The effect of implementation of education for sustainable development in Swedish compulsory schools – assessing pupils’ sustainability consciousness

Abstract

During the past decade, numerous schools in Sweden have implemented education for sustainable development (ESD) as an explicit guiding approach in teaching. In this paper, we investigate the effect of this approach in comparison with that of pupils taught in ordinary schools. Accordingly, we introduce the concept of sustainability consciousness to represent the holistic view of sustainability. Within the concept of sustainability consciousness, we combine and investigate the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainable development in terms of sustainability knowingness, attitudes, and behavior. A Likert-scale questionnaire with 50 items was developed to evaluate pupils’ sustainability consciousness through a nationwide study in Sweden. A total of 1773 pupils from the 6th and 9th grades participated. The results indicated that the ESD profile schools had a small positive effect on the pupils’ sustainability consciousness, while in grade 9 the effect was negative. The implications for further ESD implementation are discussed.

Keywords:

• compulsory school
• education for sustainable development
• pupils’ perceptions
• sustainability attitudes
• sustainability behavior
• sustainability consciousness

Acknowledgements

The authors of this paper wish to thank to all the young people who participated in this study and their schools for letting us visit them. Our thanks also go to IISD (International Institute for Sustainable Development) for their help with the Canadian questionnaire. We send a special and very big thank you to Jari Appelgren at Karlstad University, the statistical advisor for this paper. Last, but not least, we would also like to thank FontD (the Swedish National Graduate School in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Research).

Notes

1. http://www.hsr.se/gronflagg

2. http://www.programkontoret.se/denglobalaskolan

3. http://www.skolverket.se/skolutveckling/miljo-och-halsa/hallbar-utveckling/utmarkelsen

4. http://www.wwf.se/utbildning/wwf-education/wwf-education-in-sweden/1522623-ny-wwfeducation-in-sweden

5. http://www.skolverket.se/skolutveckling/miljo-och-halsa/hallbar-utveckling/utmarkelsen

6. http://www.fee-international.org/en

7. http://www.skolverket.se/skolutveckling/miljo-och-halsa/hallbar-utveckling/utmarkelsen

8. http://www.wwf.se/utbildning/wwf-education/wwf-education-in-sweden/1522623-ny-wwf-education-in-sweden

9. http://salsa.artisan.se/

10. Web addresses to the questionnaires:

Year 6:

http://www.intra.kau.se/dokument/upload/C10B9B9407a521992BNXKHX7EC04/Survey%20instrument%206th%20grade.pdf?-session=rs:C10B9B9407a52196DCKhFF628D471

Year 9:

http://www.intra.kau.se/dokument/upload/C10B9B9407a521999AyJFE893282/Survey%20instrument%209th%20grade.pdf?-session=rs:C10B9B9407a52196DCKhFF628D47

11. Software Survey and Report from the Program Suite Artologik. Accessed November 15, 2013 from www.artisan.se: http://www.artologik.com/en/SurveyAndReport.aspx

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council, project [grant number B0589701].