Actions and practice architectures for realising sustainable development by restructuring school organisations

Abstract

Sustainability is increasingly being understood as vital for school improvement. The objective of this study is to expand our knowledge of practice architectures that enable and constrain the realisation of sustainable development by restructuring school organisations to facilitate professional learning. In this follow-up study, we return to one of the three municipalities that were involved in an earlier project from 2009 to 2011. The theory of practice architectures is used as an analytic tool to identify and analyse actions that have an impact on the municipality’s efforts to realise sustainable school improvement. The results reveal dissimilarities between the investigated municipality’s school organisation and the preschool organisation. In the case of the school organisation, the dominating practice architectures disrupt the realisation of sustainable development, while in the case of the preschool organisation they are continuous and foster the same. One disruptive practice architecture in the school organisation is the idea of the autonomous principal, which disturbs the progression of a distributed leadership. In the preschool organisation, the superintendents are crucial for facilitating participation in professional learning.

Keywords

• principal
• change agent
• education for sustainable development (esd)
• school improvement