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This thesis explores how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as an overarching perspective makes meaningof educational aims and purposes. Sustainable development, as a concept, is by necessity complex, and deals withintegrated dimensions of environmental, social-cultural and economic sustainability. It involves a diverse range ofembedded values and ideologies and calls for engagement in value-related and political issues relating to environment,equality and lifestyle. In my thesis, I have turned to the actors in social practice who are set to realise the educationalperspectives of ESD – the teachers. Accordingly, the analyses departure from secondary and upper secondary schoolteachers' reciprocal meaning-making when discussing the desirable aims of teaching and ESD. Building upon previouseducational research, the thesis has three purposes, and the results are presented in four articles. The results of thestudies bring new empirical knowledge and perspectives to educational research and practice, by adding furtherunderstanding of the political and democratic dimensions of ESD.The first purpose is to investigate and describe the complexity of the concept of sustainable development from a conflictperspective and to analyse meaning-making discussions of sustainability in an educational context. This is elaborated inthe first study (Article I). To achieve this, a Conflict Reflection Tool (CRT) has been developed, by combining theconflicting dynamics of sustainable development with dialogic and univocal functions of speech. In the included casestudy, the CRT analysis of teachers' discussions shows how fact-based, univocal science utterances closed thediscussion for conflicting perspectives to emerge. However, conflicting views did emerge and were re-valued in adialogic genre through the interplay of different dimensions of sustainability and different societal levels of conflicts.The second purpose is to investigate how the desired aims of ESD are (re)articulated in areas of educational tension inorder to make ...

What happens with the aims and purposes of education when sustainability issues of complexity, uncertainty, risk and necessity are to be handled in educational practises? In this thesis Helen Hasslöf analyses how secondary and upper secondary school teachers discuss aims and purposes of their teaching practices in the light of sustainable development as an overarching perspective. Conflicting aims are problematized to discuss purposes of education. The included articles thus elaborate on students' possibilities to develop as political subjects, how to value what is seen as qualification of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and emerging myths of social change in relation to sustainability. Furthermore, the concept of sustainable development is elaborated from a conflict perspective in an educational setting. Theories and ideas from Bakhtin, Wertsch, Biesta and Laclau & Mouffe are important theoretical foundations. Analytical methods, inspired by discourse theory, are developed to be used for analysis of teachers' meaning-making discussions.

Research on education for sustainable development (ESD) put forward the complex and conflicting views of sustainable questions. The uncertainty and complexity of the future, and the many different cultural contexts makes a dynamic approach desirable. Pluralism is often put forward as a means of handling 'competing visions of the truth' and to take different opinions, knowledge and conflicting views into account in ESD (Breiting, Mayer, and Mogensen, 2005; Jensen and Schnack, 1997; Lundegård and Wickman, 2007; Rudsberg and Öhman, 2010; Scott and Gough, 2003; Öhman, 2006).The aim with my study is to reveal teachers' repertoires for creating opportunities to challenge students' thoughts and ideas in issues connected to ESD. The paper departs from the distinction Gert Biesta (2009) makes between three different functions of education. He refers to three functions as qualification, socialization and subjectification. The function of qualification has to do with the domain of knowledge and skills and how students may become more qualified through e.g. learning fact about issues in ESD. Socialization is connected to the many ways we becomes a part specific social, cultural and political order of a community, and are connected to ones identity and ways of acting. The function of subjectification can be understood as a counterforce to socialization. It is not about introducing newcomers to be participators in a community. Rather it is a way to express agency and independence to the orders of a community.How these functions of education are interrelating and in tension when teachers discuss the teaching of ESD, is the focus of the research questions of this study.• In what way are the teachers expressing empowering opportunities for students to challenge their views (subjectification) of sustainable issues?• In what way are the educational functions of qualification, socialisation and subjectification interrelating in teachers' meaning-making of education for sustainable development, and how could this be interpreted in ...

Issues of sustainability are complex and often steeped with ethical and political questions without predefined or general answers. This paper deals with how secondary and upper secondary teachers discuss these complex issues, by analysing their aims for Education for Sustainable Development. With inspiration from discourse theory, their articulations about students as political subjects are analysed. Critical thinking emerged as a nodal point in teachers' discussions. In this study, critical thinking is articulated as having various qualitative meanings related to different epistemological views. On one hand, critical thinking is articulated to invite room for subjectification; but on the other hand, room for subjectification is challenged when critical thinking is articulated through the educational aims of qualification and socialisation. A consequence of changing epistemological view might be that political and ethical issues take a back seat.

Environmental education has been a topic for biology teachers in Sweden, as well as in many other countries, since the 1970th (Björneloo, 2007; Öhman, 2006). However as a requirement due to the goals of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), environmental education has broadened up to embrace other subjects as well. ESD seeks to integrate ecological, social and economic perspectives into the education. Facts, values, democracy and action competence are important aspects (UNESCO, 1995). To educate for sustainable development is indeed a challenge and a way to put the education into authentic problems of the world. The aim of this study is to investigate how interdisciplinary group meetings can broaden teachers' understanding of ESD. This first study of my thesis investigates what perspectives of sustainable development that are emphasized, when teachers from different disciplines meet in a joint discussion. Research questions: What aspects are emphasized by teachers in an interdisciplinary discussion about sustainable development? What do different teachers consider as important aspects of sustainable development after an interdisciplinary discussion? This case study is based on a discussion between teachers at a literature seminar. The target group was chosen from teachers taking an in-service course at Malmö University. This course is one of the components included in the RCE-project "Food & ESD" running at Malmö University. The teachers normally work in public schools in Malmö with pupils age 13-15. The teachers represent different subjects as for example: natural science, social science, language, mathematics and home economics. The course given had an interdisciplinary approach dealing with the consequences of our food production and consumption in the frame of sustainable development. A socio cultural perspective is used as a starting point for this study. In this research design I have my starting point from the teachers' discussion. A literature seminar was videotaped and semi-structured ...

This study started in connection to two similar parallel on-going Teacher Development Programs (TPDs) in Sweden, within the PARRISE-project (2014-2017). It is a project funded by EU, where 18 universities from eleven countries cooperate to explore and develop ways to address political and ethical questions in science education, with starting point from Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), embracing the SSIBL framework (cf. Levinson 2016). Preliminary results shows how teachers from the TPDs formulated mutual and competing aims concerning the role of science education regarding how to address the knowledge base of science in relation to new relatively uncertain areas. This is done in relation to innovation processes and their products as for example nanotechnology. Critical thinking and awareness of ignorance were formulated as important tools for a scientific literacy discourse of a more humbled view of knowledge production, connected to science research and innovation, and identifying conflicting interest from different actors.