Skogomeskolan: creating a systematic whole-school approach to sustainability education
As a national and local pilot, through interdisciplinary linkages to the SDGs, a sustainability coordinator, outdoor pedagogy, green procurement, upskilling initiatives for management to custodial staff, there is no end to Skogomeskolan’s ambition to expand existing initiatives and continue to test new ones to achieve its ultimate goal: a systematic whole-school approach to sustainability education that includes students, staff, management, supporting staff, partners, and the local community.
Local
Sweden
The City of Gothenburg
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): City of Gothenburg (Primary School Administration and Environmental Administration) and Skogomeskolan Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Malin Last name of representative: Forss Gender: Female Nationality: Sweden Function: Rector Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Nya Skogomevägen 3 Town: Gothenburg Postal code: 422 50 Country: Sweden Direct Tel:+46 70 764 32 07 E-mail:malin.forss@grundskola.goteborg.se Website:https://goteborg.se/wps/portal/enhetssida/skogomeskolan
In 2020, following successful cross-sectoral cooperation between the Primary school and Secondary School, and Environmental Administration, Gothenburg adopted a new guideline for developing a structure and culture that enables schools to teach about sustainability in a systematic way. This will be done through a whole school approach, where sustainability is integrated throughout the entire school ecosystem: curricula, students, teachers, principals, staff, parents, local community and physical learning environment, and be taught through a hands-on, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary learning approach.
The guideline is the first of its kind in Sweden and as such, the city of Gothenburg selected a few pilot schools that would function as testbeds for its implementation. Through various initiatives, Skogomeskolan creates the future systems described in the guideline with the intent to disseminate their best practices.
Skogomeskolan is a school with about 300 students, located in the vulnerable area of Hisings-Backa in the north of the city. Students come from diverse backgrounds, both socio-economically and culturally. The school aims to make sure that its students become environmentally aware citizens who understand their role within the natural ecosystem. Some of the initiatives that the school has implemented so far are communal gardens that the students tend; peer-to-peer upskilling initiatives; outdoor pedagogy; access to green areas; a sharing-economy platform; establishing a food council.
The school upskills its workforce to give them a holistic understanding of sustainability to better integrate the subject into their work. Thus far, actions have been taken from management to custodial level.
Due to Covid, many initiatives are still in their infancy. However, the school is expanding/refining existing initiatives. They have high ambitions for the future, to further demonstrate ways of creating holistic and systematic sustainability education.
Whole-school approach
Circularity
Sustainability
Outdoor pedagogy
Learning-by-doing
Skogomeskolan is built so that the school building itself reinforces learning. For instance, at the school yard there is a system in place for the separation of waste, where the students can learn about recycling. There is a garden where the school farms vegetables that the students harvest and discuss. The aim of the school is to help the students, and their parents, develop an ecosystem thinking to foster a better more sustainable relationship with nature.
Concrete sustainability objectives for the school are to:
Promote systems-thinking by hiring a sustainability coordinator with both a pedagogical/sustainability mission to identify opportunities for development; Public procurement strategies to raise awareness and increase sustainable practices; Glocalising the SDGs in all curricula; Plans to create a Sustainability Council, where students discuss sustainability objectives with teachers and staff.
To Introduce a circular mindset and promote sustainable lifestyles by local sharing economy platform for sharing of clothes; Local waste sorting center, where the students can learn about waste and material flows.
Teaching students about farm-to-fork/locally produced foods and sustainable food systems through locally produced food; Food Council, where the students can discuss future menus with the culinary staff.
Fostering better relationships with nature by using outdoor pedagogics as a teaching method; utilising outdoor classrooms like the local meadow to teach about the changing of seasons.
Some of these objectives are harder to evaluate than others since they aspire to create sustainable mindsets from an early age. However, Skogomeskolan reports that they can already see differences between generations in how the students reason about their role in relation to nature. The students already understand how local action can affect global challenges, such as loss of biodiversity, and how waste flows can be minimised through circular thinking.
One of the most important elements of a school is that the students enjoy their learning environment. This has been shown to have a positive influence on both learning capabilities and mental health. Students/parents at Skogomeskolan have reported a high level of satisfaction with the school. Students have unprompted shared their positive impressions when external actors have visited the school through formal study visits, and parents have expressed satisfaction with initiatives.
At the school entrance, a permanent art installation was created using the school’s building materials and the minerals/rock types found on/around the building site. These art pieces serve as a constant reminder of the building's construction and connection to the natural environment.
Allowing the students to explore their emotions through art is seen as central to learning. Together with the civil society organisation Mosaicfabriken, students designed and created a mosaic wall; a now permanent art installation in the city.
Visiting, playing, and learning in nature is the core of outdoor pedagogy. It can be used as a tool for creating deeper knowledge and understanding of sustainability, equality environment, human rights, and cultural history that will ultimately lead to a review of our relationship with nature and transform it into a more symbiotic one. It is beneficial for students and teachers alike, both in terms of development and well-being, to learn in nature. That is why Skogomeskolan has a curriculum that encourages learning outside, enabled by its proximity to larger green spaces. Classes are increasingly held in these nearby green areas, clean-up days where students pick up trash to recycle it are organised, and the school is working towards one mandated weekly class in nature.
Given that public education is free in Sweden, there are no affordability concerns to in terms of accessibility. The school is also designed to be an accessible physical space. Skogomeskolan is adjusting its educational method by co-creating the learning, planning, and execution of its sustainability education with their students and staff. This process feeds into the school’s learning-by-doing method which encourages deeper understanding and improved memory retention. For example, students have been encouraged to consider the impact they have on their local environment and how they can reduce their carbon footprint by biking and conserving energy.
Skogomeskolan uses nature as a non-discriminative teacher through outdoor pedagogy. The school has created a local sharing economy initiative, encouraging students to re-think owning of clothes and to consider the circularity of products. The sharing economy should be a natural part of the students’ value system – especially given the socio-economic background of some of its students. The school has also established food councils where students, culinary staff and teachers discuss food waste and future menus. Skogomeskolan has the ambition to expand the concept to have councils that consider sustainability at large.
To manage the adjustment of educational methods, upskilling initiatives have had to be taken to support the staff to meet the accompanying challenges. Management has been given courses in “leadership and learning for sustainable development”, and custodial staff has received training on product use. The school has hired a sustainability coordinator with additional responsibilities focused on identifying developmental needs and implementing corresponding initiatives to continuously move the school forward in its sustainability teachings. There is also a structure in place, to aid teachers when adjusting their curricula to integrate sustainability in all subjects, not only the natural sciences.
As previously mentioned, the educational approach of Skogomeskolan is one that takes the whole school’s ecosystem into consideration, from building to community. As such, the local community is involved, not simply in the shaping of environmentally aware citizens, but also through school activities.
While the focus of a formal educational institution, is the education of its students, the whole-school approach has an intergenerational learning aspect to it. When students/staff share their experiences at home or in other out-of-school contexts, the retelling of their active learning results in them assuming an unofficial ambassador role. For example, with a small harvest from the communal gardens, it is not possible to continuously use them to supply the school kitchen . However, the students have divided the produce to bring home. Parents have expressed their appreciation of the initiative and described how the produce was incorporated in the family meal.
The school is also located in the vulnerable area of Hisings-Backa. Due to its status as vulnerable, Gothenburg directs extra investments into developing the area. Building a new school using environmentally friendly materials, with a strong focus on sustainability education, in this area, ensures that different families from various socio-economic status have equal access to innovative sustainability teachings, due to the proximity principle when allocating student spots.
For Skogomeskolan, collaborating with stakeholders is a central pillar of learning and a necessary means for ensuring that the students understand their role in society. For example, Skogomeskolan collaborated with Mosaicfabriken, a civil society organisation aimed at increasing local integration of asylum-seekers through art. Together with Mosaicfabriken, the students got to design a mosaic wall, that is now part of a permanent art installation in the city.
The initiative at Skogomeskolan is a local pilot for implementing the city of Gothenburg’s first-of-its-kind guideline. Thus, the school hosts study visits (local, regional, and national) to educate others about its approach to showcase the implementation of the guideline, but also as a pilot for the Swedish National Agency for Education module method.
Through Skogomeskolan’s collaboration with this national agency, teachers are a part of the module method focusing on certain subjects. Through these modules, which Skogomeskolan continues to use after the end of the national pilot project, teachers get together to workshop an interdisciplinary curriculum. Together with the sustainability coordinator and a peer-to-peer support system, they are invited to consider how sustainability fits into their subjects, and creative hands-on approaches to teaching it.
Recently, the school management has been in contact with local farmers to discuss the possibility of having a formal partnership and creating the role of “school farmer”. These local farms could supply the school canteens with locally sourced food and be a designated area for study visits to discuss the importance of buying local to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Post-Covid, there is also an ambition at the school to reinstate the Harvest festival; a day of activities for the school and local community that highlights the farm-to-fork process. There have also been collaborations with local actors, such as Mosaicfabriken and Universeum, Sweden’s national science center.
The initiative is yet to engage with the European level, it has many elements as encouraged in European initiatives, such as the recommendation on learning for environmental sustainability, European Education Area, Biodiversity Strategy, the SDGs, and the Green Deal. This initiative has joined the EU call for Transformational Places of Learning, as a first step to engage and exchange best practices/solutions at European level.
Skogomeskolan’s whole-school approach to sustainability teachings is based on research from a multitude of disciplines, from education, pedagogics, environmental studies, sociology, natural sciences etc. The guideline itself was a collaborative effort between two city administrations as an attempt to bridge the traditional silo thinking which often permeates public administration.
The existing role of the school’s sustainability coordinator combines the field of pedagogy with that of sustainability. Building on one discipline to upskill an employee, equipped with tools to view the educational system through a new lens and identify opportunities for development. The added value of having an interdisciplinary approach is that it does not devalue existing knowledge, but rather improves on other knowledge foundations. It would not be possible to have ecosystem thinking if all aspects of sustainability were not considered during the transition. For example, without the co-creative governance approach, students might have been considered too unknowledgeable to discuss scientific issues such as food waste and the food councils would never have been created.
The city’s Building Administration has guidelines for minimising negative climate impact from construction and uses locally sourced, low-emission materials as far as possible – as was the case for Skogomeskolan. The new Skogomeskolan replaced an old, run-down school building in desperate need of renovation. It was an opportune moment to increase the aesthetics of the local area. If carefully planned, the school had the potential to become a landmark that would induce a sense of pride among the local citizens. The school was built to reinforce sustainability learning through the physical environment. In this regard, the city’s Buildings Administration has integrated the so-called REBUS method, developed through an EU-funded project, where the students co-create the design of the schoolyard.
Skogomeskolan’s initiative is innovative in character for several reasons, mainly:
- It has been a pilot school for not just one, but two different methods. First, the school functioned as a pilot school to test the Swedish National Agency for Education module methodology. Today, it serves as a national example of how this method can be implemented in schools across the county. Secondly, it is the pilot for the implementation of the local city guideline, which is the first of its kind in Sweden, due to its interdisciplinary approach when created and to sustainability education. The guideline emphasises the need to systematically integrate and teach about sustainability through a whole-school approach, which involves every actor and level: city administration to custodial staff to parents to students to teachers to management.
- It is the first certified sustainability school in the local context of Gothenburg.
- Skogomeskolan has formalised student involvement in the sustainability development of the school through operational level at the communal gardens and strategic level through the food councils.
- Skogomeskolan has integrated life-long learning in the transformation process, not simply for systematically upskilling teachers, but also its culinary staff and custodial staff. The intergenerational learning aspect further takes the initiative from being localised to the school, and brings it into the community, through partnerships with local actors and parental involvement.
Every aspect of this project can be replicated, albeit with some adjustments to the local conditions. The hard investments are more dependent on the local context, such as crops grown, materials found at the building site etcetera. However, the purpose of the school as a pilot of the city guideline is to make sure that the school’s approach functions as an inspiration to other schools within Gothenburg. As such, the soft investments in the educational approach can, with upskilling of the workforce, be implemented in other local contexts.
Gothenburg’s Primary and Secondary School Administration collaborated with its Environmental Administration to create a city guideline for sustainable education. The aim was to come up with a blueprint for integrating sustainability into the formal education of children to create environmentally aware citizens. Drawing on both administrations’ expertise, the guideline includes both sustainability aspects and methods, promoting teaching methods such as a whole-school approach and outdoor pedagogy. The guideline is written in such a way, that schools should be able to implement it while also adapting it to their local needs and context.
Skogomeskolan’s sustainability coordinator (förstelärare) has a leading role in developing the school’s sustainability work, which is integrated into all the subjects taught at the school. To promote system thinking, Skogomeskolan links local sustainability lessons to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For instance, while harvesting crops from the small garden outside, the children learn both about sustainable food systems and SDG 2. By using a module method, the teaching staff is supported when integrating sustainability into their disciplines. By gathering with their peers in the modules, they workshop together to get inspiration for lesson plans and tackle challenges faced when rethinking how their work connects to the SDGs and sustainability. This can be especially challenging in non-STEM subjects.
Further, sustainability is not only included in the student curriculum but also taught to all school personnel, such as culinary staff, cleaning staff, etc, so that they can integrate it into their work – thus reinforcing the lessons learned in the classroom and contributing to lifelong learning of the school personnel. The school uses green procurement to make sure that products used in the school live up to sustainability
The inclusive learning approach used by Skogomeskolan has the goal of restructuring human relationships with nature to become more symbiotic. The aim is for the students to better understand the impact that their actions can have on the world at large. Since the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a central pillar for linking local action to solving global challenges it is a connection emphasised in the school’s classrooms.
For instance, through its communal garden, where the students harvest crops, the students learn about sustainable food systems. Further, through the school’s Food Council, the students learn about food in connection to health and wellbeing, thus contributing to SDG 2 and SDG 3. Using a whole school approach, where the teachers and school staff are encouraged to learn about and integrate sustainability into their profession, Skogomeskolan contributes to SDG4. Further, through the city’s local sharing economy platform, the students are taught about sustainable consumption to form eco-friendly consumption patterns, thus contributing to SDG 12.
Using outdoor pedagogy, and using nature as a teacher, the students learn about SDG 15. Through the school’s local waste sorting system and the future Sustainability Council, the students learn about the interlinkages between ecosystem degradation and climate change. This way they grow up to employ a system thinking for minimising their carbon footprint. In this way, the school aims to contribute to SDG 11 and SDG 13. By using nature as a teacher the students can explore their own relationship to nature in a gender-neutral manner. In this way, the project also contributes to SDG5.
The school collaborates with a wide set of stakeholders, including the Swedish National Agency for Education, to create a more inclusive education system in Sweden. Thus, contributing to SDGs 16 and 17.
The guideline was developed in 2020, which means that its implementation among the schools in Gothenburg was slowed down by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, some of the initiatives are still in their infancy.
However, Skogomeskolan as a pilot has implemented numerous initiatives as per the guideline. This includes; the modules, aiding an interdisciplinary approach and lifelong learning; appointing a sustainability coordinator; SDG integrated learning; Food Councils, where the students discuss school meals; communal gardening, where the students learn about sustainable food systems; recycling stations, where the students learn about material flows and resource management; outdoor pedagogy, whereby nature is used as a teacher; local sharing economy platform; collaborations with civil society organisations like public science centers and museums, so that the students can better understand their role in society at large; green procurement processes for materials used in the school.
A key feature of the approach used by Skogomeskolan is that it is an iterative process whereby the initiatives are continuously improved based on lessons learned. This means that Skogomeskolan already has identified a few future ambitions, such as: creating the role of “school farmer” by entering into formal partnerships with local farmers to supply locally sourced produce and designated sites for study visits; to reinstate their Harvest Festival, a day dedicated to the understanding farm-to-fork logic open to the community; more local sharing initiatives; upscaling the food councils to sustainability councils; teaching one class a week outdoors; developing new evaluation criteria for school performance using three evaluation strands where one is dedicated to sustainability as well as integrated into the other two strands; making sustainability education fun and focus on what can be done to empower the entire school community.
Through this project, Skogomeskolan contributes to increased understanding from an early age of the interconnections between climate change and ecosystem degradation. Skogomeskolan contributes to the EU competence framework on sustainability by allocating space and time in the school curriculum so that students and learners of all ages have opportunities to experience and learn about and in nature. Research clearly shows the benefits to both students and teachers of learning outside, and Skogomeskolan provides a framework for doing just that.
Beyond demonstrating the New European Bauhaus principles, Skogomeskolan is an excellent example of the implementation of the Council recommendation on learning for environmental sustainability. Skogomeskolan combines cognitive, applied, and socio-emotional learning in its approach to sustainability education in a systematic manner while glocalising the SDGs.
Through its lifelong learning and upskilling approach, Skogomeskolan also embodies the values of the EU skills agenda and principle one of the European pillar for social rights.
