Leading Educational Change in the 21st Century: Creating Living Schools through Shared Vision and Transformative Governance

Abstract

This article provides a critical overview of national and international efforts to shift education to what has been commonly called 21st century learning. Governments, non-profits, and corporate consortiums are in large part responsible for education reform designed to re-conceptualize K12 education for the 21st century. The article introduces an integrative transformative educational concept called the Living School that connects K12 educational reform with Education for Sustainability, sustainable community development, and individual well-being. Brief portraits describe schools that reflect Living School attributes. Ambitious initiatives to transform education for the 21st century require enlightened leadership and governance structures for scalable, system-wide reform. This paper offers an alternative vision for educational leadership and governance to support education reform based on a holistic approach to sustainable community economic development. An interdisciplinary model of professional learning to prepare education leaders for an alternative vision of education leadership is proposed.

Promoting Sustainable Wellbeing: Integrating Positive Psychology and Environmental Sustainability in Education

“…Today’s leaders of educational frameworks must prepare students to meet the recommended 21st-century skills and competencies (among which the four consensual ones are critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creative problem solving) [ 75 ]. Considering the shared aspiration of positive education and environmental education disciplines to promote wellbeing, the proposed integrative conceptualization of the positive sustainability education framework can derive from best practices in the two separate fields (see Table 1 ).…”

“…Different schools currently implement various programs to implement some of the theoretical principles of positive education [ 74 ] or environmental education [ 68 ]. Some leading schools even implement programs imparting both of these types of knowledge, sometimes separately without any connections between the programs, and at other times embracing the holistic concept of a “living school” that inherently integrates both sets of concepts while focusing holistically on humans’ wellbeing [ 16 , 75 ]. However, the prevailing international certification system for the whole school approach to sustainability has not yet incorporated program goals that integrate positive education principles into environmental education [ 67 ].…”

“…They suggested activities such as discussing occupational choices and exploring ways in which students can impact the political domain as important components of effective environmental education. “Look at Policy and Policymakers” thus involves students in real-life processes, which coincides with positive education and the recommended 21st-century competencies [ 75 ]. Both parents and teachers can expose students to environmental policies and policymakers through media and literature and help students to meet and interview relevant environmental stakeholders in vivo.…”

Towards a model and strategy for transformational change

“…Currently, the objective is to provide solutions and strategies to predict an uncertain future. Meaningful contributions are made in areas such as designing a vision for the institution, managing resources effectively and engaging in dialogues that reflect diverse viewpoints of all stakeholders to foster a spirit of advancement (Howard, O'Brien, Kay, & O'Rourke, 2019). Keeping stakeholders engaged in the process of changing demands is vital to sustainability.…”

Learning Analytics Using Social Network Analysis and Bayesian Network Analysis in Sustainable Computer-Based Formative Assessment System

“…The five elements including skills, knowledge, identity, values, and epistemology were defined as follows [20]: Skills (S) (dealing with data): being able to communicate clearly; being able to think and act as a professional data analyst in a particular situation.…”