Teachers’ View of Sustainable Development in Swedish Upper Secondary School

Abstract

In Sweden the importance of sustainable development (SD) can be traced in political documents from the fundamental law down to the curriculum for different school levels. To investigate how this political objective is demonstrated in knowledge and activities among the teachers, eleven upper secondary school teachers from different subjects have been interviewed to map out their views of SD, their own beliefs and how they teach SD. The interviews have been analysed in terms of content with the Knowledge – Value – Practice model as theoretical frame. The results showed that among the interviewed teachers there existed a spectrum of views of what SD stands for, from a narrow view to a well-developed view. There were also differences in their teaching practice. All teachers stated that teaching for SD is of great importance and that they all did it in terms of their own personal definition. All of them also pointed out that even if the steering documents present SD as important, the local management of the issue is weak. The differences between the teachers’ view of SD and the weak local management generate a fundamental problem. Depending on the teachers’ own definition and content choice the pupils may get different content knowledge, perhaps not even consistent with the recognized definition of sustainable development. The schools cannot therefore be said to give the pupils an equal education in the area of SD.