TITLE:
School Culture Based on Education for Sustainability & Action Research
AUTHORS:
Amalia Filippaki, Marianna Kalaitzidaki
KEYWORDS:
Education for Sustainability, Educational Action Research, School Community Culture, Transformation of School Culture, Participatory Planning
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.12 No.1,
January
19,
2024
ABSTRACT: A common educational vision
does not usually exist in the current educational life in the schools, so many
teachers use to follow a lonely route which is limited in their class or in
their teaching subjects. In this paper we present the findings of our study, in
which we set the question if such lonely routes of the teachers in the same
school, could lead to the transformation of the school to a “Sustainable
School”. Through our study we investigated the transformation
of the whole school culture trough the implementation of an educational project
in the field of Education for Environment and Sustainability. We decided to use
“Action Research” as the most appropriate methodological research approach for
our study, as we had as main goal to change a difficult situation in our school
where the teachers were working lonely, each of them in its own path. The
results of our study showed that this educational intervention, through the
procedure of participatory planning, reflection and re-planning, led to the
awareness of the whole school community and the transformation of the whole
school culture. The teachers changed their personal educational theories and
their teaching practices regarding the educational approach of Education for
Sustainability and also their collaboration framework. Through our overall refection combining with findings
of similar studies we were led to the major conclusion that the transformation
of the culture in a school is difficult to be succeed due to the fact that
continuous and daily participatory work is needed.