School Principal as an Environmentally Sustainable Leader

It is not enough to solve ecological problems only with the agreements put into effect by the states. It is also essential that the citizens adopt the said agreement articles. At this point, the necessity of providing education to individuals of all ages comes into play. For this reason, this study examined the environmental sustainability self-awareness of school principals. Phenomenology, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the research; The study group consisted of 35 school principals determined by the "criterion sampling" method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, among the school principals working in different public schools in Istanbul. It was determined to be doing a master's degree as a criterion. The data were evaluated by content analysis. After the interviews, created themes according to the questions in the interview form. The codes were created within the framework of the answers to the questions by the school administrators. The code and theme list were finalized and made ready for defining and interpreting the findings. As a result of data analysis, five main themes were reached. These are Environmental Sustainability, Ecological Leader, Ecological Events, Being a Sustainable School, and Attitudes Towards Sustainability. The majority of the participating school principals stated that it is crucial for the schools they manage to have a plan and strategy in terms of environmental sustainability.