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The purpose of this paper is to articulate, and advocate for, a deep shift in how the authors conceptualize and enact school leadership and reform. The authors challenge fundamental conceptions regarding educational systems and call for a dramatic shift from the factory model to a living systems model of schooling. The authors call is not a metaphorical call. The authors propose embracing assumptions grounded in the basic human nature as living systems. Green school leaders, practicing whole school sustainability, provide emerging examples of educational restoration.

School reform models have implicitly and even explicitly embraced industrialized assumptions about students and learning. Shifting from the factory model of education to a living systems model of whole school sustainability requires transformational strategies more associated with nature and life than machines. Ecological restoration provides the basis for the model of educational restoration.

Educational restoration, as proposed here, makes nature a central player in the conversations about ecologies of learning, both to improve the quality of learning for students and to better align educational practice with social, economic and environmental needs of the time. Educational leaders at all levels of the educational system have critical roles to play in deconstructing factory model schooling and reform. The proposed framework for educational restoration raises new questions and makes these opportunities visible. Discussion of this framework begins with ecological circumstances and then addresses, values, commitment and judgments.

Educational restoration will affect every aspect of teaching, learning and leading. It will demand new approaches to leadership preparation. This new landscape of educational practice is wide open for innovative approaches to research, preparation and practice across the field of educational leadership.

The model of educational restoration provides a conceptual foundation for future research and leadership practice.

This paper aims to present a discursive and evaluative analysis of Energy + Illawarra, an Australian Government Low Income Energy Efficiency Program (LIEEP) funded interdisciplinary social marketing energy efficiency programme. Energy + Illawarra was a community programme working with low-income older people in Australia and involving social marketers, human geographers and engineers. The paper aims to identify how ecological systems theory can inform social marketing, and what practicalities there may be in doing so. The paper also aims to assess whether a social marketing programme that draws on ecological systems theory can have a positive impact on people’s thermal comfort.

First, the paper uses critical discursive analysis to examine the use of various elements of a social marketing energy efficiency programme in relation to the different levels of ecological systems theory. Second, a longitudinal cohort survey study design is used to evaluate the programme’s influence on people’s perceptions of thermal comfort and satisfaction with thermal comfort in their homes.

The study found that ecological systems theory could be an effective framework for social marketing programmes. The evaluation study found that the intervention had a positive impact on participant’s perceptions of thermal comfort, satisfaction with thermal comfort and attitudes towards energy efficiency. However, the paper identifies some potential tensions in using ecological systems theory and suggests that issues of power, representation, agenda setting, the need for reflexive practice and consideration of unintended consequences are important considerations in social marketing programmes.

The work presented here suggests that multi-level social marketing programmes that draw on ecological systems theory can make a useful contribution to social change as demonstrated by the evaluation survey finding positive impacts on thermal comfort and attitudes of participants. However, issues of power, representation, agenda setting, the need for reflexive practice and consideration of unintended consequences should be considered in social marketing programmes.

This paper aims to explore how the socio-ecological model can be expanded to address wicked problems that are perpetuated by marketing systems through examining the ways the external environment can be targeted.

The authors used an extended socio-ecological model to provide a framework for social marketers to combat climate change through the food system in the external environment.

The socio-ecological model is extended to examine how social marketers can influence the micro and macro environment through targeting the physical structure, economic, political and socio-cultural environment of desirable (sustainable) and undesirable (unsustainable) food products.

The authors highlight that social marketers should focus on the various ways the external environment at multiple levels can be targeted to produce systemic change.

This paper broadens the current macro-social marketing knowledge by providing a framework to analyse where and how change can be affected at the various levels of society.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine school health education in the USA and present alternative approaches for more critical and comprehensive health education.

An ecological model framework is used to identify the limitations and opportunities for improvement in school health education in the USA. An argument is made for school health education that embraces ecological approaches, political economy theory, and critical pedagogies.

US schools have been tasked with providing health education that is primarily rooted in individualistic approaches. Often missing from this education is recognition of the social and structural determinants of health that greatly influence one’s ability to practice the health behaviors promoted in schools. This raises pedagogical and ethical concerns, which can be addressed by teaching health education that is grounded in ecological and political economy understandings of health and in critical pedagogies that allow students to more comprehensively and accurately understand health, how their worlds influence health, and their agency within those worlds.

This paper offers justification for a critical model of school health education and for the professional preparation of school health educators that is grounded in critical pedagogy and ecological approaches.

This work complements other research on critical health education by adding explicit integration of the ecological model and the political economy theory within critical pedagogies.

This paper aims to argue that resilience – and its underlying socio-ecological perspective – is a critical concept that could serve to integrate different views on, and approaches to, social marketing. The aim is to inspire social marketers to move away from narrow, issue-based interventions targeting individual behaviours and to consider the impact of social ecologies, particularly the contribution resilience research can make to behaviour change.

This is a conceptual paper; socio-ecological models and the resilience concept are discussed and applied to a current “wicked problem” – obesity.

From a socio-ecological perspective, research findings highlight the impact macro, meso and micro forces have on behaviour and the importance of a child’s micro-system and the influence it has on development and life outcomes. Building resilience requires a relationship-building, person-centred, holistic and long-term developmental approach to behaviour change.

This is a conceptual paper that introduces new concepts to the social marketing field. Future research should focus on understanding how to implement a resilience-building approach in practice – including the interrelationships and interactions between individual, family and community resilience – and how resilience can be integrated within systematic, socio-ecological thinking when addressing “wicked problems”.

Rather than blaming and targeting individuals, the goal should be to create an environment that supports parents, families and communities to build resilience at the micro, meso and macro levels. The findings support the argument that social marketers should adopt an upstream approach to develop interventions that make the environment the primary focus. Social marketers should collaborate with, and learn from, social workers, psychologists and educationalist to further their understanding of resilience. This would have a positive, sustainable impact on a whole range of social and health issues, ultimately helping to address the overarching issue of social inequality.

Building resilience amongst individuals, families and communities offer a means to achieve fundamental positive social change and to reduce social, economic and health inequality.

The paper offers a unique perspective on how and why resilience – and its underlying socio-ecological framework – should be applied within the social marketing field.

Addressing calls for broadening social marketing thinking beyond “individualistic” parameters, this paper aims to describe a behavioural ecological systems (BEM) approach to enhance understanding of social markets.

A conceptual framework – the BEM – is presented and discussed within a context of alcohol social change.

The BEM emphasises the relational nature of behaviour change, where individuals are embedded in an ecological system that involves the performances of behaviour and social change within historical, social, cultural, physical and environmental settings. Layers of influence on actors are characterised as macro (distant, large in scale), exo (external, remote from individuals), meso (between the individual and environments) and micro (the individual within their social setting). The BEM can be applied to guide social marketers towards creating solutions that focus on collaboration amongst market actors rather than among consumers.

The BEM contributes to a broader holistic view of social ecologies and behaviour change; emphasises the need for social marketers to embrace systems thinking; and recognises that relationships between actors at multiple layers in social change markets are interactive, collaborative and embedded in dynamic social contexts. Importantly, a behavioural ecological systems approach enables social marketers to develop coherent, integrated and multi-dimensional social change programmes.

The underlying premise of the BEM brings forward relational logic as the foundation for future social marketing theory and practice. Taking this approach to social market change focuses strategy on the intangible aspects of social offerings, inclusive of the interactions and processes of value creation (and/or destruction) within a social marketing system to facilitate collaboration and interaction across a network of actors so as to overcome barriers and identify solutions to social problems.

By applying ecological models of health behaviour to marketing communications to achieve behaviour change, this paper aims to illustrate the importance of taking into account various economic, environmental and social influences.

A two-part study was undertaken. Part one involved exploring the lived worlds of the targeted population. Part two explored how the needs of the target audience informed a social marketing communications strategy. This was illustrated through Childsmile, a Scottish Government funded oral health institution.

A variety of intra- and inter-personal influences where identified that encouraged or discouraged oral health. Complementing this was how these needs are incorporated into an ecological social marketing communications campaign. Although the long term effects of the ecological social marketing campaign will not become evident for a number of years, initial results indicate its important role in changing behaviour.

The importance of engaging with various groups within social marketing is shown. Specifically, the need to understand and encourage interaction between individuals, their community, health institutions and the Government.

Behaviour change, through social marketing communications, is possible among socio-economic deprived groups. Change supported with face to face interactions with health professionals.

Previous criticisms of social marketing research being American-centric, and avoiding issues around socio-economic deprivation are addressed. In addressing this, the paper also answers calls for research into ecological models of social marketing communications to understand how influences affect its applicability.

Students' simplistic observations and uninspired solutions for social-ecological dilemmas were the motivation for this study. The purpose of this paper is to foster systemic thinking in students and study the role of the lecturers.

The research was designed as a self-study action-research (AR), which was carried out by the lecturers of an environmental citizenship course in a teachers' college. The paper describes three AR circuits, expressed in three stages of field mapping by students: group mapping at the beginning of the course, initial individual field mapping and field mapping prior to action design.

Analyzing the maps after each stage allowed for design modifications. The findings indicate that field mapping helped students better understand the complexity of a social-ecological system and their role within it. Lecturers were required to maintain a delicate balance between teaching and supporting the students' first-hand experience as environmental citizens.

The study's conclusions are based on a case study and are therefore presented dialectically rather than as global generalizations.

Mapping the field of action can serve as a powerful tool in fostering a system approach to environmental citizenship in many educational settings.

The paper presents the use of Kurt Lewin's field theory for environmental education and for fostering environmental citizenship based on systemic and ecological thinking. The diversity of students' conceptualizations of the complexity of a social-ecological system, as revealed in this study, calls for further research of field-mapping as a teaching method.

The study's main goal is to investigate different leadership styles that characterize middle-level leaders, the intermediate leadership tier of role holders in school, as they practice leadership scenarios through active participation in a professional learning process of role-play simulation, using a social-ecological approach.

Thirty middle-level leaders from different Israeli high schools and districts participated in the study during an M.A. course in an educational leadership program. The authors used qualitative analysis to examine role-play simulations of leadership scenarios based on group debriefings. This content analysis was conducted within a two-dimensional theoretical framework composed of leadership style theory and a social-ecological model.

The study findings address four main leadership styles: authentic, transformational, participative and transactional. Regarding their appearance within different social-ecological layers, the interpersonal layer was the most salient one with a prominent appearance of transformational and authentic leadership styles. On the organizational and communal layers, authentic leadership was more prominent. The study findings demonstrate multidimensionality in both the leadership styles and social-ecological layers, as different styles appeared in different layers concurrently.

The findings may help articulate the nature and characteristics of middle-level school leadership. They may also provide relevant theoretical content and instructional strategy to develop simulation-based preparation programs for middle-level leaders.

The study findings highlight unique leadership characteristics of middle-level school leaders and suggest a contextual perception of their leadership styles within a social-ecological framework.