Curriculum analysis and education for sustainable development in Iceland

Abstract

The article explores how the Icelandic public school curriculum for early childhood, compulsory and upper secondary school deals with education for sustainable development. As the curriculum does not often mention the term sustainability, a key with which to investigate signs of education for sustainable development in the three curricula was created. The key encourages a holistic view of sustainable development, where economic, environmental and social factors are not treated as separate entities. It was designed to reflect the goals of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) with research on environmental education and education for sustainable development in mind. The key has seven characteristics: values, opinions and emotions about nature and environment; knowledge contributing to a sensible use of nature; welfare and public health; democracy, participation, and action competence; equality and multicultural issues; global awareness; and finally, economic development and future prospects. Using the key, a variety of signs and indicators that provide a space for teachers and schools to deal with issues of sustainable development were identified.

Keywords:

• curriculum
• curriculum analysis
• education for sustainable development
• environmental education
• reorientation of education

Acknowledgements

The project is financially supported by the universities where the GETA group members work as faculty and graduate students, namely, the University of Iceland and the University of Akureyri. It also received a three‐year grant from the Environmental and Energy Research Fund which is owned by Reykjavík Energy (Orkuveita Reykjavíkur), the municipal energy company of Reykjavík and a number of neighbouring communities. The first author also wishes to thank the University of Akureyri for granting him a research semester in autumn 2008 that enabled drafting parts of the article. All opinions expressed in the article are those of the authors. Although the article is a joint endeavour, the individual authors may have different views about some of the material presented. The curriculum key and the results of the curriculum analysis have been presented by one or more of the authors at several national and international conferences. We finally like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their encouragement and patience in the review process.

Notes

1. We speak interchangeably about sustainability and sustainable development and also about education for sustainability and education for sustainable development.

2. The GETA project consisted of a number of work packages which can be divided into three phases: a preparation phase of various studies to support school development, a phase that consisted of action research projects with selected schools and an assessment and dissemination phase. Two reports were produced in the preparation phase, one on the study of the curriculum as well as the policy of Icelandic municipalities and various non‐governmental organisations (Jóhannesson et al. 2008) and another about previous practices in Icelandic schools (Bergmann et al. 2008). This article is based on research conducted for the first‐mentioned report. The full title of the project in Icelandic is GETA til sjálfbærni – menntun til aðgerða (literally: competence for sustainability – education for action). GETA is intended as a word play: the Icelandic verb geta means to act and the Icelandic noun geta refers to competence; using it in capital letters makes it look like an acronym. We refer to the GETA group, or GETA research group, as all the researchers and graduate students involved in the project; the curriculum analysis team – i.e. the authors of this article – is a subgroup of five researchers. In addition, the following members were in the GETA group during the academic year of 2007–2008 when the curriculum research was conducted: Allyson Macdonald, Erla Kristjánsdóttir, Eygló Björnsdóttir, Stefán Bergmann, Steinunn Geirdal, Svanborg Rannveig Jónsdóttir and Þórunn Reykdal.

3. We consulted some amount of work in environmental education and education for sustainable development for developing our argument, among those Breiting (1989), Tilbury (1995), Jensen and Schnack (1997), Bonnett (1999), Breiting and Mogensen (1999), Rest (2002), Summers, Corney, and Childs (2003), Gruenewald (2004), Chatzifotiou (2006), Gough and Scott (2006), Huckle (2006), Rauch and Steiner (2006), Lundegård and Wickman (2007), McKeown and Hopkins (2007), Gadotti (2008), Jickling and Wals (2008) and Breiting (2009).

4. The translation of the characteristics in the key is as accurate as we could make it, but nevertheless some of terms we use may carry connotations in Icelandic that we were unable to catch.

5. For a more detailed explanation of the key, see Norðdahl (2009) and Jóhannesson et al. (2008). Less detailed introductions to the curriculum key have been published in Icelandic in a publication of the teacher organisations (Pálsdóttir 2008), a newsletter from Rannís, The Icelandic Centre for Research (GETA Research Group 2008a), in a keynote lecture (Jóhannesson 2009), and in conference proceedings (Pálsdóttir et al. 2009; Pálsdóttir, Macdonald, and Jóhannesson 2009).

6. The use of the curriculum key is free for anyone; it is not a patented instrument so its use only requires proper citations.

7. The minister of education, science, and culture, Katrín Jakobsdóttir of the Left Green Party, has used our work in her speeches, for instance in September 2009 at conference about a national plan of education for sustainable development (Jakobsdóttir 2009). She also declared education for sustainability as one of five basic threads for rewriting the curriculum for early childhood, compulsory and upper secondary schools. As researchers we are a bit cautious about such political interest in our work; as practitioners and activists we are excited that our interpretation of the curriculum has received support.