½¿É«µ¼º½

As the scientific consensus becomes stronger and the scale of the climate and ecological crisis becomes starker, climate change education and efforts towards sustainability in schools have become an increasing focus of research in recent years. Yet there is an identified lack of meaningful response at the level of educational policy in England (Greer et al., 2023). The (DfE, 2022) has been critiqued as not striving for pro-environmental action and not centring values (Dunlop & Rushton, 2022). In the absence of guidance from above, many schools are carving their own path towards sustainability. This blog post explores the potential of a values-based approach to generate a shared vision through which to promote whole-school buy-in of sustainability initiatives.

‘In the absence of guidance from above, many schools are carving their own path towards sustainability.’

In a recent paper published in Environmental Education Research (Howard-Jones & Hennessy, 2025), my colleague Paul Howard-Jones and I present the findings of our study investigating the sustainability stories of four schools in the region of Gloucestershire, in the south-west of England. Despite all being state funded, the schools provided four very different contexts: a Christian faith school; a technical college; a brand-new purpose-built school with its first intake of students; and a community school in a particularly environmentally conscious town.

Our research sought to explore the views of staff and students who were identified as ‘environmental leaders’ within their school community. We designed the research process over a two-year time period to allow us to identify processes of change. We collected data in the form of interviews with staff and students (35 interviews total) at two different time points. We were particularly interested in the participants’ conceptualisations of progress and barriers towards sustainability.

From this research, we identified the following three key areas of challenge:

1. Generating a shared vision
2. Anchoring student communication with management
3. Developing the communication skills of staff and students.

This blog post focuses on the first challenge. We found that generating and articulating a shared vision was particularly powerful when tied to existing school values. In the faith school, this was expressed through the Christian value of stewardship. The headteacher talked about getting to a point where sustainability permeates through everything and ‘it just sings’, evoking the metaphor of everyone singing from the same hymn sheet.

In the newly founded school, the school values contained explicit reference to sustainability. The headteacher commented, ‘our values have been recently considered, vocalised and consulted on, so they’re real living things’ and added that calendared systematic opportunities for discussion (such as staff continuing professional development) are necessary to keep those values alive. Furthermore, these values guided the recruitment of staff to the school.

The technical college utilised a practical jobs-based narrative which was appropriate for their setting. Through participation in the project, they were inspired to link their sustainability objectives to the school’s emphasis on professional values via the concept of ‘professional respect’. This was articulated though the application of the employability-related concept of ‘respect’, with teachers encouraged to award points to students for showing respect to the environment.

In the community school, there was a sense that people in the local area had an environmentally conscious mindset, and this helped to create a shared vision. In addition, the headteacher was vocally and visibly supportive of environmental causes and this was felt and seen by staff and students, but this had only limited impact due to the lack of clear mechanisms for communication between staff and students, such as student representatives at meetings with governors or other stakeholders.

In conclusion, there are various approaches a school can take to generating a shared vision. One approach is though explicitly linking to school values. If the values-based approach is taken, it is essential to ensure these values become embodied in school life as dynamic living things, rather than only existing as a static document or on a website. Opportunities to enact school values should be regular and visible. Another way to enliven school values could be to hold a student-led process, such as a student council consultation process or a people’s assembly, to rework them to include a focus on sustainability in a way that feels most salient to students.

References

Department for Education [DfE]. (2022). Sustainability and climate change: A strategy for the education and children’s services systems. .

Dunlop, L., & E. A. C. Rushton. (2022). ‘Putting climate change at the heart of education: Is England’s strategy a placebo for policy?’ British Educational Research Journal, 48(6), 1083–1101.

Greer, K., King, H., & Glackin, M. (2023). The ‘web of conditions’ governing England’s climate change education policy landscape. Journal of Education Policy, 38(1), 1–24.

Howard-Jones, P. A., & Hennessy, L. (2025). Understanding progress in climate change and sustainability education in four state-funded secondary schools in England. Environmental Education Research, 31(6), 1295–1311.