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School-nonprofit collaborations in sustainability education are intended not only to enhance students’ individual learning, but also to generate broader societal benefits; yet, the systemic impacts of such sustainability education remain underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a participatory, grounded case study of New York Sun Works (NYSW), a nonprofit that equips hundreds of public schools with hydroponics labs and a sustainability science curriculum spanning environmental science and climate change through the lens of urban agriculture. Data sources included narrative video interviews with the NYSW executive director, classroom observations, and interviews with nine teachers. Through iterative analysis, we developed a framework that demonstrates how school-nonprofit partnerships for sustainability education catalyze systemic impacts in three domains: (1) educational transformation, (2) sustainability solutions, and (3) civil society. These findings suggest that nonprofit-facilitated, school-based sustainability education can advance significant educational, environmental, and societal transformations beyond conventional learning outcomes.
Kudryavtsev et al. (Tue,) studied this question.