Re-forming sustainability leadership in light of Charlotte Mason

: the governance of ecological reflexivity

Abstract

The Anthropocene crisis demands sustainability leadership capable of ecological reflexivity—the capacity of systems and ideas to change in response to signals from the Earth System. While this need is recognised, the field lacks a coherent formative praxis for its cultivation. This thesis addresses this gap by re-forming the work of 19th-century educationalist Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) into a relational social theory for contemporary leadership development. Drawing from Mason’s personalist philosophy, it constructs a framework based on deputed authority, self-government, and her key instruments for human formation: atmosphere, habits, and living ideas. Mason’s science of relations provides the epistemology for this praxis.

Through three exploratory Q studies, this research builds a partial connection between Mason's legacy and contemporary sustainability leadership. This thesis develops a liberative mode of inquiry, christened a ‘cousin’ of participatory action research, by linking it to the reflexive processes of self-reference embedded in the stages of Q methodology. An initial, critically reflexive single-case study maps the conceptual terrain and researcher subjectivity. This is followed by an extensive Q study exploring how contemporary Mason practitioners interpret the value of her ideas for complex local challenges. The final Q study investigates the resonance of Mason’s core principles with expert scholar-practitioners in sustainability leadership.

This research makes significant contributions to theory, methodology, and practice. Theoretically, it introduces the Vital Pivot as a novel formative praxis for cultivating ecological reflexivity and proposes Personanity as a new core leadership capacity with a relational ontological foundation. Methodologically, it advances critically reflexive practice through a novel application of the single-case Q study and introduces corangement as a new term to describe the co-creative generation of emergent understanding. Practically, the study offers Ethical Interventions—reframing Mason’s instruments as a non-coercive praxis for sustainability leadership development—and demonstrates Q methodology’s potential as a participatory tool for this context.

Date of Award	1 Oct 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Cumbria
Supervisor	David Murphy (Supervisor) & Jamie McPhie (Supervisor)