ECOLOG is based upon a participatory approach: Schools analyse the ecological, technical, and social conditions of their environment and, on the basis of these results, define objectives, targets, and/or concrete activities and quality criteria, to be implemented and evaluated. Students as well as all the other stakeholders of a school should be involved in a participatory way, and collaboration with authorities, businesses, and other interested parties is encouraged. ECOLOG is a national support system with the aim of promoting and integrating an ecological approach into the development of individual schools and attempts are being made to embed the programme in Austria's federal states through regional networks (Rauch 2013). All in all, over 400 schools with about 90,000 students are currently part of the network (www.oekolog.at) (Rauch & Pfaffenwimmer 2014). Throughout the past fourteen years of the ECOLOG-schools network's existence, a series of evaluations, inquiries, and studies have been produced. Based on these evaluations, the author was commissioned to conduct an evaluation study of those 23 schools that have been part of the ECOLOG programme for the last 10 years (Rauch & Dulle 2012). Through guideline-based interviews (Lamnek 2005), this study collects and analyses evaluations by heads of schools and ECOLOG coordinators of the effects of the ECOLOG programme in their schools as well as the experiences the interview partners have had with the programme during the last 10 years. The 23 schools which are part of this study come from all nine Austrian states and represent all school types, including primary schools, secondary schools, higher secondary schools, as well as vocational schools and higher vocational schools. Afterwards, these interviews were transcribed and analysed according to the model of content analysis (Mayring 2002). Furthermore, additional material available at the schools was analysed. Prior to final analysis, a brochure was produced, containing summaries of all ECOLOG-related activities in the form of illustrated profiles of the 23 schools as well as of their successes and challenges that were faced (Rauch & Dulle 2011). This brochure as well as a number of theses, formulated from the preliminary results of the interviews, was presented and put forward for discussion in the context of a workshop with representatives of the schools interviewed and other schools taking part in the ECOLOG programme. In the presentation the theses as well as the feedback which was generated in the workshop will be presented and reflected (Rauch 2016).

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