A sustainable city starts from schools: A qualitative study of barriers to green school development from the lens of Iranian experts

IF 4.7 2区环境科学与生态学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Environmental Development Pub Date : 2025-05-01 DOI:10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101223

Fahimeh Esmaeili , Behnaz Babaeimorad , Behnam Ghasemzadeh , Mazdak Irani

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The establishment of green schools offers multifarious advantages, including the promotion of environmentally-conscious behaviors, optimization of resource consumption, improvement of public health, and enhancement of community engagement. However, recent advancements in the design and construction of green schools across various communities have highlighted certain deficiencies and indicated that the rate of progress in these schools is slower than expected, warranting a more detailed examination. This research aims to identify barriers to the evolution of green schools by leveraging insights from key informants through qualitative content analysis. Thirty-three comprehensive, semi-structured interviews, covering a wide range of expertise and occupations, were conducted using purposive sampling until theoretical saturation was achieved. The analysis of the collected data revealed three main themes: "Sociocultural," "Institutional," and "Economic," which were divided into 13 sub-themes and characterized by 42 distinct codes. The findings accentuate the necessity to devise comprehensive strategies—spanning local, national, and global paradigms—to navigate these challenges, requiring the proactive engagement of multiple stakeholders and influential entities during the preliminary planning stages. By addressing these impediments, the momentum behind green school initiatives can be reinvigorated, catalyzing sustainability and heralding significant ecological dividends.

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可持续发展的城市从学校开始：从伊朗专家的角度对绿色学校发展障碍的定性研究

建立绿色学校具有多方面的优势，包括促进环保行为、优化资源消耗、改善公众健康、增强社区参与等。然而，最近在各个社区绿色学校的设计和建设方面取得的进展突出了某些不足之处，并表明这些学校的进展速度比预期的要慢，需要进行更详细的检查。本研究旨在通过定性内容分析，利用关键信息提供者的见解，确定绿色学校发展的障碍。33个全面的、半结构化的访谈，涵盖了广泛的专业知识和职业，使用有目的的抽样进行，直到达到理论饱和。对收集数据的分析揭示了三个主要主题：“社会文化”、“制度”和“经济”，这些主题被分为13个子主题，并以42个不同的代码为特征。研究结果强调了制定综合战略的必要性——跨越地方、国家和全球范例——以应对这些挑战，要求在初步规划阶段，多个利益相关者和有影响力的实体积极参与。通过解决这些障碍，绿色学校倡议背后的势头可以重新焕发活力，促进可持续发展，并预示着显著的生态红利。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Environmental Development Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

8.40

自引率

1.90%

发文量

审稿时长

74 days

期刊介绍： Environmental Development provides a future oriented, pro-active, authoritative source of information and learning for researchers, postgraduate students, policymakers, and managers, and bridges the gap between fundamental research and the application in management and policy practices. It stimulates the exchange and coupling of traditional scientific knowledge on the environment, with the experiential knowledge among decision makers and other stakeholders and also connects natural sciences and social and behavioral sciences. Environmental Development includes and promotes scientific work from the non-western world, and also strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world. Further it links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural developments, and is intended to shorten the delays between research and publication, while ensuring thorough peer review. Environmental Development also creates a forum for transnational communication, discussion and global action. Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes, in particular, contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the frontiers of environmental sciences, pointing at new directions and innovative answers. All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the general criteria of quality, originality, precision, importance of topic and insights, clarity of exposition, which are in keeping with the journal''s aims and scope.