The Significance of Teaching Traditions in Environmental and Sustainability Education at Secondary School Level

• In Event: 34.034 - Teacher Instructional Characteristics and Approaches and Their Impacts on Learning Environments

Abstract

The Swedish national curriculum stresses that all school subjects should address ESD/environmental and sustainability education (ESE) and be taught with a multidisciplinary approach that includes all the three ecological, social and economic dimensions. Something to consider is how a more multidisciplinary subject content might affect other educational outcomes at student level. There is a knowledge gap about teachers’ ESE teaching from different disciplinary traditions. This study investigates Swedish secondary teachers’ responses to a written enquiry designed to discern their teaching traditions. Follow-up interviews complement the inquiry. The results show that science, social science and language teachers stress some important educational aspects differently, which in the long run could contribute to students failing to develop action competence.

Authors

• Per Sund, Stockholm University

• Niklas Gericke, Karlstad University

• Gabriel Bladh, Karlstad University