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.