Organisational Strategies for Implementing Education for Sustainable Development in the UK Primary Schools: A Service Innovation Perspective

Ksenija Kuzmina, Rhoda Trimingham and Tracy Bhamra
Additional contact information
Ksenija Kuzmina: Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University London, London E203BS, UK
Rhoda Trimingham: School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Tracy Bhamra: School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 22, 1-16

Abstract: Education for sustainable development (ESD) in schools requires a whole-school approach to ensure that all stakeholders, including students, value sustainability and express this value in an active engagement in the ongoing development process. Such inclusivity however is rarely achieved, with benefits of ESD in schools usually recognised only by a select few. School strategies that continue to dominate research focus on management of the finite resources or give emphasis to a particular pedagogical agenda, whereas approaches that emphasise whole-school ESD engagement are scarce. This paper aims to address this gap. To do so, we propose to frame schools as service organisations and use service logic approach and service innovation theory to review how five primary schools in England define and implement ESD. The findings from our comparative case study discuss three strategies that schools as service organisations need to consider: defining sustainable student experience as a core service concept, developing an organisational culture of sustainability-driven innovation, and engaging in a value co-creation process with external stakeholders in order to facilitate the concept. Our results suggest that by placing “sustainable student experience” as the core service concept, schools can align their external and internal organisational activities to enable sustainable education for all stakeholders.

Keywords: education for sustainable development; schools; service organisations; service logic; value co-creation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9549/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9549/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9549-:d:446182

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().