Education about controversial sustainability issues is vital for society’s ability to handle problems like climate change in a democratic manner. How teachers educate about these issues should, ideally, be evidence-based. However, teachers’ ideals and attitudes about education also play a role in how they teach. The aim of this questionnaire study with Swedish junior high-school teachers’ (n = 378) was to explore whether, and how, different teaching traditions – culturally shared ideals regarding education – are associated with reported ways of teaching – i.e. various concrete teaching practices – regarding controversial sustainability issues. Four teaching traditions were identified: A fact-based, - against values tradition was negatively related to, while a pluralistic tradition was positively related to, all ways of teaching, i.e. encouraging sustainable actions, rational reflection, perspective-taking, emotional awareness, and using conflicts for learning among students. A fact-based science orientation was foremost positively associated with promoting rational reflection among students. A normative tradition was positively related to encouraging rational reflection, perspective-taking, and emotional awareness. We also investigated differences between teaching traditions regarding gender and subject identification. We discuss the results in relation to theories and earlier studies about teaching traditions. Practical implications for teacher education and already-active teachers are elaborated upon.

This study delves into the intricate dynamics of controversial issues in environmental education, challenging conventional notions. It explores the relationship between “controversy” and the field of environmental education, elucidating its multifaceted dimensions in and ambitions of teaching practice. In dialogue with previous research and based on our empirical study, we contend that controversy’s existence transcends the mere content of education and extends to its perceived fundamental core and normative underpinnings. We argue that controversy, including controversial sustainability issues (CSIs), is not confined to educational content alone but encompasses the purposes of education. We propose that controversy in educational encounters cannot be neatly categorized as a fixed, predictable social product and is not solely dependent on student interaction. This challenges earlier research positions that linked controversy to the presence of debate or dissensus in a subject area. Our study challenges the traditional understanding of controversy, highlighting its partial spontaneity and unpredictability in teaching. This contrasts previous positions that emphasized the epistemic dimension of controversy. Instead, our findings suggest that controversy plays an active role in the process of self-formation or subjectification in relation to any content.

In this article, we explore how and why the concept of rhythm is crucial to understand how environmental and sustainability education (ESE) may deal with the urgency of taking action regarding climate change. Many activists consider sustainability educators as important allies in this struggle. Our argument is that ESE has a different role and responsibility. Both activism and education can be important allies; however, they operate in different modes and rhythms. Three scholars John Dewey, Michel Alhadeff-Jones and Sharan Todd inspire us with captivating ideas on education as a rhythmic aesthetic experience. Their ideas also show the importance of the interruption of existing rhythms for opening new perspectives on how humans relate to the world. Our encounter with these ideas results into a plea for a pedagogy that provides for alternative, aesthetic arrangements of time and space. In line with this, we explore three examples of place-based education. We conclude that there is no time to waste regarding the problems of climate change. However, ESE requires a pedagogy that provides for alternative arrangements of time and space, while enabling educative moments interrupting a linear flow of time, including our familiar experiences of the world.

What is different about this book than almost any other in philosophy of education is only three of the contributors are philosophers. All the rest are empirical educational researchers. They are, however, philosophically sophisticated researchers. They are unique in that they rely on philosophy, not the social sciences, to provide their theoretical frameworks and inform their methods of empirical investigation. These chapters may be read as a contribution to what is sometimes called “applied philosophy” by those who do not realize that a philosophy that cannot be applied is nonsense.

In recent years we have seen increasing youth activism on climate and other sustainability issues. This paper presents a theoretical framework for further research on young sustainability activists as public educators. The point of departure is taken in Latour's argumentation concerning the need to create new attachments to the Earth. In line with this, we highlight the importance of aesthetics and experiences conceived as integrated sense-perceptional, emotional and intellectual faculties. The second part of the paper moves into social movement theory, to explore what role the Youth for Sustainability movement may have in creating new attachments to the Earth. Drawing on Melucci, emphasis is put on the movement's collective identity making. Furthermore, following Ranciere, the ability to interrupt the distribution of the senses is stressed. Examples of youth activism for sustainability are presented and interpreted, which points to the potential of children and young people to act successfully. The last part of the paper moves into pedagogical theories to explore how this kind of youth activism fostering new attachments to the Earth can be conceived as public pedagogy. We thereby refer to Biesta's distinction between pedagogy for the public, pedagogy of the public and pedagogy for publicness.

Medel från Rektors 5:e utlysning för kvalitetsutveckling för utbildning har använts för att genomföra en genomlysning av Stockholms universitets (SU) lärarprogram med avseende på didaktik och hållbar utveckling. Didaktik belyser undervisningens genomförande medan hållbar utveckling innebär att nuvarande och kommande generationer försäkras en hållbar ekologisk, ekonomisk och social utveckling.

Representanter från de institutioner som ansvarar för Stockholms universitets lärarprogram har samlats regelbundet under 2019-2020. Medverkande institutioner är Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik (IPD), Institutionen för de humanistiska och samhällsvetenskapliga ämnenas didaktik (HSD), Institutionen för matematikämnets och naturvetenskapsämnenas didaktik (MND), Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen (BUV) och Institutionen för språkdidaktik (ISD).

Behovet av denna genomlysning grundas i högskolelagen (1992:1434) som ålägger alla lärosäten att verka för hållbar utveckling och att högskoleförordningen tydliggör att ett examensmål för lärarexamen, oavsett lärarprogram och inriktning, är undervisning för hållbar utveckling.

Syftet med genomlysningen är att ge underlag för att utveckla kvalitén med avseende på didaktiska perspektiv på hållbar utveckling i de lärarprogram som ges på SU. Underlaget består av att i kursplaner och litteraturlistor identifiera var och i vilken utsträckning hållbar utveckling behandlas i lärarprogrammen samt identifiera möjligheter för att inkludera hållbar utveckling inom respektive lärarprogram

I föreliggande rapport presenteras resultaten från genomlysningen av respektive lärarprogram. Totalt genomlystes 289 kursplaner från 10 lärarprogram. I kursplanerna studerades kursens innehållsbeskrivning, förväntade studieresultat och kurslitteratur. Kopplingen till didaktik och hållbar utveckling uttrycks i tre nivåer: ingen, viss eller direkt koppling. Sett över samtliga innehållsbeskrivningar är fördelningen att 3% av kurserna hade direkt koppling, 12% viss koppling och 85% ingen koppling till didaktik och hållbar utveckling. Mönstret var likartat för Förväntade studieresultat och Kurslitteratur (se Tabell 1). Resultatet visar att det finns ett stort behov av att skapa gemensamma förutsättningar för en utvecklingsprocess mot en didaktik för hållbar utveckling för samtliga lärarprogram på Stockholms universitet.

I rapporten pekas på programrådens roll som central för att påskynda implementeringen av hållbar utveckling på lärarprogrammen på Stockholms universitet. Programråden har möjlighet att samordna både kurser och lärarutbildare inom och mellan lärarprogram för att säkerställa att alla lärarstudenter examineras med avseende på didaktik och hållbar utveckling.

Följaktligen befinner sig Lärarprogrammen på Stockholms universitet inför en rad didaktiska och organisatoriska utmaningar för att uppfylla delmålet i lärarexamensordningen rörande didaktik och hållbar utveckling. Hållbar utveckling är interdisciplinärt och skapar därför behov av samarbete och samordning mellan institutioner. I denna samordning spelar programråden för respektive lärarprogram en central roll.

The risk of neutralizing the political dimension in environmental education through the depoliticization of its thematic objects, its intended learning, and its educational purposes, is a curricular phenomenon identified by recent research in the field. The aim of this article is to develop a conceptual and analytical framework to identify clarification of the political dimension. The framework on the political dimension as part of environmental education provides political learning entry that help to avoid the vanishing of this dimension. Nevertheless, this is not without themes and cannot be decoupled from its educational aims. Therefore, establishing a conceptual and analytical framework considering environmental themes, political learning and educational purposes together can effectively support the curricular construction of environmental education’s political dimension. Thus, we define six environmental issue meta-themes by politicization and depoliticization trends that cross them; draw on environmental and political education research to identify political learning components in an environmental education context; and discuss linking political learning to possible educational purposes. We believe that within the dialectic of politicization/depoliticization that crosses the thematic subjects, learning and purposes of environmental education’s political dimension, the path leading to the democratic subjectification of learners guarantees its non-neutralization.