This presentation will conceptualise on the issue of sustainability more generally and particularly in relation to its social role for providing equity in and through education. The paper frames the discussion within the UN Sustainable Development Goals and their accomplishment in and for educational practice. The purpose is to explore how teacher education can address the role of equity and equality in educational institutions in the context of social sustainable pedagogical processes.

The paper takes an international comparative perspective and presents some Swedish cases in the light of Nordic discussions gender and equity in the field of education and it will specifically touch on the role teacher education can play in this context. Equity, diversity and equality are framed in an intersectional perspective, where gender is understood within the scope of other parameters of inequality as ethnicity, sexual identity, which are also important dimensions of identity.

The paper will analyse specific examples that will be chosen from three teacher education programmes in Sweden, one for pre-school teachers, one for teachers in leisure time centres and one for teachers in adult education. The study builds on ethnographic observations and document analyses of programme curriculums, course of studies, study guidelines and other documents at a Swedish university. These cases are being discussed in the light of other Nordic studies and in with inspirations from a norm-critical theoretical perspective.

The results can elucidate that working with gender and equity can be organised systematically within programme studies at university. The results are re-examined in relation to their importance for building social sustainable structures in institutions for education within the education system.