School staff perceptions on education for sustainability and sense of community as reflected in an elementary school culture in Israel

Abstract

Promoting education for sustainability (EfS) within schools requires adopting a whole-school approach for organizational change. In this study, we adopted Schein’s (1985) organizational culture model in school context, which includes three levels: artifacts, espoused values and basic underlying assumptions. Since sense of community is an important component in school culture, we explored the relationships between EfS, school culture and sense of community. Our findings indicated that the elementary-school staff felt committed to EfS and to their school community at all levels of school culture and every level served as a stable platform for the development of the next level. Furthermore, interconnections between artifacts, teachers’ values and underlying assumptions indicated a deep connection between EfS and school culture, which is not common in schools. The study concludes that schools’ investment in their staff’s sense of community is necessary for creating teachers’ commitment to promoting EfS as part of a whole-school approach.