This empirical study on leadership actions investigate Education for sustainable development (ESD) in Swedish schools. School leaders at five schools in one Swedish municipality are interviewed twice in 2018 and 2020, to evaluate effects from a longitude school improvement project focusing ESD.  

Actions can be seen as the school leader individual response on a direct stimuli. The school leader take action. Agency on the other hand is the gathered experience of such stimuli and the alternative possibilities at hand for a school leader to act upon (Feldman & Pentland 2003). Leadership agency in this study is defined the sense making of ESD over time by school leaders acting by experience, or what  Hallenberg (2018) call expert agency, based in their own actions and related to other school leaders way of acting as a collective (Tourish 2014). The study adds knowledge to how individual leadership actions can contribute or counteract ESD implementation. Further aspects that drives and establishes ESD over time in schools; leadership agency on ESD is outlined. 

A review study on school leaders and education for sustainable development, ESD (Mogaji & Newton, 2020) reported the need to make school leaders more aware of ESD,  as a way to empower students to handle sustainable. Research onschool leadership to  raise quality in ESD active schools points out a lack of connection between inner school organizational routines that give support to ESD and the external organizational routines that connect education to the surrounding society (Mogren & Gericke, 2017), which in ESD is a guarantee of the relevance of education to the learner. Knowledge on school leadership and ESD as exemplified is based on case studies that point out important starting points for an effective ESD implementation, holistic ideas (Leo & Wickenberg 2013; Mogren, Gericke & Scherp, 2019) collegial approaches in the school organization (Gericke & Torbjörnsson, 2022) and  legitimizing functions (Mogren & Gericke, 2019). This study builds on the knowledge identified at the formulation arena of ESD and take it one step further,  studying the realization arena, what actually falls out in practice of ESD implementation over time, based on initial intentions. The formulation arena of a project, setting the scene is not a guarantee for successful implementation, instead schools often fail in their ambitions on ESD (Hargreaves, 2008) and certification programs on ESD with initial ambitions is not always successful (Olsson, Gericke & Chang Rundgren, 2016 ).

Sense making activities is a methodological approach in school improvement and used in this study to understand practice (Weick, 2001). Sense making deals with challenges in the daily work patterns for school leaders, when ordinary frames of reference are disrupted and new understandings needs to be incorporated (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstefeld, 2005).  How school leaders make sense of ESD; couple the formulated visions  to the practical outcomes of ESD is understood in this study by the  framework of coupling mechanism (Liljenberg & Nordholm 2018). The framework of coupling mechanism seeks to understand more than if organizational routines  on ESD are in place, but also their outcome and how they are used in practice.  The coupling mechanisms is categorized according to either accommodation mechanisms leading to permanent changes of structures and routines in the organization for ESD. Mechanisms can also be assessed as assimilation, then leading to superficial changes, or decoupling mechanisms that shows no positive effects of implementation of ESD or  even hinder changes in education. 

Research questions:

A, What leadership actions are identified for reaching accommodation in an ESD school improvement process?

B, How is leadership agency in ESD formed and characterized in practical ESD implementation?

This study is conducted within a school improvement project, studied by researchers in several different studies over time . The project was introduced to five schools in one municipality starting with a pre-study in year 2016 and followed by research until year 2021. The respondent nine school leaders from five schools all take part in the continues school improvement project on ESD. The aim of the practical improvement work for schools is to steer their processes towards an ESD whole school approach (Henderson & Tilbury, 2004) that establishes ESD in the school organization. The theoretical framework of coupling mechanisms, assessing actions as accommodative, assimilative or decoupling (Liljenberg & Nordholm 2018) link the formulation arena of ESD and the realization arena with outcomes in practice. School leaders actions on three specific organizational routines of ESD are studied over time (a holistic idea of ESD, the interdisciplinary approach of ESD and leadership legitimization of ESD). Accommodation actions are searched as they intend to transform and change pre-defined understanding of education, causing real changes that are permanent. Leadership agency on ESD is analyzed by thematization (White, 2009) of collective action by responding school leaders over time. Leadership agency towards an established ESD implementation is outlined by combining the mechanisms used by school leaders steering their actions and the identified themes of importance for the whole group in leading towards ESD. Interview data was coded, transcribed and narratives was constructed. nd characterized in practical ESD implementation? We make use of the analyzation of narratives to answer research question 1, RQ1, What leadership actions are identified for reaching accommodation in an ESD school improvement process? In the second step, thematization of narratives (from RQ1) for each mechanism of ESD (accommodation, assimilation and decoupling) are analyzed to search for characteristics of leadership agency in ESD, answering RQ2, How is leadership agency in ESD formed and characterized in practical ESD implementation?

Results on identified leadership actions for reaching accommodation of ESD confirm the importance of leadership actions to establish a guiding holistic idea on ESD in the school organization, as well as acting on communication and feed-back systems where collegial long reaching work can develop over time. Results further shows that a realization on ESD towards a permanent implementation is a pathway of distancing reliance on individual responsibilities of ESD to instead build structural support in the organization. Accommodating agency, as searched in the study consist of school leaders that involve collegial with other school leader to find moral support in decision-making as the same time as they increase their own understanding of the improvement of ESD. Five characteristic expressions for advancement in leadership agency of ESD towards a permanent implementation is identified; 1, changes in the infrastructure of education to establish interdisciplinary teacher teams. 2, the use of a distributed leadership approach to collaborate collegial on ESD. 3, the active use of steering documents to support and legitimize ESD implementation and as a response to critical voices. 4, the development of supportive and structural routines as well as continuously keeping school improvement on ESD alive. 5, establishing a terminology about ESD that is used at the local school and that need specific introduction to new staff . Over all the pathway towards a permanent accommodation of ESD and the characteristic of accommodation mechanisms state that leadership agency of ESD is a question of nesting ESD to the robust foundations within education to establish structures and processes that prevents ESD implementation to fade or fail. In this study robust foundations are identified as ESD common goals in the organization, collegial work, communication, and leadership ambitions.

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