Navigating Contradictions in Sustainable Education Reform through Teacher Agency and Institutional Dynamics

Abstract

This study explores how secondary school teachers navigate the contradictions inherent in sustainable education reform within institutional environments characterized by standardization and accountability pressures. Although policy frameworks take on a stronger emphasis on the incorporation of sustainability within curricula, there has been a widespread feeling brought about by teachers where they feel disassociated between the rhetoric of reform and what the lack of achievement results in in practice in their classrooms. Based on twelve interviews with teachers that took a qualitative narrative inquiry approach, four important themes, namely, policy-practice dissonance, limited autonomy within a performative system, development of agency as collective, and adaptive resistance through localized pedagogies, were identified. Teachers, despite being hampered by systemic limitations, developed agency in constructing informal networks of support, embedding the concepts of sustainability creatively in subject content, and negotiating curricular demands so as to tally with their ethical convictions. These results indicate that teacher agency in mediating a reform is especially important in an environment where top-down instructions do not align with pedagogical purposes. The authors conclude that sustainable education reform cannot and should not be imposed through strict edicts but should be co-built with and be enabled through an institutional culture that would lead to authentic and transformational changes in practice.