Challenges of creating climate-friendly schools: How barriers develop out of organising processes at schools and prevent them from adopting transformative measures

Abstract

The urgency of cutting carbon emissions and the lagging implementation of transformative, climate-friendly measures has been firmly expressed by climate scientists. In this context, schools are called upon to organise processes which can lead to more climate-friendly schools. In search of solutions to this challenging task, high school students, teachers and the research team in the transdisciplinary project k.i.d.Z.21_aCtiOn2 sought to reduce carbon emissions in partner schools in Germany and Austria. The collaboration built on the young people having previously been involved in a climate change education programme which prepared them to become agents of change in their schools. Alongside the project's attempts to transform the schools into more climate-friendly organisations, various hindering aspects have been identified through Situational Analyses, a qualitative approach building on Grounded Theory which made use of participants' and researchers' mappings of situations. The mappings captured all involved actors, their roles in the transformation processes, carbon emission sources, the students' proposals and to what extent these were considered or implemented. Overall, this situated, participatory approach identified 15 types of barriers. Building on previous organisational research on schools, a coupling theory approach has been adopted to analyse the extent to which the interrelations of involved actors contributed to these barriers. The study provides detailed descriptions of how barriers to carbon reduction measures arise in schools. Other initiatives of creating climate-friendly educational institutions can build on the outlined importance of capturing all involved actors and their couplings in order to understand, and potentially prevent, barriers.