Abstract:

Sustainability, education, and leadership are three highly important topics in today´s societies. Undoubtedly, sustainable development is the foundation of sustained ecological and human well-being not only in the current world but in the world of the future generations. It is widely acknowledged that addressing sustainability requires, apart from multiple resources, also education, knowledge, and sustainably oriented leaders willing to make difference by integrating sustainability in strategy, mission, and vision as well as in all organizational activities. This study suggests that the foundation of education for sustainable development can be created in educational organizations led by sustainable educational leaders. The main assumption of this study is that sustainable educational leaders may play an important role in providing an educational environment characterized by a sustainable school ethos where learners may perceive the importance of sustainability and sustainable ethical and moral values based on sustainability. The aim of this study is to add knowledge about sustainability in education in general and, specifically, examine sustainability from the perspective of educational leadership. The study is qualitative, conceptual, and trans-disciplinary as it is grounded in previous research in the fields of sustainability, education, and leadership. A literature review is conducted to advance knowledge about the relation between sustainability, education, and leadership, and about the more specific relation between educational leadership and sustainability. The results show that sustainability, education, and leadership are well-established research fields with great body of research, but there appears to be limited research combining these research fields. Nevertheless, the results reveal that there is growing interest to study leadership from the perspective of sustainability, whereas there is lack of research about the relation of educational leadership and sustainability although there are indications that educational institutions led by sustainable educational leaders can constitute settings where a great number of people may gain knowledge about sustainable development and learn sustainable principles and practices.

Keywords:

Sustainability, education, leadership, educational leadership.