Austria’s largest network for sustainable development education in schools is ÖKOLOG, which currently comprises 11% (over 700 schools) of the Austrian schools of all types as well as all university colleges for teacher education. ÖKOLOG was developed in 1996 by an Austrian team of teachers working on the international ENSI project (Affolder & Varga, 2018). ÖKOLOG is a national support system with the aim of promoting and integrating a sustainability approach into the development of individual schools and attempts are being made to embed the programme in Austria's federal states inter alia by regional networks and a webpage (www.ecolog.at).

ÖKOLOG is structured in three levels to support schools in the ÖKOLOG program: (1) the coordination by the Institute of Instructional and School Development at the University of Klagenfurt in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, (2) nine ÖKOLOG regional teams (one in each Austrian province) in collaboration with educational and environmental authorities, University Colleges of Teacher Education and various organizations of environmental and sustainability education, and (3) ÖKOLOG coordinators and teams in all ÖKOLOG schools (Rauch et al., 2023). Schools analyse the ecological, technical, and social conditions of their environment and, resultingly, define objectives, targets, concrete activities, and quality criteria to be implemented and evaluated. Students and other stakeholders of a school should be involved in a participatory way, and collaboration with authorities, businesses, and other interested parties is encouraged. The measures concern, among others, areas like saving resources (energy, water, etc.), reduction of emissions (i.e., waste, traffic), spatial arrangement (from the classroom to the campus), the culture of learning (communication, organisational structure), health promotion, social learning, as well as the opening of the school to the community (Rauch & Pfaffenwimmer, 2020).

Since the beginning of the ÖKOLOG-schools network's existence, a series of evaluations, inquiries, and studies have been produced and published both using qualitative and quantitative methods (Rauch et al., 2023).  Evaluation studies are carried out on an ongoing basis to gain a better understanding of organizational and individual educational processes and to ensure the quality of educational governance. The current evaluation study is also specifically dedicated to so-called all-day schools. Traditionally, school lessons in Austria are mainly held in the morning. In recent years, all-day schools have gained in importance, not least for social reasons (e.g. parents working). In principle, all-day schools spread school life over the whole day (usually from 8:00 to 17:00) and offer lunch. The structuring of lessons and extracurricular activities at the schools is additive or integrative.

The main theoretical model used is currently those on ESD effective schools by Verhelst et al. (2022). In this model six central processes are identified which influence a "whole school approach": Pluralistic communication, shared vision, democratic decision making, adaptability, collective efficacy and supportive relations. It is assumed that all-day schools have specific potential for transformative educational processes due to the fact that they go beyond conventional teaching, but at the same time specific demands are placed on them. The aim of the studies described below was to explore these relationships and their potential.

2022 - 2023, a total of four case studies were carried out in different contexts. When selecting the participating schools, in addition to membership in the ÖKOLOG network, care was taken to cover the diversity of the Austrian school landscape as far as possible: Thus, a rural elementary school (pupils aged 6-10) and an urban grammar school (pupils aged 10-18) both receive a lot of support as well as a middle school (age 10-14) in a socio-economically challenging location and a vocational school (age 15+, training takes place in a company in addition to school) in a metropolitan area. Two were case studies developed as part of the ERASMUS+ project SustainAll - Sustainability at all-day schools. The greatest possible heterogeneity was also taken into account when selecting the cases with regard to the conceptual integration of education for sustainable development into the educational offerings, as well as the economic side of the school (buildings, purchasing, waste disposal, etc.). The data collection consisted of in-depth interviews, observations and the analysis of documents. The interviews were conducted with various stakeholders (teachers, pupils, parents, directors, social workers, leisure time educators) and focused on personal ideas of sustainability and transformative learning as well as implementation in the school. The observations consisted of participation in formal and informal activities, in non-specific and ESD-specific activities. The homepage, school concepts and the annual reports, which all ÖKOLOG member schools produce annually, were used as documents. The data was evaluated using content analysis (Mayring 2022). Based on the research questions, the individual case studies were initially analyzed deductively using a coding scheme. In the next inductive step, it was important to include particularly central aspects that came from the actors in the school. Finally, the four individual case studies were evaluated by means of a contrastive case comparison. This shows common difficulties and development logics in terms of the integration of ESD, but also major specifics of the individual situation of the schools.

In line with Verhelst et al. (2022), the factors "shared vision" and "pluralistic communication" appear to play a particularly important role. The ÖKOLOG programme acts as a shared vision for the schools, providing a common focus. Pluralistic communication with regard to ESD means illuminating sustainability issues from different perspectives and the facilitation of a dialog. The schools are at very different stages of development in the anchoring of ESD in their day-to-day work; there appear to be internal system boundaries, some of which extend along professional groups (teachers and leisure educators), but also along personal lifestyles (e.g. own flying behavior). In addition, it is not surprising that those schools whose pupils have socio-economic starting advantages have a more comprehensive establishment of ESD. For the further development of the ÖKOLOG network, these findings mean that further training and advisory services should be strongly related to organizational development in order to support schools in "shared vision" and "pluralistic communication" on the one hand, but also to be able to take into account the specifics of the individual school location with regard to the school types, the socio-economic and socio-cultural situation as well as the personal skills of the professionals on the other.

Affolter, C. & Varga, A. (2018) (Eds.), Environment and School Initiatives. Lessons from the ENSI Network - Past, Present and Future. Environment and School Initiatives, Vienna and Eszterhazy Karoly University, Budapest. Mayring, P. (2022). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. (13. Aufl.). Beltz. Rauch, F. & Pfaffenwimmer, G. (2020). The Austrian ECOLOG-Schools Programme – Networking for Environmental and Sustainability Education. pp. 85-102. In: A. Gough, J. Chi Kin Lee and E. Po Keung Tsang (eds.). Green Schools Globally: Stories of Impact for Sustainable Development. Dortrecht, Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-46820-0_1 Rauch, F., Glettler, C., Steiner, R. & Dulle, M. (2023). Environmental and Sustainability Education in Austria, In R. Rieckmann, & R. Thomas (Eds.), World Review: Environmental and Sustainability Education in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals. RiScience Publishers/CRC. (In Print) SustainAll (2024). www.sustainall.eu/en Verhelst, D., Vanhoof, J., & Van Petegem, P. (2022). Development and validation of the education for sustainable development school organisation questionnaire. Environmental Education Research, 28(2), 241–259. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.2007219