stokking, K. et al. (1999). Evaluating Environmental Education. Sustainability Victoria (2014). ResourceSmart AuSSI VIC Guidelines. Thomson, G. et al. (2005). Measuring the Success of Environmental Education programs. Webster, K. & Johnson, C. (2010). Sense & Sustainability: Educating for a circular economy.

Author Information

Alan Reid (presenting / submitting)

Monash University

Faculty of Education

Clayton

Mark Rickinson

Monash University, Australia

Matthew Hall