This study uses the Swedish Science Studies course to examine teaching approaches in sustainability education. Science Studies is an interdisciplinary course that aims to educate scientifically literate and active citizens, who are committed to environmental care and sustainability. Based on a survey of 155 teachers, the study explores the…

This article centers on a local school reform project aimed at implementing a transformative approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The study investigates the project in terms of how the design criteria of a continuous professional development program and critical factors of the implementation process influenced the actual…

This article examines the affordances and limitations of textbooks for promoting action competence for sustainable development. Based on a content analysis of Swedish lower secondary level textbooks in geography and biology, we investigated how content about sustainable development is organised and formulated, the ways its multidimensional…

This article reviews Education for Sustainability (EfS) in the secondary sector across a range of countries. Drawing on journal articles, book chapters and official reports, it identifies some of the more successful approaches to implementing EfS within the secondary sector. The authors first discuss the importance of educating for sustainability…

Purpose: Teaching sustainable development at the higher education level requires that existing curricula are supplemented with multi-disciplinary (and sometimes multi-national) collaboration and integrated thinking. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of a particular framework for business model innovation for…

Purpose: This paper aims to unveil how sustainability is integrated into the courses/programmes of higher education institutions. The research question addressed is: how do academics representing different disciplines cooperate and engage in the work of integrating sustainability into their teaching programmes. Design/methodology/approach: This…

This study applies a model of school organisation developed by one of the authors to investigate school improvement processes leading to a whole school approach in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) literature. The model is operationalized to a survey instrument and distributed to Swedish upper secondary teachers. The instrument provides…

Purpose: This study aims to report on how programme directors address sustainability within engineering education at Swedish universities and engineering colleges. Design/methodology/approach: The study was performed as a survey with follow-up interviews around the following core questions--to what extent do programme directors possess a deep…

The study investigates the transdisciplinary teaching of education for sustainable development (ESD) with a global dimension at an upper secondary school in Sweden. The purpose was to analyse and describe variations in how nine teachers in different subject matters experienced collaborative teaching in the context of a whole school educational…

The present study explores how school improvement in combination with a teacher professional development (TPD) project influenced the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) in five Swedish schools, when employing a whole school approach. Interviews were conducted with three teachers from each school. Shulman and Shulman's…

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is a multidisciplinary approach that encourages students to work actively with peers, teachers and stakeholders in society to identify complex challenges, formulate relevant questions and take action for sustainable development. In this paper, it is argued that CBL can be viewed as an evolution of the Conceive,…

According to the curricula in various countries, teachers in the subject areas of science, social science and language are often expected to collaborate on cross-curricular issues such as sustainable development (SD) in the 9-year compulsory school. This study is based in Sweden and investigates teachers' teaching traditions. The overall aim of…

In many countries' policy documents and curricula, teachers in the subject areas of science, social science and language are encouraged to collaborate on cross-curricular issues such as sustainable development (SD). This study is conducted in secondary schools (compulsory years 7-9) in Sweden and investigates the similarities and differences in…

In educational settings, sustainable development (SD) is often handled with the aim of reducing the contested aspects of the concept. Issues like trade, conservation, public health and international relations are often presented in a simplified way so that they are easier for students to grasp. However, in education, this tendency to simplify…

This collection of short papers is an outcome of the third conference on virtual exchange in higher education hosted by the Pedagogical University in Krakow in April 2018. Following the focus of the conference on virtual exchange in service of social inclusion and global citizenship, the papers collected in this volume offer first-hand insights…