Conference Agenda

Theoretical Background

Schools are recognised as key multipliers for sustainable societal transformation, yet only a small share of K–12 institutions achieve sustained and coherent implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Research consistently identifies school leaders as central figures in fostering sustainable schools (Mogren & Gericke, 2019), but the specific practices, conditions, and constraints that shape Leadership for Sustainability remain underexplored. The symposium is theoretically anchored in the Whole-School Approach (WSA), which conceptualises ESD implementation as requiring the integration of sustainability across all facets of school life—including vision, pedagogy, curriculum, institutional practices, capacity-building, and community connections—through participatory, system-wide processes (Mathie & Wals, 2022). The WSA provides a unifying framework connecting the four papers, while each contribution draws on complementary theoretical perspectives: the Model of Educational Reconstruction (Kattmann et al., 1997), temporal governance and acceleration theory (Rosa, 2013), policy enactment perspectives (Ball et al., 2012), and distributed leadership approaches (Spillane, 2006).

This symposium addresses this gap by asking: How do school leaders enact Leadership for Sustainability across different European contexts, and what conditions enable or constrain whole-school approaches to ESD?

Methodological Approaches

The symposium integrates diverse methodological approaches: systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines combined with qualitative content analysis, photo-elicitation and group discussions with school leaders, thematic analysis of interview data, and comparative policy analysis of governance frameworks. This methodological pluralism enables both breadth across European contexts and depth in understanding leadership practices.

Symposium Structure and Paper Contributions

This symposium investigates Leadership for Sustainability through a systematic progression from empirical reconstruction to critical analysis of systemic constraints and, ultimately, to practical pathways forward. It uses Leadership for Sustainability to denote leadership practices oriented toward whole-school ESD implementation. We distinguish this from sustainable leadership (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006), which emphasises the temporal endurance of leadership itself; in practice, these dimensions intersect, and individual papers engage both aspects.

Paper 1 establishes the empirical foundation by reconstructing what Leadership for Sustainability entails in practice. Drawing on a systematic literature review and comparative empirical research with school leaders in Switzerland and Sweden, the paper identifies seven interrelated characteristics (Lampert et al., 2026): shared vision, strategic alignment, collaborative structures, stakeholder networks, professional learning systems, participatory governance, and sustainable school culture.

Paper 2 examines the lived realities of enacting such leadership in Danish educational settings, focusing specifically on how temporal conditions affect the sustainability of leadership practice itself. The paper reveals how temporal governance—characterised by acceleration, fragmentation, and lack of time for reflection—constrains sustainability-oriented practices, with consequences for professional judgment and wellbeing (Laursen, 2026).

Paper 3 situates these insights within broader policy frameworks through comparative analysis of Swedish and Swiss governance (Nordin & Sundberg, 2018). The paper examines how transnational sustainability discourses—particularly Agenda 2030 and UNESCO's competence frameworks—intersect with national policies, revealing how different governance architectures construct temporal horizons that either enable or inhibit long-term sustainability transformation.

Paper 4 demonstrates how participatory school cultures can enable sustainability-oriented transformation despite systemic constraints (Lüddeckens, 2025). The findings suggest that structured opportunities for inclusive governance and collaborative norms offer workable conditions for enacting Leadership for Sustainability.

European Dimension and Contribution

The symposium brings together researchers from Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark, enabling systematic comparison across different governance traditions: Switzerland's decentralised cantonal system, Sweden's curriculum-driven national governance, and Denmark's municipal autonomy model. This comparative perspective illuminates how national policy architectures shape the possibilities for Leadership for Sustainability and contributes to European dialogue on sustainable school development and the implementation of Agenda 2030.

The findings carry implications for school leaders, leadership preparation programmes, and policymakers by providing evidence-based frameworks, identifying competencies requiring attention, and revealing how governance architectures can better support long-term sustainability transformation.

Schools serve as key multipliers for sustainable societal transformation by developing students' sustainability competencies through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). While principals are recognised as central figures in fostering sustainable schools (Mogren & Gericke, 2019), research has predominantly focused on describing characteristics of sustainable schools rather than on the specific leadership practices that enable their development (Verhelst et al., 2021). This paper addresses this gap by presenting an empirically grounded reconstruction of Leadership for Sustainability, examining how scientific conceptualisations of sustainable school development align with principals' understandings and practices across different school contexts. The research question guiding this study is: How do scientific studies conceptualise Leadership for Sustainability, and how do these conceptualisations align with principals' understandings and practices in Swiss and Swedish school contexts? Theoretically, the study draws on the Whole-School Approach (WSA), which conceptualises ESD implementation as requiring the integration of sustainability across all facets of school life—including vision, pedagogy, curriculum, institutional practices, capacity-building, and community connections—through participatory, system-wide processes (Mathie & Wals, 2022). Methodologically, the research employs the Model of Educational Reconstruction (Kattmann et al., 1997), enabling systematic integration of scientific conceptions with practitioners' understandings of leadership. The study comprises two phases. First, a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines (Page et al., 2021), combined with qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2023), identified seven characteristics of sustainable schools and corresponding leadership practices from 12 empirical studies (Lampert, Kolb & Anderegg, 2025; Lampert et al., 2026). Second, building on these findings, an empirical study with six school leaders (three from Switzerland, three from Sweden) was conducted between January and May 2025, using photo-elicitation (Richard & Lahman, 2015) and group discussions to examine how the literature-derived characteristics manifest in practice. Data were analysed using content analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2023). The analysis identifies seven interrelated characteristics constituting Leadership for Sustainability: (1) developing and anchoring a shared sustainability vision, (2) strategic alignment of school development with ESD, (3) establishing collaborative organisational structures, (4) building stakeholder networks, (5) fostering professional learning systems, (6) enabling participatory governance, and (7) cultivating a sustainable school culture. The empirical data reveal both alignment and tensions between scientific conceptualisations and practitioners' understandings, with contextual differences emerging between the Swiss and Swedish settings. These findings establish the empirical foundation for the symposium: Papers 2–4 critically examine the temporal, policy-related, and cultural conditions that enable or constrain the enactment of the leadership practices reconstructed here.

Kuckartz, U., & Rädiker, S. (2023). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse: Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung [Qualitative content analysis: Methods, practice, computer support]. Beltz Juventa. Lampert, I., Allenspach, D., Müller-Kuhn, D., & Brückel, F. (2026). Leadership for sustainability: A systematic literature review of characteristics supporting whole-school ESD implementation in K–12 education. Environmental Education Research. Manuscript submitted for publication. Lampert, I., Kolb, J., & Anderegg, N. (2025). Leadership for Sustainability als Schlüssel für wertvolle Bildung. #schuleverantworten, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.53349/schuleverantworten.2025.i3.a602 Mathie, R. G., & Wals, A. E. J. (2022). Whole school approaches to sustainability: Exemplary practices from around the world. Wageningen University. Mogren, A., & Gericke, N. (2019). School leaders' experiences of implementing Education for Sustainable Development—Anchoring the transformative perspective. Sustainability, 11(12), Article 3287. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11123287 Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., ... Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, Article n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71 Richard, V. M., & Lahman, M. K. E. (2015). Photo-elicitation: Reflexivity on method, analysis, and graphic portraits. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 38(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2013.843073

Building on Paper 1’s reconstruction of Leadership for Sustainability, this paper examines how contemporary forms of time pressure shape the conditions for sustainable leadership in educational settings. Informed by prior work showing how temporal demands structure educational leaders’ everyday work, leadership is approached as a practice increasingly organised through accelerating temporal demands that compress time for reflection, prioritisation, and endurance, with direct consequences for professional judgment and well-being. The paper asks: How does time governance shape the possibilities for sustainable leadership? The study is theoretically anchored in perspectives on how time structures possibilities for practice within educational institutions (Madsen & Laursen, 2026), with particular attention to processes of temporal acceleration (Rosa, 2013). In relation to the time governance of leadership practice, sustainable leadership is understood as the capacity to sustain professional judgment and leaders’ well-being over time under conditions of temporal acceleration. Empirically, the paper draws on qualitative data from a larger Danish municipal project focusing on “leadership in balance” (Laursen, 2025). The analysis is based on interviews with seven educational leaders, analysed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). The findings show that time governance significantly conditions leaders’ possibilities for sustainable leadership in three ways. First, leaders actively contribute to the acceleration of their own time demands by taking on additional tasks in order to remain informed and influential in political and administrative decision-making processes. Second, leaders describe a persistent lack of time for immersion, understood as reflective time for preparation, strategic thinking, and professional sense-making. Third, everyday leadership practice is characterised by frequent interruptions, particularly from employees seeking advice, which displaces immersion to evenings and weekends. These dynamics show how accelerating and fragmented time demands intensify leaders’ work, erode time for immersion, and narrow the temporal conditions under which sustainable leadership and leaders’ well-being can be maintained.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. Sage. Laursen, R. (2026). Education and the politics of time: Temporal governance in teaching and learning (Ed. with M. Madsen). Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Laursen, R. (2025). At balancere et lederliv: En undersøgelse af frontleders psykiske arbejdsmiljø i Holstebro Kommune [Balancing a leadership life: An investigation of frontline leaders’ psychosocial work environment in Holstebro Municipality]. Institut for Kultur og Læring, Aalborg Universitet. https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/808239405/At_balancere_et_lederliv_aaurapport.pdf Laursen, R., & Jensen, R. (2025). The governance of teachers' time allocation and data usage through a learning management system: a biopolitical perspective. Critical Studies in Education, 66(2), 213–232. Rosa, H. (2013). Social acceleration: A new theory of modernity. Columbia University Press.

Papers 1 and 2 reveal a paradox: empirical evidence shows that Leadership for Sustainability is enacted through participatory, relational practices (Paper 1), yet leaders experience significant temporal and organisational constraints that inhibit these practices (Paper 2). This paper addresses the structural origins of this paradox by examining the policy frameworks that shape leadership expectations and possibilities. This paper examines how global ideas of sustainability leadership travel, are reshaped in national policy contexts, and enacted in schools in Sweden and Switzerland. Drawing on the Leadership for Sustainability project, it investigates how transnational discourses, particularly Agenda 2030 (UNESCO, 2017) and UNESCO’s sustainability competence frameworks (systems thinking, anticipatory, normative, strategic, collaboration, critical thinking, self‑awareness, and integrated problem‑solving), intersect with national curricular policies to shape opportunities and constraints for school leaders. Combining a policy enactment perspective with a temporal politics lens, the study analyses how leaders navigate tensions between long‑term sustainability ambitions and short‑term policy demands embedded in accountability systems, curriculum reforms, and organisational routines (Tahirsylaj & Sundberg, 2025; Nordin & Sundberg, 2018). This approach aligns with the symposium’s focus on competing temporal logics, where sustainability requires slow, participatory development, while governance structures prioritise speed, efficiency, and measurability (see also Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). The paper addresses three questions: (i) How do Swedish and Swiss governance frameworks construct temporal horizons of sustainability (such as urgency, long‑term transformation, or continuous improvement) and how do these imaginaries shape expectations for leadership? (ii) How do these frameworks pre‑structure school leaders’ temporal agency by accelerating, sequencing, or slowing change processes and shaping the futures they are expected to enact? (iii) What temporal tensions arise when policy timelines meet the everyday temporalities of school life, including workload rhythms, institutional path dependencies, and locally negotiated paces of change? The analysis draws on comparative policy analysis and multimodal empirical material from six schools across both countries. Preliminary findings show that while both systems mandate sustainability and democratic participation, Sweden’s curriculum‑driven governance accelerates short accountability cycles, whereas Switzerland’s decentralised system provides greater autonomy but weaker long‑term anchoring. These differences shape leaders’ capacities to cultivate sustainable school cultures and contribute to persistent policy–practice gaps (see also Sterling 2014). Critically, this analysis explains why the temporal and organisational constraints identified in Paper 2 persist: they are deeply embedded in policy architectures that shape what counts as legitimate leadership work. Paper 4 turns to how schools navigate these constraints through participatory cultural practices.

Mogensen, F., & Schnack, K. (2010). The action competence approach and the ‘new’ discourses of education for sustainable development, competence and quality criteria. Environmental Education Research, 16(1), 59–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620903504032 Nordin, A., & Sundberg, D. (2018). Exploring curriculum change using discursive institutionalism – a conceptual framework. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(6), 820–835. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2018.1482961 Sterling, S. (2014). Separate tracks, or real synergy? Achieving a closer relationship between education and sustainable development, post‑2015. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 8(2), 89–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973408214548360 Tahirsylaj & Sundberg (2025): Five visions of competence-based education and curricula as travelling policies: a systematic research review 1997–2022, Journal of Curriculum Studies, UNESCO. (2017). Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning objectives. UNESCO Publishing. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247444

Sub-paper had to be withdrawn.

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