Emerging Leadership Strategies in Environmental and Sustainability Education in Preservice Teacher Education

Abstract

Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) has been a neglected area in teacher education despite the potential it offers for stimulating societal change via the school system. Our work in recent years to promote this aspect of teacher education in Canada led us to reflect on our experiences, the challenges we have faced, and the lessons learned about leading this type of change. The study involved a collaborative action research approach with a series of meetings in which we acted as critical friends and then used coding to identify emerging themes. In this way we were able to identify successful leadership strategies and support each other in our endeavors. By connecting our experiences to theories related to leadership in environmental education, we were able to identify useful leadership strategies. Little has been published specifically related to leadership in this field, so we hope that our findings will assist others in this work and stimulate further research.