Manners of teaching about controversial sustainability issues and students learning
With the aid of quantitative and qualitative methods we have identified and characterized teachers' habits of teaching about controversial sustainability issues
Details
- Period: 2018-01-01 – 2023-12-31
- Budget: 5,999,974 SEK
- Funder: Swedish Research Council
Description
The first purpose of the project is to analyse the institutional dimension of teaching, i.e. to identify different manners of teaching dealing with controversial sustainability issues. The second purpose is to analyse the learning—both the process and the content—within the identified manners of teaching. The third purpose is to analyse teachers’ reflections, judgements and experiences teaching controversial sustainability issues.
The project has been designed as follows: to identify general teaching traditions –manners of teaching regarding controversial sustainability issues that many teachers use –within subjects and to analyse a) the pros and cons of each of the traditions regarding learning and b) teachers' didactical reflections on the teaching of controversial sustainable issues. This design has been chosen because we want to avoid that the knowledge created becomes anecdotal and the power of generalisation is missed.
We will conduct a national survey in order to identify manners of teaching of controversial sustainable issues in the subjects of biology, geography, civic education, and religion in lower secondary education. Out of the results from the survey we will select teachers to be studied through interviews and video-recordings.
This project's focus is directly in line with the considerable amount of attention on sustainable development at the international as well as national policy level (Agenda 2030 and Global Action Programme on ESD).