Environmental education is a process that allows individuals to explore environmental issues, engage in problem-solving and take action to improve the environment. As a result, individuals develop a deeper understanding of environmental issues and have the skills to make informed and responsible decisions through environmental education. Therefore, environmental education is an important aspect of the school curriculum as it is embedded in the school’s curriculum of other subjects. In South Africa, subjects such as natural sciences (NS), mathematics, geography and so on are tracked and managed by those designated to do so, both at the school level and by the subject advisors of the department of education. However, the case is different from the environmental education content. This research explores strategies that are available to manage environmental education through distributed leadership by subject advisors, principals, school management teams (deputy principals and/or head of departments) and teachers. This research adopted a constructivism research paradigm, and employed a qualitative research approach, descriptive case study research design, non-probability sampling which is purposive in nature, individual interviews, observation, and document analysis as data collection tools. The population that contributed to the understanding of distributed leadership in schools in this research are three principals, three SMT members, three teachers, in three schools and two subject advisors in one district. The findings of this research point out that there are no strategies in place to manage environmental education as it is giving less attention as compared to other subject’s content due to the context of its content, lack of motivation from superiors as there is no empowerment through decision making taken collectively and roles are not distributed to all stakeholders. There is a lack of communication between stakeholders as there is no transparency and staff members are told what to do instead of having effective discussions. The curriculum is theoretical instead of practical which promotes participation. Distributed leadership seems to not be understood as the principals and the SMTs seem to practice delegation and confuse delegation with distributed leadership. Environmental education is also not tracked at a school level or at a departmental level. I can conclude by saying that environmental education is viewed as unimportant as it is not comprehended as something which adds value to a learner’s knowledge. Again, distributed leadership is not met in terms of environmental education management in schools. The findings of this research also involve a developing an environmental education model in the educational sector which made use of the strategies that might help in managing environmental education curriculum. Therefore, it is recommended that the content of environmental education is restructured to cater for practicality to best suit the current lifestyles. It is also recommended that all stakeholders are involved rather than thinking the management of environmental education is a sole responsibility of a teacher and be involved in the development and decision making in terms of the management of environmental education. Especially, since the world is experiencing a global crisis, it is recommended that we do not only aspire to a just community, but a society that is able to combat all global crises at an early stage to live in a sustainable community.

Key words: environmental education, environmental education management, distributed leadership, transformational leadership, and strategies.