Leadership Traits in Environmental Education: Insights from Johor Schools

Abstract This study investigates how school leaders interpret and mobilize the traits and competencies required to initiate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in school contexts. Using a qualitative single-case study design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight school leaders involved in the Johor Sustainable Education Action Plan (JSEAP). Thematic analysis reveals three interrelated dimensions of leadership practice: a positive orientation towards change, substantive ESD-related knowledge and interpersonal competence. Rather than operating as static attributes, these dimensions emerge as relational and contextually shaped capacities, developed through leaders’ ongoing engagement with institutional constraints, policy expectations and school-level realities. The findings suggest that early-stage ESD leadership is less a matter of technical readiness than a process of situated sense-making, in which leaders negotiate meaning, capability and context simultaneously. This study advances ESD scholarship beyond competency frameworks towards a more complex understanding of how sustainability-oriented change is initiated in schools.