Leading for a Sustainable Future: Sustainable Leadership in Cyprus Primary Schools

Abstract

Education systems worldwide face a growing pressure to align with Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 by embedding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into school life. This study examines how primary school headteachers in Cyprus interpret and enact sustainable leadership to advance ESD within a small, highly centralised system. Drawing on sustainable and distributed leadership theories and a whole-school lens, the study employed semi-structured interviews with ten headteachers from diverse regions (urban, rural, and semi-rural). Reflective thematic analysis identified four patterns: (1) leaders sought a strategic integration of ESD into planning and culture; (2) empowerment and participation were pursued through teacher working groups, student eco-councils, and community partnerships; (3) systemic constraints, a rigid curriculum, limited autonomy, and scarce professional development produced a policy–practice gap; and (4) leaders relied on adaptive, collaborative micro-practices to sustain momentum. The findings suggest that, in Cyprus, sustainable leadership operates as a values-based stewardship enacted through ‘quiet activism’. The study highlights implications for leadership development, such as reflexivity, systems thinking, and ethical reasoning, as well as policy design, such as time, autonomy, and structured support for whole-school ESD, in small-state contexts.

1. Introduction

Education systems worldwide face growing pressure to respond to climate disruption, ecological degradation, and social inequity through the transformative integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), in line with Sustainable Development Goal 4.7. Achieving this goal requires a reorientation of school leadership towards sustainability, ensuring that educational institutions act not merely as transmitters of knowledge but as agents of ethical, social, and ecological change (Hargreaves, 2007; Cebrián et al., 2020). Within this paradigm, sustainable leadership has emerged as a critical concept for cultivating long-term, values-driven school improvement and embedding sustainability into school culture and governance (Bush, 2020; Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024).

Sustainable leadership extends beyond administrative efficiency to encompass moral purpose, collaboration, and stewardship of people, place, and planet. It requires leaders to balance educational excellence with ecological and social responsibility. This involves integrating principles of inclusion, justice, and resilience into everyday school practices (Karamanidou & Bush, 2017). As research in Education Sciences increasingly highlights, leadership for sustainability is not simply about implementing environmental initiatives; it depends on coherent, participatory systems that can sustain innovation and foster agency among staff, students, and communities (Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024). Distributed leadership, which emphasises shared responsibility and collective agency, has therefore gained traction as a strategy for advancing ESD (Spillane et al., 2004; Bolden, 2011). However, its operationalisation in highly centralised education systems, where autonomy and decision-making are tightly controlled, remains underexplored (Hallinger, 2018; Bush, 2020). At the same time, there is an ongoing debate about whether concepts such as distributed or sustainable leadership can be meaningfully realised in highly centralised systems (Harris, 2013; Hallinger, 2018; Perryman et al., 2017). Critics argue that, under strong accountability and compliance regimes, such approaches risk becoming largely rhetorical.

While distributed leadership has been widely promoted as a progressive and democratic alternative to hierarchical leadership models, recent scholarship has increasingly questioned its viability under conditions of strong accountability, performativity, and centralised control. Critics argue that, in highly regulated systems, distributed leadership risks becoming symbolic or rhetorical, functioning as delegated responsibility rather than genuine shared agency (Harris, 2013; Hallinger, 2018). Empirical studies suggest that, where curriculum, assessment, and inspection regimes remain tightly prescribed, opportunities for the meaningful distribution of leadership are constrained by limited autonomy, workload intensification, and risk aversion (Bush, 2020; Karamanidou, 2025a; Mogren et al., 2024). As a result, distributed leadership may operate unevenly, benefiting motivated individuals while leaving underlying power relations and structural constraints largely intact. This study therefore approaches distributed leadership not as an assumed ideal, but as a contested and context-dependent practice whose possibilities and limitations must be examined empirically within centralised systems.

Recent scholarship conceptualises sustainable leadership in primary school contexts as a values-driven, relational, and future-oriented practice that enables the long-term embedding of Education for Sustainable Development within school systems (Bush, 2020; Cebrián et al., 2020). Empirical studies increasingly focus on concrete leadership actions that support or constrain the sustained implementation of ESD, highlighting sense-making, resourcing, professional learning, and organisational alignment as critical leadership practices (Mogren et al., 2024). Within whole-school and whole-institution approaches, sustainable leadership is framed as a form of organisational stewardship that integrates curriculum, culture, operations, and community partnerships rather than isolated environmental initiatives (Holst et al., 2024, 2025). In primary education, sustainable leadership is closely associated with moral purpose, ethical stewardship, and long-term capacity building, alongside a sensitivity to contextual and systemic constraints that require adaptive and relational leadership (Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021; Cebrian et al., 2024; Karamanidou, 2025b; Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024). Recent models further emphasise collaboration, distributed leadership, and professional development as central mechanisms for building a school-level capacity for sustainability in highly centralised systems (Elkaleh et al., 2025).

Recent policy-oriented and empirical work on Education for Sustainable Development reinforces this perspective by emphasising reflexivity, systems thinking, and collaborative agency as key leadership capacities for sustaining ESD over time, particularly in highly centralised systems (UNESCO, 2020; Cebrián et al., 2020, Holst et al., 2024, 2025). Recent models of sustainable leadership further emphasise the role of collaboration, distributed leadership, and professional development in building school-level capacity for sustainability, particularly in systems characterised by strong central control (Elkaleh et al., 2025).

In this study, sustainable leadership and distributed leadership are treated as conceptually distinct but complementary. Sustainable leadership is understood as the overarching ethical and values-based framework that guides long-term, socially and ecologically responsible school development. Distributed leadership, by contrast, is approached as one of the principal means through which sustainable leadership for ESD is enacted in practice, enabling participation, shared agency, and collective responsibility within the school and its wider community.

Despite a growing international literature, research on sustainable leadership in small-state and centralised systems is limited (Pashiardis & Johansson, 2016). Most empirical studies have been conducted in decentralised or resource-rich contexts, often overlooking the structural and cultural constraints that shape leadership practice in smaller, geopolitically complex nations. Cyprus offers a particularly instructive case: a small island state marked by political division, economic dependency, and environmental fragility. The Cypriot Ministry of Education has made explicit commitments to sustainability through national frameworks such as the Sustainable Environmental Education Policy (SEEP) (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2012) and the PEDIA Project (Pedagogical Institute of Cyprus, 2014), which position schools as ‘living laboratories’ for sustainability. More recently, the AELIA initiative has supported school gardens and field labs, local partnerships, and teacher networks (AELIA Project, 2024). Yet implementation has been uneven. Centralised governance, rigid curricula, and limited leadership autonomy continue to restrict deep institutional change and contribute to a persistent gap between policy intent and school realities (Zachariou & Symeou, 2009; Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021).

Recent Cypriot and international studies converge on the conclusion that leadership capacity is pivotal for bridging this policy–practice gap in ESD (Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021; Karamanidou, 2025b; Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024). In Cyprus, headteachers frequently function as both instructional and administrative leaders, often without formal preparation in sustainability leadership or the structural authority needed to drive whole-school change (Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021). This paradox—high expectations for leadership alongside constrained autonomy—raises important questions about how sustainable and distributed leadership are interpreted, adapted, and enacted within everyday school realities in small, centralised systems. However, little is known about how sustainable and distributed leadership are enacted in small, politically complex, and highly centralised education systems such as Cyprus, where policy ambitions outpace institutional capacity (Hallinger & Bryant, 2013; Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021; Karamanidou, 2025b).

The novelty of this study lies in its context-sensitive examination of sustainable leadership as enacted by primary school headteachers within a small, highly centralised education system. While much of the existing literature on sustainable and distributed leadership is based on decentralised or resource-rich contexts, this study offers empirical insight into how leadership for ESD is interpreted, adapted, and sustained under conditions of limited autonomy. The objective of the study is to explore how Cypriot primary school headteachers conceptualise sustainable leadership, distribute leadership for ESD, navigate systemic constraints, and enact strategies that enable sustainability to be sustained over time.

The present study addresses this gap by examining how primary school headteachers in Cyprus conceptualise and practise sustainable leadership to embed ESD within their schools. It investigates how leadership for ESD is distributed (Mogren et al., 2024), how systemic and cultural barriers shape implementation, and which strategies enable long-term, values-driven school transformation. The research questions guiding the study are the following:

• RQ1: How do Cypriot primary headteachers conceptualise sustainable leadership for ESD?
• RQ2: How is leadership for ESD distributed among staff, students, and community partners?
• RQ3: What system-level and school-level factors constrain or enable implementation?
• RQ4: Which leadership strategies sustain ESD over time in a highly centralised context?

By situating Cyprus within international debates on sustainable and distributed leadership, this study offers a context-sensitive account of how ESD can be advanced in small, centralised, and politically sensitive education systems. It highlights sustainable leadership as an evolving form of educational stewardship that integrates environmental, social, and ethical dimensions, and it identifies key conditions that can support whole-school ESD in such contexts (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Wals et al., 2024; Mogren et al., 2024). These insights aim to inform both leadership development and policy design related to SDG 4.7.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Research Design and Approach

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten headteachers, the study shows that sustainable leadership in Cyprus is characterised less by large-scale transformation and more by ethical persistence and ‘quiet activism’ within bureaucratic constraints, and argues that strengthening policy coherence, leadership preparation, and school-level autonomy is essential if whole-school ESD is to be institutionalised rather than remain leader-dependent. This qualitative study was situated within an interpretivist/constructivist paradigm and is reported in line with the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). Conceptual anchors included sustainable leadership (Hargreaves, 2007; Bush, 2020) and ESD (Cebrián et al., 2020; Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021). This dual strategy was chosen to connect conceptual foundations with the lived realities of leadership practice. This was particularly important in a highly centralised education system such as Cyprus. While sustainable leadership provides the normative orientation of the study, distributed leadership is used as an analytical lens to examine how leadership for ESD is shared and enacted among staff, students, and community partners.

The study combined a focused theoretical review with field-based inquiry to explore how Cypriot primary school headteachers understand and enact sustainable leadership for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

2.2. Setting

The research was conducted in the Republic of Cyprus, a small island state with a highly centralised education system and an evolving policy commitment to ESD. National initiatives such as the Sustainable Environmental Education Policy (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2012), the PEDIA infrastructure programme, and the ESD for 2030 Country Initiative (UNESCO, 2020) have sought to embed sustainability across educational settings (Zachariou & Kadji-Beltran, 2009; Zachariou & Korfiatis, 2021). Despite these efforts, leadership practice in primary schools remains under-researched, particularly in relation to how headteachers interpret policy frameworks and translate them into everyday school life. Centralised governance, prescriptive curricula, and inspection regimes limit school-level autonomy, while leadership development remains predominantly managerial (Day & Leithwood, 2007). Cultural expectations around examinations and parental perceptions of ‘core’ subjects also shape the status of ESD in daily practice. These contextual features provide an important backdrop for interpreting the leadership practices reported in the Results.

2.3. Participants and Sampling

Participants were public-sector primary school headteachers who met predefined eligibility criteria of at least five years in a leadership role and prior engagement with an ESD initiative. A purposive, maximum-variation sampling strategy was employed to capture diversity across urban, semi-rural, and rural contexts. Following ministry and municipal permissions, invitations were distributed via school email addresses with two reminders one week apart. Twelve headteachers were approached, ten consented, and all were enrolled (n = 10). The sample size was guided by an information–power logic that prioritised depth over breadth; thematic sufficiency was reached by interview seven, with two confirmatory interviews thereafter and one additional case to ensure regional balance. Six of the ten interviewees were female and four were male headteachers. For each participant, school location (urban/semi-rural/rural), school size, years in post, and prior ESD involvement were recorded. This small-scale, exploratory design therefore prioritised depth of understanding over statistical generalisation (Karamanidou & Bush, 2017).

Regional balance was ensured by purposively selecting headteachers from urban, semi-urban, and rural primary schools across different administrative regions of Cyprus. While the sample captures variations in geographical context and school setting, it does not include deputy headteachers, classroom teachers, or policy-level actors, nor does it represent all school types or leadership experiences within the system. As a result, the findings reflect the perspectives of headteachers only and should be interpreted as context-specific rather than representative of all educational stakeholders. Future research could extend this work by including additional leadership roles and system-level perspectives.

2.4. Data Collection

Data were generated through semi-structured individual interviews with headteachers. An interview guide was developed to explore four broad domains: (i) understandings of sustainable leadership and ESD; (ii) leadership practices and decision-making related to ESD; (iii) distribution of roles among staff, students, and community partners; and (iv) perceived system-level and school-level constraints and enablers. Interviews were conducted in Greek between November and December 2025 by the author. Each interview lasted approximately 45–60 min and took place online or on school premises according to participant preference. With consent, interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by the author. This study was not preregistered.

Table 1 illustrates the alignment between the research questions, the thematic focus of the interview prompts, and key components of sustainable leadership drawn from the literature, supporting theoretical triangulation.

Table 1. Alignment between research questions, interview focus, and sustainable leadership components.

Research Question	Interview Question Focus	Sustainable Leadership Components Addressed	Theoretical Sources
RQ1: How do Cypriot primary headteachers conceptualise sustainable leadership for ESD?	Headteachers’ understandings of sustainable leadership and ESD; meanings attributed to sustainability; leadership values and long-term purpose	Moral purpose; ethical stewardship; values-based leadership; long-term orientation; care for people, place, and future	Hargreaves (2007); Hargreaves and Fink (2006); Bush (2020); Cebrián et al. (2020)
RQ2: How is leadership for ESD distributed among staff, students, and community partners?	Leadership practices related to ESD; delegation and sharing of responsibility; role of teachers, students (e.g., eco-councils), and community partnerships	Distributed agency; participation; relational leadership; collective responsibility; collaborative culture	Spillane et al. (2004); Bolden (2011); Harris (2013); Karamanidou and Bush (2017)
RQ3: What system-level and school-level factors constrain or enable implementation?	Perceived systemic constraints and enablers; curriculum rigidity; autonomy; accountability pressures; professional development and policy support	Systems thinking; contextual intelligence; navigation of constraints; policy–practice mediation	Day and Leithwood (2007); Hallinger (2018); Zachariou and Korfiatis (2021); Bush (2020)
RQ4: Which leadership strategies sustain ESD over time in a highly centralised context?	Strategies used to sustain ESD initiatives; adaptive practices; informal networks; incremental change; leadership persistence	Adaptive capacity; resilience; sustainability over time; ethical persistence; ‘quiet activism’	Thorpe and Karamanidou (2024); Hargreaves (2007); Ball (2003); Tilbury (2011)

2.5. Data Analysis

The interview data were analysed thematically to identify recurring patterns in how headteachers conceptualised and enacted sustainable leadership for ESD. Greek segments were translated into English for analysis and reporting using a meaning-oriented approach complemented by selective back-translation of key quotations. During analysis, minor discrepancies in coding interpretation and meaning attribution were discussed and resolved through collaborative review, ensuring consistency and preservation of semantic equivalence across the dataset. Analysis proceeded iteratively and abductively, moving between the data and the conceptual framework. First, the author read all transcripts several times to become familiar with the data. Initial codes were then generated inductively and deductively, informed by the literature on sustainable and distributed leadership and ESD. Codes were organised into candidate themes, which were refined through repeated comparison within and across transcripts, attention to deviant cases, and reflection on contextual constraints. Reflexive memo writing supported interpretive consistency, and illustrative quotations were selected to retain participants’ authentic voices. Participation was voluntary, and informed consent was secured from all headteachers. Transcripts were managed and coded manually using standard word-processing and spreadsheet tools; no specialised qualitative analysis software or custom computer code was used. Data were anonymised, stored securely, and handled in accordance with institutional policy and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The final thematic structure was agreed once themes were judged to capture both convergence and variation in participants’ accounts (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Malterud et al., 2016).

2.6. Ethical Considerations, Trustworthiness, and Researcher Positionality

The study received ethical approval from The Cyprus National Bioethics Committee (CNBC). ll participants received written and oral information about the purpose of the study and their rights, including voluntary participation, confidentiality, and the right to withdraw at any time without consequence. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection. Identifying details have been removed or altered in reporting to protect anonymity, which is particularly important in a small-state context.

Credibility was strengthened through triangulation (using policy documents/interviews), prolonged engagement with the field, and member checking of theme summaries with the participants. Transferability was supported by a thick description of school contexts, and dependability was enhanced via an audit trail (interview guide versions, analytic memos, codebook iterations). The author is an education scholar with prior ESD collaboration experience; reflexive notes documented assumptions and potential power dynamics, especially during English–Greek code-switching. Translation decisions prioritised semantic equivalence, and quotations were minimally edited for clarity. While the study does not employ data source triangulation, theoretical triangulation was embedded in the research design through the alignment of research questions, interview foci, and key components of sustainable leadership drawn from established frameworks, as illustrated in Table 1.

Rigour was ensured through an explicit attention to credibility, dependability, and transferability. Credibility was strengthened through a prolonged engagement with the data, iterative coding, and constant comparison, as well as the use of theoretically informed interview prompts aligned with established sustainable leadership frameworks. Dependability was supported through a transparent and systematic analytic process, including a clear documentation of coding decisions and reflexive engagement with emerging interpretations throughout analysis. Transferability was addressed by providing a rich contextual description of the Cypriot primary education system, school settings, and leadership conditions, enabling readers to assess the relevance of the findings to other small-state or highly centralised education systems.

2.7. Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence

No generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools were used for study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation. GenAI support, where used, was limited to superficial editing of grammar, spelling, and formatting in the manuscript. All study design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation were carried out solely by the author.

2.8. Data and Materials Availability

Anonymised excerpts of interview data and the semi-structured interview guide are available from the author upon reasonable request, subject to ethical and data-protection constraints associated with research in a small-state context. Raw interview recordings and full transcripts cannot be shared publicly because of the risk of participant identification.

3. Results

This chapter presents the findings of the qualitative analysis based on semi-structured interviews with ten primary school headteachers. The analysis identified six interrelated themes that capture how sustainable leadership for Education for Sustainable Development is interpreted and enacted within a highly centralised education system. Together, these themes illustrate the ways in which headteachers navigate policy constraints, accountability pressures, and limited autonomy, while embedding sustainability within school culture and practice. Each Section, Section 3.1, Section 3.2, Section 3.3, Section 3.4, Section 3.5 and Section 3.6, represents a distinct but interconnected theme that emerged inductively from the data analysis.

3.1. Strategic Integration of Sustainability

Headteachers described sustainability not as an isolated initiative but as a guiding framework woven into their school’s identity and development planning. Eight of ten participants linked their efforts to national frameworks such as the Sustainable Environmental Education Policy (SEEP) and the ESD for 2030 Country Initiative, which encourage schools to embed sustainability goals within annual action plans. However, leaders emphasised that authentic integration required a shift from compliance to conviction, transforming ESD from an external mandate into a shared school value. As one headteacher (P1) reflected, ‘We wanted sustainability to become part of who we are, not just what we do’.

This shift from project-based engagement to a systemic mindset aligns with Hargreaves’s (2007) view of sustainable leadership as moral and cultural stewardship. Yet the commitment remained fragile, constrained by limited time, rigid timetables, and fragmented policy guidance, as noted by nine of ten participants. Several headteachers (seven out of ten) described a ‘policy–practice gap’, in which ESD is promoted as a strategic priority but relies heavily on the interpretive agency of individual leaders. Clear institutional mechanisms to support implementation were often absent.

3.2. Empowerment and Participation

Participants consistently portrayed sustainability leadership as relational and shared. Nine of ten reported establishing student eco-councils and/or teacher working groups, and six also involved community partners such as municipalities and NGOs. P3 commented, ‘You cannot lead sustainability alone; you must let others own it’. Initiatives such as student eco-councils, teacher-led committees, and community partnerships served as vehicles for co-leadership and collective responsibility. As one headteacher explained, ‘Sustainability cannot sit with the headteacher alone; when teachers and students take ownership, it becomes part of the school’s everyday life rather than an imposed initiative’ (P3).

Empowerment occurred on two levels. Formal structures (e.g., designated committees) institutionalised participation, while informal leadership cultures emerged through spontaneous teacher initiatives. As one headteacher explained, ‘Sustainability is not something we add on as a separate programme; it has to become part of how the school thinks and operates every day’ (P6). This sense of shared responsibility reflects Bolden’s (2011) argument that distributed leadership depends not merely on structural delegation but on cultural trust, and functions as a key mechanism through which sustainable leadership was enacted. However, participation was uneven in five schools, concentrating among a small, motivated group when staff felt over-burdened or communication was limited. In schools where headteachers fostered open communication and recognised teachers’ expertise, sustainability became embedded; in others, participation remained restricted to a core group. These variations suggest that distributed leadership, while conceptually central, is contingent on individual leadership style and school climate (Karamanidou & Bush, 2017).

3.3. Systemic Barriers and Leadership Constraints

All headteachers identified persistent constraints: centralised curriculum requirements (10/10), a lack of dedicated time for ESD (9/10), and limited professional development in sustainability leadership (8/10). Several headteachers described how examination pressures limited the time and flexibility available for ESD-related activities. One participant explained that, while sustainability initiatives were valued, ‘priority is inevitably given to subjects and activities that are directly assessed’, resulting in ESD being incorporated only where it could be aligned with examinable curriculum content. Others noted that preparation for national assessments constrained opportunities for interdisciplinary or project-based sustainability work, particularly in upper primary grades. Many described ‘responsibility without authority’, in which national expectations for innovation were not matched by enabling structures (8/10). One headteacher summarised this tension as ‘a mandate without a mechanism’ (P4). Six participants reported that performance metrics and inspection priorities marginalised sustainability work, relegating it to discrete events rather than integrated pedagogy.

These accounts echo the observation that Cyprus’s education system often privileges administrative compliance over professional autonomy. Headteachers expressed how they felt positioned as policy intermediaries rather than transformative agents, managing contradictions between accountability demands and sustainability goals (P1, P4, P5, P7, P8). Centralisation was also identified as a key constraint on ESD implementation. Headteachers reported a limited autonomy to adapt curriculum content or allocate resources to sustainability initiatives, with one participant noting that ‘any deviation from prescribed programmes requires approval that is rarely granted’. As a result, ESD practices were often implemented informally or on a small scale, relying on individual initiatives rather than institutional mandates.

3.4. Adaptive and Collaborative Strategies

In navigating these constraints, headteachers demonstrated an adaptive capacity and contextual sensitivity. Six of the ten participants drew on informal professional networks, collaboration with local municipalities, and partnerships with NGOs to sustain momentum. These alliances provided access to materials, expertise, and legitimacy, partially compensating for the absence of structural support. Such practices resonate with Thorpe and Karamanidou’s (2024) account of culturally responsive leadership grounded in community relationships.

Adaptation often took incremental forms: integrating sustainability themes into morning assemblies, using school gardens for experiential learning, and linking ESD to citizenship and ethics education. Five participants described this as ‘leading quietly’, advancing sustainability through small, cumulative actions rather than top-down directives. One headteacher described this leadership approach as ‘working quietly within the system, doing what is possible without drawing attention, because pushing too hard can create problems’. Another headteacher mentioned that ‘is all about doing what is possible, without attracting resistance’. These practices enabled continuity under constraint but remained precarious because they depended on individual initiative and informal networks rather than institutionalised support.

3.5. Communication and Ideological Framing

Eight of the ten headteachers explicitly referred to these challenges when discussing accountability pressures and system-level expectations. Several headteachers highlighted the role of framing and communication in shaping engagement with ESD. Presenting ESD as ‘values we live together’ rather than as an ‘extra subject’ helped teachers and parents view it as core to schooling (P1, P3). Conversely, exam-centred discourse and a narrow ideology of ‘core subjects’ positioned ESD as peripheral, limiting teacher agency (P5, P8). Headteachers reported that transparent, dialogic communication through staff briefings, student assemblies, and parent forums reduced resistance and broadened the ownership of sustainability initiatives.

3.6. Synthesis of Findings

This synthesis draws together the empirical themes identified above, and, across themes, sustainable leadership in Cypriot primary schools emerged as ethical, relational, and context-bound. Headteachers acted as mediators between policy aspirations and school realities, translating broad ESD goals into local, culturally meaningful practices despite limited autonomy. Change was sustained through participation, persistence, and adaptation, yet remained vulnerable to time pressures, accountability regimes, and reliance on individual leaders. As another participant noted, ‘Sharing leadership was not about giving up responsibility, but about trusting others to carry sustainability forward when formal structures do not support it’. These patterns provide the basis for the Discussion’s analysis of how system design conditions leadership practice and what supports are required to stabilise whole-school ESD. These distributed practices can therefore be interpreted not as leadership ends in themselves, but as enactments of sustainable leadership values within the constraints of a centralised system.

4. Discussion

This study examined how Cypriot primary school headteachers interpret and enact sustainable leadership when embedding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within a highly centralised education system. By integrating a focused theoretical review with qualitative data, the findings illuminate sustainable leadership as both an ethical orientation and a pragmatic practice shaped by organisational culture, school–community relationships, and the systemic constraints of a small-state bureaucracy. The discussion below interprets the findings in relation to the guiding research questions and situates them within the broader international literature. Overall, the study found that sustainable leadership in Cypriot primary schools is characterised by a strategic but fragile integration of ESD, unevenly distributed participation, systemic constraints that generate a policy–practice gap, and adaptive ‘quiet activism’ that sustains incremental change.

4.1. Reframing Sustainable Leadership: From Vision to Pragmatic Navigation

Across the interviews, headteachers described sustainability not as an isolated initiative but as an ethical stance permeating their professional identity. Leaders spoke of sustainability as ‘a way of thinking’ that shapes everyday relational practices within schools, including collaboration, shared responsibility, and attention to environmental values, as reflected in the headteachers’ emphasis on relational practices, staff collaboration, and whole-school responsibility for sustainability described in Section 3.2 and Section 3.4. This view reflects Hargreaves’s (2007) view of sustainable leadership as moral stewardship that safeguards long-term human and ecological well-being. This aligns with the literature positioning sustainability as a values-driven endeavour rooted in continuity, care, and social responsibility (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Karamanidou & Bush, 2017).

However, the Cypriot evidence tempers the idealism present in much of the sustainable leadership literature. Rather than pursuing ‘deep change’ (Fullan, 2003), headteachers described sustainability work as a continual negotiation between moral aspiration and systemic constraint. In this sense, sustainable leadership under centralisation is best understood not as transformational reform, but as a moral orientation that shapes how leaders navigate constraints and make everyday decisions. Leaders often balanced their vision with rigid timetables, prescriptive curriculum structures, and accountability pressures that limited autonomy. These findings support Bush’s (2020) argument that leadership practice is shaped by institutional contexts and reaffirm Thorpe and Karamanidou’s (2024) claim that effective sustainability leadership requires contextual intelligence and an ability to read the system, anticipate constraints, and adjust strategies accordingly. The headteachers’ accounts show that sustainable leadership in centralised systems becomes a form of pragmatic moral praxis: a commitment to values enacted through small, locally meaningful actions rather than large-scale reform. Recent research similarly frames sustainable leadership in constrained systems as adaptive, relational, and context-sensitive practice. In such contexts, leadership is enacted through ethical persistence rather than formal structural change (Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024; Holst et al., 2024; Karamanidou, 2025a). This interpretation answers RQ1 by reframing sustainable leadership under centralisation as ethical persistence, combining moral purpose with an adaptive navigation of bureaucratic constraints.

4.2. Distributed Leadership or Delegated Responsibility?

The study revealed a strong rhetorical and aspirational support for distributed leadership, with participants emphasising collaboration, shared ownership, and the involvement of teachers, students, and community partners. These findings echo Bolden’s (2011) and Cebrián et al.’s (2020) arguments that distributed leadership strengthens sustainability through collective agency and participatory governance. Student eco-councils, teacher committees, and local partnerships served as structures through which leadership was shared. Yet the data also reveal significant tensions. For many headteachers, ‘distributed leadership’ operated primarily as delegated responsibility rather than genuine empowerment. Teachers often lacked protected time or systemic support, and workload pressures restricted their capacity to lead. This aligns with Harris’s (2013) caution that distributed leadership may become rhetorical in tightly controlled systems and with Karamanidou and Bush’s (2017) critique that distribution requires trust, recognition, and shared risk to be meaningful.

Student participation, celebrated in policy discourse, was similarly vulnerable. Eco-councils provided opportunities for agency, but exam-centred cultures positioned ESD as peripheral, limiting student leadership to symbolic roles. These findings highlight the fragility of participation in systems where ‘core subjects’ dominate and where sustainability lacks institutionalised status. Thus, RQ2 is answered by showing that distributed leadership for sustainability flourishes only under conditions of relational trust, open communication, and system-level support. In the absence of such conditions, distributed leadership risks becoming managerial delegation rather than collaborative agency.

4.3. The Policy–Practice Gap: ‘A Mandate Without a Mechanism’

A central theme across interviews was the disjuncture between national sustainability policies and school-level realities. The phrase ‘a mandate without a mechanism’ captures leaders’ frustration with policy frameworks that articulate ambitious goals but fail to provide time, autonomy, professional development, or structural support. This reflects Zachariou and Korfiatis’s (2021) identification of the ‘implementation paradox’ of ESD in Cyprus and resonates with international analyses (Tilbury, 2011; Burns et al., 2015) that highlight the gap between policy rhetoric and institutional capacity.

Building on the constraints described in Section 3.3, these findings suggest that, while these practices were not always articulated explicitly by participants, they can be interpreted as reflecting broader patterns of leadership adaptation under centralised accountability conditions. Participants described how accountability regimes, prescriptive curricula, and inspection priorities marginalised sustainability, relegating it to discrete events such as tree planting and recycling campaigns rather than integrated pedagogy. These findings challenge assumptions in the ESD policy literature that national frameworks necessarily drive deep cultural change; instead, they reveal the systemic contradictions that emerge when policy aspirations collide with bureaucratic constraints. The Cypriot case also demonstrates how centralisation shapes leadership identity. Headteachers become intermediaries rather than change drivers, tasked with reconciling national mandates with limited authority. This extends Pashiardis and Johansson’s (2016) observations about leadership in small-state systems, where the proximity between policy and practice intensifies hierarchical control. These insights address RQ3 by illustrating how governance structures shape the feasibility and meaning of sustainable leadership, exposing the systemic conditions that reinforce symbolic compliance rather than substantive transformation. Similar adaptive responses to accountability pressures have been documented in other highly centralised education systems (Hallinger, 2018; Perryman et al., 2017).

These accounts also echo Zachariou and Korfiatis’s (2021) observation that Cyprus’s education system often privileges administrative compliance over professional autonomy. Headteachers felt positioned as policy intermediaries rather than transformative agents (Day & Leithwood, 2007), managing contradictions between accountability demands and sustainability goals.

4.4. Adaptive Capacity and the Practice of ‘Quiet Activism’

Despite systemic barriers, headteachers demonstrated a considerable adaptive capacity. Leaders created ‘spaces of possibility’ through informal networks, partnerships with municipalities and NGOs, and small-scale innovations such as school gardens and experiential learning projects. These practices embody what Thorpe and Karamanidou (2024) describe as culturally responsive leadership and reflect Ball’s (2003) notion of policy enactment as situated interpretation rather than straightforward implementation.

Recent empirical research similarly shows that the sustained accommodation of ESD in schools depends less on formal authority and more on leaders’ capacity to align everyday practices, professional learning, and organisational routines with sustainability goals (Mogren et al., 2024; Holst et al., 2024). The concept of ‘quiet activism’ (Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024) resonates strongly with the Cypriot data. Rather than visible, large-scale reforms, headteachers enacted sustainability through incremental, relational practices: integrating ESD into morning assemblies, linking it to ethics and citizenship education, or modelling sustainable behaviour. In this study, ‘quiet activism’ refers to leadership practices that intentionally seek to advance sustainability values within institutional constraints, rather than routine managerial compliance. These practices include subtly reinterpreting policy mandates to create space for sustainability initiatives, embedding ESD principles within existing curricular activities, cultivating staff commitment through informal influence rather than formal directives, and sustaining long-term ethical goals despite short-term accountability pressures (Mogren et al., 2024). What distinguishes quiet activism from routine management is its normative orientation and intentionality: actions are guided by moral purpose and a commitment to sustainability, even when such goals are not explicitly supported or rewarded by the system (Thorpe & Karamanidou, 2024).

These micro-practices sustained momentum and built local legitimacy even in the absence of structural support. However, their reliance on personal initiative exposes a vulnerability: sustainability efforts may fade when key leaders retire or move. This supports Bolden’s (2011) argument that distributed agency requires institutionalisation and underscores the importance of structural embedding to ensure continuity. These findings answer RQ4 by showing that adaptive, relational leadership practices sustain sustainability in centralised systems but require systemic reinforcement to achieve long-term institutionalisation.

4.5. Rethinking Sustainable Leadership in Centralised Contexts

Taken together, the findings question the assumptions embedded in much of the sustainable leadership literature, particularly the models developed in decentralised, Anglo-American contexts where school autonomy is greater (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Hallinger, 2018; Mogren et al., 2024). The Cypriot case reveals sustainable leadership as a form of resilient stewardship, ethical persistence enacted through relationships, adaptation, and incremental innovation within bureaucratic limits.

This interpretation extends Bush’s (2020) argument that leadership is situated and contextually bounded, and aligns with Hallinger’s (2018) claim that leadership cannot be abstracted from policy and cultural contexts. The Cypriot evidence also builds on Zachariou and Symeou’s (2009) work by showing how community partnerships compensate for institutional gaps, functioning as alternative infrastructures for sustainability in resource-constrained systems (Hallinger, 2018; Wals et al., 2024; Mogren et al., 2024). Thus, the study contributes to international debates by illustrating how sustainable leadership is redefined in small-state, centralised systems. This is applied where policy ambition outpaces institutional capacity and where leadership becomes a political and relational act rather than a purely managerial or instructional one (Wals et al., 2024; Cebrián et al., 2020).

This study advances the existing theories of educational leadership by demonstrating how sustainable leadership is enacted under conditions of strong centralisation and limited autonomy. While much of the sustainable and distributed leadership literature assumes professional discretion and decentralised governance as enabling conditions, the findings show that leadership for sustainability can also emerge through constrained, adaptive, and ethically driven practices (Hallinger, 2018). In this context, sustainable leadership is less a function of formal authority and more a form of moral and relational stewardship, enacted through persistence, the reinterpretation of policy mandates, and incremental change (Karamanidou, 2025a). This refines existing theories by positioning sustainable leadership not only as a structural or strategic model, but as a context-sensitive practice shaped by governance conditions, accountability regimes, and institutional constraints (Wals et al., 2024).

4.6. Research Desiderata and Future Directions

The findings highlight several gaps in the sustainable leadership and ESD knowledge base, particularly in relation to small, centralised education systems. First, more research is needed on the mechanisms that translate national ESD mandates into genuine school-level discretion, including how autonomy, accountability, and support structures interact in highly regulated systems. Second, future studies should examine how communication and ideology, especially narratives about ‘core subjects’ and examination performance, shape teacher, student, and parent agency around ESD. Third, the durability of leader-dependent ‘quiet activism’ remains underexplored; there is limited evidence on how adaptive, relational practices survive leadership transitions or changes in policy climate. Fourth, relatively little is known about how primary pupils develop and demonstrate ESD-related competencies, such as systems thinking and anticipatory competence, within whole-school approaches.

Addressing these gaps will require comparative research across small-state and politically divided systems. Mixed-methods designs that connect school ethnography with policy and governance analysis and longitudinal work will track how leadership practices evolve over time. Such studies could illuminate how sustainable leadership is shaped by shifting policy priorities, leadership succession, and changing community dynamics, and would further clarify the conditions under which whole-school ESD becomes embedded rather than episodic (Wals et al., 2024).

Although this study is situated in Cyprus, its findings resonate with research from other highly centralised or small-state education systems. Similar leadership constraints have been documented in contexts such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and parts of Southern Europe, where strong accountability regimes and curriculum control shape leadership practice (Hallinger, 2018; Bush, 2020; Perryman et al., 2017). Studies in these contexts similarly report adaptive, incremental leadership approaches that prioritise ethical commitment and relational influence over formal transformation. The patterns identified in this study therefore offer insights that may be transferable to other systems characterised by strong central control, limited autonomy, and policy-driven reform agendas (Hallinger, 2018; Perryman et al., 2017).

4.7. Implications for Leadership Development and Policy

The study also points to important implications for leadership development and policy design in centralised systems. Leadership preparation programmes should move beyond managerial competence to cultivate reflexivity, systems thinking, ethical reasoning, and skills for building and sustaining community partnerships, echoing calls by Cebrián et al. (2020) and Bush (2020). The headteachers in this study frequently reported feeling trained to manage rather than to lead for sustainability-related change; addressing this gap is crucial if school leaders are to act as stewards of ESD rather than solely as implementers of centrally defined priorities.

At the policy level, institutionalising sustainability requires an alignment between national goals and the everyday conditions of school leadership. The findings suggest the value of policy measures such as the following:

• Protected time for teacher collaboration and student eco-councils focused on ESD;
• Local autonomy windows that allow schools to reallocate a proportion of instructional time to integrated ESD projects;
• Targeted professional development in sustainable leadership, including micro-credentials or specialist modules;
• Recognition frameworks within inspection and accountability systems that value community partnerships, student leadership, and whole-school ESD initiatives;
• Networked learning clusters of schools to share designs, garden/field-lab infrastructure, and assessment tools.

Taken together, these implications underline that sustainable leadership cannot depend solely on individual commitment; it must be supported by coherent leadership development pathways and enabling policy frameworks if whole-school ESD is to be sustained over time.

4.8. Limitations and Transferability

Although the study draws on a single primary data source (headteacher interviews), which limits data source triangulation, steps were taken to strengthen trustworthiness through theoretical triangulation. Specifically, the interview design and analytic framework were explicitly aligned with established sustainable leadership and distributed leadership theories, ensuring that the findings were interpreted in relation to multiple conceptual perspectives. Nonetheless, the absence of direct data from teachers, students, or parents limits insight into how leadership practices were experienced across the wider school community, and future research incorporating multiple participant groups and methods would further strengthen understanding.

In addition, the research was conducted within a single small-state system characterised by a high centralisation and limited leadership autonomy. While a thick description has been provided to support analytical transferability, the applicability of the findings to other contexts should be assessed with care. Future work incorporating classroom observations, teacher and student perspectives, and the longitudinal tracking of leadership transitions would strengthen the understanding of how sustainable leadership is enacted and sustained in centralised settings.

5. Conclusions

This study demonstrates that sustainable leadership in Cyprus’s highly centralised primary education system is enacted less through large-scale reform and more through ethical persistence, adaptive practice, and relational ‘quiet activism’ shaped by systemic constraint. Headteachers framed sustainability as a shared moral commitment to community, care, and continuity, yet their agency was continually mediated by systemic pressures, limited autonomy, and centralised governance.

The leadership observed was incremental, adaptive, and relational rather than transformational. It reflected contextual intelligence and distributed responsibility, emphasised in contemporary leadership research. Participants’ descriptions of ‘finding spaces of possibility’ illustrate how school leaders reinterpret policy mandates through creativity and collaboration, embodying a form of quiet activism rooted in care and resilience. These findings reinforce the view that sustainable leadership is not merely strategic or managerial but profoundly moral and relational. The study contributes to international scholarship by advancing a context-sensitive model of sustainable leadership that highlights how values are sustained within bureaucratic limits. It supports arguments for leadership development that move beyond compliance toward reflection, systems thinking, and ethical reasoning. For policy, the results point to the need for coherence between national sustainability goals and local leadership capacity, ensuring that sustainability is institutionalised, not individualised. By conceptualising quiet activism as a form of ethical, adaptive leadership under constraint, this study contributes a refined analytical lens for understanding how sustainability-oriented leadership can persist in highly centralised education systems.

Future research should examine how such leadership practices evolve over time, influence teacher and student agency, and shape whole-school culture. Comparative and longitudinal studies across small or divided education systems could deepen the understanding of how governance and context mediate leadership for sustainability. This study concludes that sustainable leadership in Cyprus is less about transformation and more about ethical persistence, a steady, values-driven effort to sustain people, purpose, and possibility within systemic constraint.