Using school food gardens to promote education for sustainable development: leadership perspectives from school principals in South Africa

1 Introduction

The world is facing complex and interconnected sustainability challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, environmental degradation, and growing social inequalities. These challenges have intensified calls for education systems to prepare learners with the knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions needed to contribute to more sustainable futures (UNESCO, 2017; United Nations, 2015). Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has emerged as a transformative educational approach that enables learners to critically engage with sustainability issues and participate in developing solutions to social, economic, and environmental challenges (Holfelder, 2019; Rieckmann, 2018). ESD is central to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action) (UNESCO, 2017; United Nations, 2015).

Schools are increasingly recognised as important settings for developing sustainability competencies through authentic and contextually relevant learning experiences. Conventional classroom practices, however, may provide limited opportunities for learners to engage directly with sustainability challenges as they are experienced in everyday life. This has increased interest in pedagogies that connect formal curriculum knowledge with learners' lived environments and community concerns (Kuo et al., 2019; Turner-Hill et al., 2021). School food gardens provide one such setting by creating opportunities for curriculum learning to intersect with food production, biodiversity, composting, water management, and environmental stewardship (Maliotou and Liarakou, 2026; Sithole and Yassim, 2026). The significance of such learning lies not simply in relocating learning outdoors, but in potentially connecting curriculum knowledge with the social and ecological realities surrounding the school.

In South Africa, the relationship between education and place is particularly relevant because schools operate within markedly unequal socioeconomic conditions. Although the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA), National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD), and Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) provide a policy environment supportive of environmental and sustainability learning, implementation occurs within schools facing differing levels of resources, teacher capacity, food insecurity, and community need (Department of Basic Education, 2011; Department of Environmental Affairs, 2011; Laurie et al., 2017; Le Grange, 2011). School principals therefore occupy an important mediating position between policy aspirations and school-level enactment.

School gardens may be conceptualised as third learning spaces that connect formal curriculum knowledge, learners' everyday experiences, and community knowledge (Sobel, 2004; Turner-Hill et al., 2021). In communities affected by food insecurity and environmental pressures, gardens may enable wider sustainability concerns to be encountered through locally situated practices involving food production, soil, biodiversity, organic waste, and water use. This place-responsive orientation situates ESD within local realities rather than treating sustainability only as an abstract global concern.

However, establishing a school garden does not itself ensure meaningful ESD. Its educational contribution depends on whether garden activities are connected to curriculum objectives, supported by appropriately prepared teachers, recognised as legitimate instructional activity, and embedded within wider school practices. The leadership question is therefore not simply whether principals support sustainability initiatives, but how they seek to translate sustainability intentions into organisational and pedagogical practice through educational direction, teacher capacity building, curriculum integration, resource mobilisation, and stakeholder participation (Hallinger and Murphy, 1985; Müller et al., 2020).

Using an interpretivist qualitative multiple-case study involving semi-structured interviews with five primary school principals, this study examines how principals conceptualised and described their leadership of school food gardens as third learning spaces for ESD in the Tshwane School District. By foregrounding principals' perspectives, the study illuminates the organisational and pedagogical conditions through which school gardens may be positioned as sustainability-oriented learning environments in resource-constrained contexts.

2 Background and literature review

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) seeks to equip learners with knowledge, values, competencies, and capacity for action in relation to interconnected environmental, social, and economic challenges (Rieckmann, 2018; UNESCO, 2017). School food gardens provide one context for such learning because they can connect curriculum content with practical experiences of food production, biodiversity, composting, water conservation, and environmental stewardship. Previous research has identified educational, nutritional, environmental, and social benefits associated with school gardening (Eugenio-Gozalbo et al., 2020; Haase and Power, 2023; Laurie et al., 2017). These benefits should not be assumed to arise merely from establishing a garden. Gardens can remain peripheral activities unless they are purposefully connected with curriculum, teacher practice, school priorities, and stakeholder participation. The analytical concern is therefore not only what gardens potentially contribute to ESD, but what organisational and pedagogical conditions enable this potential to be realised. This shifts attention towards school leadership because principals influence educational priorities, instructional programmes, teacher professional learning, resource allocation, organisational culture, and relationships with external stakeholders (Goddard et al., 2015; Hallinger, 2011).

Leadership for ESD nevertheless exceeds a narrowly classroom-centred understanding of instructional leadership. Sustainability initiatives typically involve curriculum, organisational practices, professional development, learner participation, physical learning environments, and community relationships. The WSA complements instructional leadership by conceptualising sustainability as an institution-wide process rather than the responsibility of an individual teacher, subject, or project (Gericke and Torbjörnsson, 2022; Seiser et al., 2022).

Within this process, participation should not be reduced to physical involvement in garden activities. Meaningful participation entails opportunities to contribute knowledge, assume responsibility, collaborate in problem-solving, influence relevant decisions, and reflect on sustainability practices. Teacher participation is particularly important because teachers mediate between practical garden activity and curriculum learning; meaningful involvement therefore depends on pedagogical preparation, professional support, and opportunities for collaborative planning.

School food gardens also connect leadership with place-responsive learning. As third learning spaces, they may mediate among formal curriculum knowledge, learners' everyday experiences, and community knowledge (Sobel, 2004; Turner-Hill et al., 2021). Yet this potential remains contingent upon teacher capacity, curriculum integration, organisational support, and leadership. Principals therefore do not directly produce place-based learning; rather, they may establish conditions under which teachers and learners can use the garden as a meaningful educational environment.

Within South Africa, previous research has considered school food gardens in relation to nutrition, food security, learning, and stakeholder perceptions (Laurie et al., 2013, 2017), while more recent work foregrounds principals' perspectives on sustainability-oriented school gardens (Sithole and Yassim, 2026). The remaining concern is less whether gardens possess educational potential than how leadership contributes to translating that potential into sustained pedagogical and organisational practice, particularly within resource-constrained schools.

This study therefore examines how five South African primary school principals perceived and described the leadership processes through which school food gardens could be positioned as third learning spaces for ESD.

2.1 Research gap and contribution

Although scholarship has established the educational, nutritional, environmental, and social potential of school food gardens, less attention has been directed towards the leadership processes through which these spaces become integrated into teaching, learning, and whole-school sustainability practices. Moreover, instructional leadership, whole-school sustainability, and place-based learning have often been treated as related but conceptually distinct concerns. This study brings these perspectives together by examining how principals perceive and describe their efforts to establish educational direction, support teacher capacity, facilitate curriculum integration, and mobilise school-community participation. The study therefore shifts attention from what school gardens potentially contribute to ESD towards how principal leadership may create the organisational and pedagogical conditions through which that potential can be realised.

2.2 Theoretical framework

This study is informed by the Whole School Approach (WSA) to Education for Sustainable Development and Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model. The integration of these frameworks provides a comprehensive lens for understanding how principals lead the implementation of school food gardens as third learning spaces for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). While the Whole School Approach emphasises systemic and collaborative dimensions of sustainability education, Hallinger's model focuses on the leadership practices required to support teaching, learning, and organisational improvement. Together, these frameworks offer complementary perspectives for examining how principals create the conditions necessary for sustainability learning within schools.

2.2.1 The whole school approach to education for sustainable development

The Whole School Approach (WSA) is widely recognised as an effective framework for implementing Education for Sustainable Development because it promotes the integration of sustainability across all aspects of school life rather than confining it to specific subjects or activities. The approach emphasises the interconnectedness of leadership, curriculum, pedagogy, school culture, community engagement, and learner participation in fostering sustainable development (Gericke and Torbjörnsson, 2022; Seiser et al., 2022).

According to the WSA, sustainability becomes meaningful when it is embedded within the daily practices, policies, relationships, and learning experiences of the entire school community. This perspective positions schools as agents of social transformation that actively model sustainable values and behaviours. Consequently, implementing ESD requires collaboration among principals, teachers, learners, parents, and community stakeholders. It also requires learning environments that allow learners to engage directly with sustainability issues through authentic and participatory experiences.

In the context of this study, school food gardens represent an important mechanism through which the Whole School Approach can be realised. Gardens provide opportunities for curriculum integration, experiential learning, community participation, environmental stewardship, and food security initiatives. They function as spaces where sustainability principles are enacted rather than merely discussed. The WSA therefore provides a useful lens for examining how principals foster collaboration, build partnerships, and create organisational structures that support sustainability learning.

The study draws particularly on five interconnected dimensions of the Whole School Approach: These dimensions guided the analysis of how principals embedded sustainability within school practices through school food gardens. Participation is understood here as more than attendance or physical involvement. Meaningful participation entails opportunities to contribute knowledge, exercise responsibility, participate in relevant decision-making, collaborate in problem-solving, and reflect on sustainability practices. Teachers occupy a critical mediating position because transforming gardening activity into curriculum learning depends substantially on their pedagogical decisions; principal support must therefore encompass professional preparation, collaborative planning, and recognition of garden-based learning as legitimate instruction.

• Leadership and governance
• Teacher professional development
• Curriculum integration
• Community engagement
• Participation

2.2.2 Hallinger's instructional leadership model

While the Whole School Approach explains the organisational conditions necessary for sustainability education, Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model provides insight into how principals influence teaching and learning processes. Hallinger and Murphy (1985) conceptualise instructional leadership through three interconnected dimensions: The first dimension, defining the school mission, involves establishing and communicating a clear vision for learning. In the context of this study, principals play a critical role in articulating a vision that positions school food gardens as legitimate educational spaces for sustainability learning. A clear vision helps align staff, learners, and stakeholders around shared educational goals and ensures that garden initiatives become part of the school's broader mission rather than isolated projects.

• Defining the school mission.
• Managing the instructional programme.
• Promoting a positive school learning climate.

The second dimension, managing the instructional programme, focuses on curriculum implementation, teacher support, and instructional improvement. This dimension is particularly relevant because school food gardens require teachers to adopt new pedagogical approaches that extend learning beyond the classroom. Principals support this process by facilitating professional development, encouraging curriculum integration, and monitoring the educational use of gardens as learning environments.

The third dimension, promoting a positive school climate, involves creating supportive relationships, fostering collaboration, and building a culture conducive to learning. Such practices are essential for implementing ESD initiatives because sustainability education requires collective engagement, innovation, and trust among stakeholders. By cultivating collaborative school cultures, principals create conditions that enable teachers and learners to participate meaningfully in garden-based learning activities. Applied to school food gardens, these dimensions extend beyond general support for gardening. They may involve positioning sustainability within the school mission, supporting teachers to link garden activities to curriculum objectives, protecting instructional time for outdoor learning, facilitating professional development, and enabling collaboration among school and community stakeholders. The model thus helps explain how principals may convert physical garden infrastructure into an intentionally supported instructional environment.

2.2.3 School food gardens as third learning spaces

The concept of third learning spaces strengthens the connection between the WSA and instructional leadership. Drawing on place-based learning perspectives (Sobel, 2004), third learning spaces exist at the intersection of formal curriculum knowledge, learners' everyday experiences, and community knowledge. These spaces create opportunities for learners to connect theory with practice and apply classroom learning to real-life situations.

Within this study, school food gardens are conceptualised as potential third learning spaces because they extend opportunities for learning beyond conventional classroom boundaries. Concepts associated with plant growth, language, measurement, food systems, biodiversity, or water use may be encountered through formal curriculum teaching and then explored through observation or activity in the garden. Learners' household and community knowledge may also enter these learning encounters. The garden therefore provides an intermediary space in which curriculum knowledge, practical experience, and local knowledge can potentially interact.

However, a garden does not become a third learning space simply because teachers and learners enter it. Its educational function depends on pedagogical intentionality. Teachers need to relate activity to learning objectives, while learners require opportunities to observe, question, make decisions, solve problems, and reflect. Principals may support these processes by legitimising garden-based learning, enabling teacher development, facilitating curriculum planning, and mobilising organisational and community resources.

2.2.4 Conceptual integration of the frameworks

This study argues that neither the Whole School Approach nor Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model alone is sufficient for understanding leadership for sustainability. The Whole School Approach provides a systemic perspective on how sustainability is embedded across school structures and relationships, while instructional leadership explains how principals influence teaching, learning, and professional development. Together, these frameworks illuminate the organisational and pedagogical processes through which school food gardens become meaningful spaces for Education for Sustainable Development.

The integrated framework guided both data collection and analysis by focusing attention on how principals: Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual relationship underpinning this study. The WSA provides organisational conditions for embedding sustainability across school structures, relationships, and practices. Within this context, principals may enact instructional leadership by articulating a vision for sustainability, supporting teacher professional development, integrating gardens into curriculum activities, and fostering collaborative school cultures. These processes may enable school food gardens to function as third learning spaces for experiential and place-based learning and to provide opportunities for sustainability competency development; the present study does not independently assess learner outcomes.

• Developed a vision for sustainability and garden-based learning;
• Supported teachers' professional development;
• Integrated gardens into curriculum and instructional practices;
• Fostered opportunities for learner participation and perceived agency;
• Built collaborative relationships with parents and community stakeholders; and
• Created school environments that support sustainability education.

3 Methods

This study adopted a qualitative multiple-case study design situated within an interpretivist paradigm. The design was appropriate because it enabled an in-depth exploration of how school principals interpreted and enacted leadership practices related to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through school food gardens. A case study approach was selected because it allows researchers to investigate contemporary phenomena within their real-life contexts and capture participants' lived experiences and meaning-making processes (Aspers and Corte, 2019; Cohen et al., 2018; Creswell, 2009).

This study was conducted in five purposely sampled public primary schools located in economically marginalised communities within the Tshwane School District, Gauteng Province, South Africa. The schools serve communities characterised by high levels of unemployment, poverty, and food insecurity, where many households face ongoing socioeconomic challenges and have limited access to environmental and educational resources. Within these contexts, schools often play a broader social role that extends beyond teaching and learning to include supporting learners' nutritional, social, and developmental needs. Garden initiatives may also create points of connection among schools, families, and community stakeholders around local concerns such as food production and environmental practices; because parents and community members were not interviewed, these wider functions are interpreted through principals' accounts rather than as independently established community outcomes.

All participating schools were involved in the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures project and had established Mandala permaculture gardens as part of a post-COVID-19 initiative concerned with sustainability education, food security, and community resilience. The gardens incorporated food production, composting, biodiversity enhancement, water-wise cultivation, and environmental stewardship.

Mandala gardens were relevant to the study not because the research sought to evaluate the Mandala design or its agronomic effectiveness, but because their multifunctional organisation provided a bounded setting in which food production, ecological practices, curriculum-related activity, and stakeholder participation could potentially intersect. Their presence across the five schools provided a common sustainability initiative through which principals' leadership perceptions and practices could be compared. The analytical focus therefore remained on leadership relating to the gardens as educational spaces rather than on evaluating the permaculture model itself.

Data were generated through semi-structured interviews with the five principals. The interview guide was developed from the research questions and theoretically sensitised by the WSA and Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model. Questions explored principals' understandings of sustainability and the educational role of the gardens, leadership vision, teacher support and professional learning, curriculum integration, learner and stakeholder participation, resource mobilisation, and perceived opportunities and constraints associated with garden-based ESD. The framework informed areas of inquiry rather than a predetermined coding structure; open-ended questions and follow-up probes enabled participants to introduce experiences and interpretations beyond these domains. Interviews lasted approximately 30–40 min, were audio-recorded with consent, and transcribed verbatim (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2015).

The five principals were purposively selected because they had direct leadership responsibility for schools participating in the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures initiative and experience with Mandala permaculture gardens. Each principal and school constituted a case within the multiple-case design. Supplementary Table 1 summarises key participant and school characteristics, including principal gender and leadership experience, school enrolment, and quintile. These details provide contextual information for interpreting the findings and assessing their potential transferability while preserving participant and school anonymity (Table 1).

Table 1. The demographic details of the principals and schools.

Data analysis followed Tesch's eight-step process of qualitative data analysis (Creswell, 2009). Each participating school was treated as a bounded case. Cross-case thematic analysis enabled the identification of common leadership practices across the five schools while preserving contextual variation. The analysis began with repeated reading of all interview transcripts to gain a holistic understanding of participants' experiences and leadership perspectives. The researcher immersed himself in the data by reading and re-reading transcripts while recording preliminary notes and reflections in a research journal. During the second stage, key ideas and meaning units were identified and labeled with initial codes. For example, statements concerning teachers' limited confidence in outdoor teaching were initially coded around limited outdoor teaching competence and the need for professional development; related codes concerning mentoring, peer learning, and collaborative professional learning were grouped under teacher capacity development and contributed to the theme “Building Teacher Capacity for Garden-Based Pedagogies”. Codes concerning curriculum time, subject-specific garden activities, and the positioning of gardens as instruction rather than recreation contributed to the category of curriculum legitimisation and the theme “Positioning Gardens as Legitimate Curriculum Spaces”.

Through an iterative process of constant comparison, related categories were clustered into themes that captured shared patterns across the five cases while preserving the uniqueness of individual participants' experiences. Emerging themes were continually refined by comparing coded segments with the original transcripts to ensure that interpretations remained grounded in the data. To foreground participants' voices, verbatim quotations were used extensively during theme development and reporting. These quotations served as direct evidence for analytical claims and enabled readers to assess the connections between the data and the study's interpretations. The final analysis produced five interconnected themes relating to principal leadership for Education for Sustainable Development through school food gardens.

The identified themes were subsequently interpreted through the combined lenses of the Whole School Approach and Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model. This process enabled the researchers to examine how principals' experiences and leadership practices aligned with broader theoretical understandings of sustainability leadership, collaborative school improvement, and instructional leadership.

Trustworthiness was enhanced through several strategies (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Credibility was established through prolonged engagement with participants, member checking, and the use of verbatim interview transcripts. Participants were given opportunities to verify the accuracy of the researchers' interpretations and to clarify any ambiguities. Transferability was supported through detailed descriptions of the research context, participants, and study setting. Dependability was strengthened by maintaining an audit trail that documented data collection, coding decisions, and theme development. Confirmability was promoted through reflexive journaling, which enabled the researchers to critically reflect on potential biases and assumptions throughout the research process.

4 Findings

The findings presented below reflect the participating principals' perceptions and interpretations of their leadership practices and of the educational role of school food gardens. The themes therefore represent how principals understood and described these practices and outcomes rather than independently observed effects on teachers, learners, families, or community stakeholders.

4.1 Theme 1: enacting visionary leadership for sustainability

Participants consistently described leadership vision as critical for ensuring that school food gardens were viewed as educational assets rather than peripheral projects. Principals emphasised that gardens needed to be embedded within the school's mission and linked directly to teaching and learning.

Principal 5 described vision as:

“A mental picture of what the school should become and what the principal wants to create.”

Principal 2 stressed the importance of collective ownership:

“Running a successful school requires a collective effort from all stakeholders.”

Principal 3 further noted:

“A clear purpose drives resilience and positive outcomes because staff know what they are working towards.”

These accounts demonstrate that principals actively framed gardens as central to school improvement and sustainability education. Their leadership involved communicating a shared vision, building commitment among staff, and ensuring alignment between garden activities and educational goals.

4.2 Theme 2: building teacher capacity for garden-based pedagogies

The principals consistently identified teacher professional development as essential for the successful use of school food gardens as learning spaces for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Participants explained that many teachers had been trained to teach within conventional classroom environments and often lacked the pedagogical skills, confidence, and practical gardening knowledge needed to facilitate meaningful outdoor learning experiences. Consequently, principals viewed professional development as a prerequisite for transforming gardens into productive educational spaces.

Principal 2 highlighted this challenge:

“Teachers were never trained in outdoor teaching and learning, and some of them did not even do gardening. Their professional development should be prioritised.”

Similarly, Principal 1 explained that garden-based learning required teachers to develop new competencies:

“Extending learning to the garden requires teachers to broaden their knowledge and refine their practices for interactive learning.”

Principal 5 emphasised the value of collaborative learning opportunities for teachers:

“Creating spaces for teachers to share ideas in a job-embedded context helps build professional learning communities that encourage sharing best practices and collective problem-solving.”

These accounts suggest that principals perceived professional development not as a once-off intervention but as a continuous process of learning, reflection, and collaboration. Participants viewed teacher learning as critical for developing confidence in outdoor pedagogy and for ensuring that gardens became meaningful learning spaces rather than isolated gardening projects.

Viewed through Hallinger's instructional leadership framework, these findings illustrate how principals actively manage instructional programmes by supporting teacher learning and creating conditions that enable pedagogical innovation. The findings also align with the Whole School Approach, which emphasises capacity building and shared responsibility as foundations for sustainable educational change.

4.3 Theme 3: positioning gardens as legitimate curriculum spaces

The principals unanimously argued that learning in the garden should be recognised as legitimate curriculum time rather than recreational activity. Participants indicated that effective garden-based learning requires careful planning, curriculum alignment, and deliberate instructional leadership.

Principal 3 stated:

“Taking learners to the garden is not free time.”

Principal 1 explained how curriculum integration occurred:

“The curriculum is not changed, but learners are exposed to gardens. The language teacher would use nouns of things found in the garden and verbs related to activities done there.”

These quotations indicate that principals viewed gardens as extensions of the classroom in which existing curriculum objectives could be contextualised through experiential approaches. Principal 1's example illustrates curriculum integration as contextualisation rather than curriculum replacement: familiar language concepts were connected to observable objects and activities in the garden. Participants' accounts therefore reflected a commitment to instructional integrity while extending learning beyond classroom walls.

4.4 Theme4: cultivating learner agency through experiential sustainability learning

A fourth theme concerned principals' perceptions of learner development. Participants consistently described school gardens as spaces where learners developed confidence, responsibility, and a sense of achievement through direct engagement with sustainability practices. Rather than merely acquiring knowledge about food production, learners were perceived as developing the confidence to act independently and solve problems

Principal 2 shared the story of a learner who successfully grew spinach:

“A learner explained how she planted spinach seeds, cared for the seedlings, harvested the produce, and eventually took it home to her family. She was very proud of what she had achieved.”

Principal 5 similarly reflected on how learners responded to setbacks:

“I was pleased to hear that instead of blaming others, they took responsibility for not effectively nurturing their plot. They could explain why things did not go well and were ready to apply alternatives for the next round.”

These narratives suggest that principals perceived garden-based learning as providing opportunities for achievement, responsibility, reflection, and problem-solving. Participants interpreted learners' responses to successful and unsuccessful gardening activities as indications of increasing ownership and willingness to adapt their actions.

Although participants interpreted these experiences as indicative of growing confidence, resilience, and self-efficacy, these learner outcomes were not independently assessed. The findings should therefore be understood as principals' perceptions of opportunities for learner development rather than evidence of measurable changes in these attributes.

4.5 Theme 5: mobilizing communities for collective sustainability action

A final theme concerned collaboration and stakeholder engagement. Principals consistently argued that garden success depended on shared responsibility among teachers, learners, parents, and community members.

Principal 4 observed:

“The school should not be a one-man show. Teachers and stakeholders have brilliant ideas, and all the manager needs to do is give them a chance to express their opinions.”

Principal 5 emphasised the importance of trust:

“When people feel valued and heard, trust is earned and communication becomes a two-way conversation.”

Principal 1 distinguished engagement from compliance:

“Stakeholder engagement is ongoing and continuous. I do not confuse engagement with compliance issues.”

These findings reveal that principals understood school food gardens as collective endeavours requiring meaningful participation from multiple stakeholders. Gardens created spaces where community knowledge, educational expertise, and sustainability goals could intersect in support of learner development.

5 Discussion

This study examined how primary school principals in economically marginalised South African communities perceived and described their leadership of school food gardens as third learning spaces for ESD. Across the five cases, principals positioned themselves as facilitators of sustainability-oriented practices through vision-setting, teacher development, curriculum integration, and stakeholder engagement. These findings illuminate how principals understand their leadership role in creating conditions for garden-based ESD; they should not be interpreted as independent evidence of the effectiveness of these practices or their effects on teachers and learners.

5.1 Leadership for sustainability: extending instructional leadership

A central finding was the importance principals attributed to establishing a shared vision that positioned school food gardens as educational rather than peripheral food-production spaces. This reflects Hallinger's emphasis on defining and communicating the school mission, but the findings also suggest that instructional leadership requires broader interpretation when applied to ESD. In this study, leadership extended beyond classroom instruction to include legitimising outdoor learning, supporting teacher capacity, facilitating curriculum integration, and mobilising school and community participation.

However, articulating a sustainability vision does not necessarily translate into meaningful pedagogical practice. The educational value of a garden depends on whether teachers can connect garden activities with curriculum objectives and whether sustainability becomes embedded in routine school practices. Vision is therefore necessary but insufficient: leadership becomes consequential when it creates organisational and pedagogical conditions through which sustainability intentions can be enacted. This highlights both the complementarity and tension between instructional leadership and the WSA. Principals may initiate and coordinate change, but its sustainability depends on distributed participation among teachers and other stakeholders.

This issue is particularly important in resource-constrained schools. Although participants described collaboration and resource mobilisation as responses to contextual challenges, principal resourcefulness should not be interpreted as a substitute for adequate systemic support. Leadership agency remains constrained by material resources, teacher preparation, policy support, and wider socioeconomic conditions. Moreover, because the evidence derives from principals' accounts, the study cannot establish that reported leadership practices directly produced improved teaching or learner outcomes. Sustainability-oriented instructional leadership is therefore better understood here as relational, context-dependent, and enabling rather than solely directive.

The study highlights the critical role of professional development in enabling teachers to teach effectively within outdoor learning environments. Principals consistently reported that many teachers lacked confidence and expertise in outdoor pedagogy and sustainability education. Consequently, teacher professional development emerged as a prerequisite for integrating gardens into curriculum activities.

This finding is particularly important because it demonstrates that school gardens alone do not automatically promote ESD. Their educational value depends largely on teachers' ability to transform gardening activities into meaningful learning experiences. The findings support the Whole School Approach, which identifies capacity building as a key mechanism for educational change. By facilitating mentoring, professional learning communities, workshops, and peer collaboration, principals created conditions that enabled teachers to adopt innovative pedagogical approaches. In this way, instructional leadership became a mechanism through which sustainability initiatives were translated into classroom and outdoor learning practices.

5.2 School food gardens as spaces for learner agency and self-efficacy

Another important finding concerns principals' perceptions of learner development. Participants described gardening activities as providing opportunities for learners to experience achievement, responsibility, problem-solving, and reflection. These accounts can be interpreted in relation to sustainability competency frameworks that emphasise systems thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, and responsible action (Rieckmann, 2018). However, because learners were not interviewed or independently assessed, these findings represent perceived opportunities for competency development rather than evidence that particular competencies were acquired.

The school garden can therefore be understood as a place-based context in which learners may practise sustainability-related competencies through concrete activity. Yet experience alone does not automatically generate competencies. A more defensible leadership-to-learning pathway is that principals create enabling organisational conditions, teachers connect garden experiences with curriculum concepts, and learners are provided opportunities for situated sustainability learning. The present data cannot establish the extent to which these opportunities resulted in measurable changes in self-efficacy, resilience, responsibility, or environmental awareness.

5.3 Community engagement and the whole school approach

A further contribution of the study lies in its demonstration of how principals fostered collaboration among teachers, learners, parents, and community stakeholders. The findings reveal that successful garden initiatives were underpinned by participatory leadership practices that promoted communication, trust, and shared ownership. Principals recognized that sustainability education extends beyond classroom boundaries and requires engagement with the wider community.

This finding aligns with the WSA, which emphasises collaboration across stakeholder groups. The garden may operate as a boundary-crossing space connecting school knowledge with community experience and locally relevant sustainability concerns. However, claims about benefits for families or communities remain provisional because these stakeholders were not interviewed. The findings therefore illuminate principals' perceptions of community engagement rather than independently verified community resilience, food-security, or environmental outcomes.

5.4 Theoretical contribution

This study extends Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model by demonstrating how instructional leadership functions beyond classroom-based instructional settings and can be applied to sustainability-oriented outdoor learning environments. The study also extends the Whole School Approach by showing how school food gardens act as integrative spaces through which leadership, curriculum, learner participation, and community engagement intersect in practice.

Importantly, the study extends both frameworks by highlighting the adaptive leadership practices employed by principals operating under conditions of resource scarcity. Participants relied on creativity, collaboration, and local partnerships to sustain garden initiatives. These findings indicate that flexibility and context responsiveness are essential components of leadership for sustainability in developing-country contexts.

5.5 Distinctive contribution to educational leadership research

Unlike previous studies that have primarily documented the benefits of school food gardens for sustainability education, this study demonstrates the mechanisms through which principal leadership transforms these spaces into sites of meaningful educational practice. By integrating the Whole School Approach and Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model, the study provides a framework for understanding how leadership shapes sustainability-oriented learning in resource-constrained schools.

5.6 Implications for global ESD leadership

Although situated in South Africa, the findings have relevance for schools globally that seek to integrate sustainability education under conditions of resource constraints. The study demonstrates how place-based learning environments can be leveraged through instructional leadership to promote sustainability competencies, community engagement, and experiential learning. Across the themes, principals' accounts also reveal tension between sustainability aspirations and implementation capacity. Teacher preparedness, resource limitations, curriculum demands, and sustained stakeholder participation conditioned the educational use of the gardens. Their proposed responses emphasised professional learning, shared responsibility, stakeholder engagement, and stronger instructional integration. Local resource mobilisation, however, should not be treated as a substitute for adequate systemic support.

5.7 Limitations of the study

This study provides contextually grounded insights into how five principals perceived and described the leadership of school food gardens for ESD. The small, purposively selected sample from one district was appropriate for in-depth exploration but restricts transferability. The findings are not statistically generalisable to principals or schools across South Africa; rather, the contextual detail provided enables readers to judge their potential relevance to comparable settings.

Second, the study focused exclusively on school principals' perspectives. While principals play a central role in leading school food garden initiatives, the inclusion of teachers, learners, parents, school governing body members, and community partners could have provided a more comprehensive understanding of how leadership practices influence the implementation and sustainability of garden-based learning. Future research should therefore adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to capture diverse experiences and perspectives.

Third, the study relied primarily on self-reported interview data. As with many qualitative studies, participants may have presented their leadership practices in socially desirable ways, potentially resulting in overly positive accounts of school food garden initiatives. Although member checking, reflexive journaling, and the use of verbatim quotations were employed to enhance trustworthiness, the possibility of response bias cannot be entirely excluded.

Fourth, the study examined leadership practices at a single point in time. Consequently, it was not possible to determine how principals' leadership approaches, teacher practices, or learner outcomes evolved over an extended period. Longitudinal studies would provide deeper insights into the sustainability and long-term educational impacts of school food gardens as third learning spaces for ESD.

Finally, although the study was informed by the Whole School Approach and Hallinger's Instructional Leadership Model, other theoretical perspectives may offer additional insights into leadership for sustainability in resource-constrained contexts. Future studies could draw on theories of transformative leadership, distributed leadership, or ecological leadership to further examine the complex relationships between sustainability education, community engagement, and school improvement.

Despite these limitations, the study contributes important empirical evidence on the role of principal leadership in promoting Education for Sustainable Development through school food gardens. By foregrounding principals' experiences in historically marginalized communities, the study provides contextually grounded insights that can inform leadership practice, policy development, and future research on sustainability education in South Africa and comparable contexts.

6 Conclusion

This study explored how five primary school principals in the Tshwane School District perceived and described their leadership of school food gardens as third learning spaces for ESD. Participating principals positioned leadership as an enabling process involving vision-building, teacher capacity development, curriculum integration, and stakeholder engagement. From their perspectives, gardens provided opportunities for experiential sustainability learning, environmental stewardship, learner participation, and community engagement; these outcomes were not independently assessed.

The study further suggests that principal leadership can create organisational and pedagogical conditions for sustainability education by legitimising garden-based learning, supporting teacher development, coordinating instructional arrangements, and enabling collaborative participation. The findings do not establish a direct causal relationship between these reported leadership practices and learner or community outcomes.

The study also highlights the potential of school gardens to connect curriculum learning with locally experienced concerns such as food production and environmental sustainability. However, claims concerning learner development, household food security, environmental awareness, or community resilience should be interpreted as principals' perceptions and as priorities for further multi-stakeholder and longitudinal investigation.

6.1 Recommendations

Based on the findings, the following recommendations are proposed:

• Educational authorities should integrate school food gardens more explicitly into curriculum and sustainability policies.
• Professional development programs should equip teachers with outdoor pedagogical skills and ESD competencies necessary for garden-based learning.
• Leadership development initiatives should prepare principals to lead sustainability-focused innovations through instructional and community-centered leadership practices.
• Schools should strengthen partnerships with parents, local organizations, agricultural experts, and community stakeholders to promote long-term sustainability and resource mobilization.
• Educational authorities should consider supporting context-responsive school garden models as potential pedagogical resources for ESD, accompanied by curriculum guidance, teacher professional development, leadership support, and appropriate resourcing. Decisions about expansion should take account of local environmental, socioeconomic, and institutional conditions rather than assuming that a single garden model will be equally appropriate across contexts.

6.2 Future research

Future studies should include the perspectives of teachers, learners, parents, and school management teams to provide a more comprehensive understanding of school food gardens as learning spaces. Comparative studies across provinces and countries may further illuminate how contextual factors influence leadership for sustainability. Longitudinal research would also be valuable in examining the long-term educational, environmental, and social impacts of school food gardens on schools and communities.

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Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2026.1987792/full#supplementary-material

Supplementary material Supplementary material at the source

Footnotes

Edited by: William L. Sterrett, Baylor University, United States

Reviewed by: Marlon F. Adlit, Department of Education, Philippines

Beste Sabir, Nord University Levanger, Norway