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In the world of public school education everything depends on good leadership. Sadly, many of our schools administrators can't differentiate the difference between leading and managing; far too many of them don't know the first thing about fundamental leadership principles. In short, they don't understand the fundamentals of Mission Oriented Leadership, the need for top-down leadership, or the critical differences between leadership and management. A cursory review of the selection process for school administrators, and the graduate level curriculums for those who seek a degree in school administration, clearly supports the contention that policymakers and educators are under the misconception that anyone can be taught or trained to be an effective school leader. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This paper aims to increase related knowledge across personal, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability and how it can be applied to support transformative learning.

The paper provides a reflexive case study of the design, content and impact of a course on eco-justice that integrates relational learning with an equity and justice lens. The reflexive case study provides a critical, exploratory self-assessment, including interviews, group discussions and surveys with key stakeholders and course participants.

The results show how relational approaches can support transformative learning for sustainability and provide concrete practices, pathways and recommendations for curricula development that other universities/training institutions could follow or learn from.

Sustainability research, practice and education generally focuses on structural or systemic factors of transformation (e.g. technology, governance and policy) without due consideration as to how institutions and systems are shaping and shaped by the transformation of personal agency and subjectivity. This presents a vast untapped and under-studied potential for addressing deep leverage points for change by using a relational approach to link personal, societal and ecological transformations for sustainability.