Differences in Conceptual Understanding of Sustainable Development based on Teacher Subject Area and Experience Level

Sustainable development (SD) is defined by meeting the needs of society now and in future generations. Education for sustainable development (ESD) works to instill the ideas, values, and skills associated with SD at young ages to develop a society that can achieve SD and manage global sustainability challenges. Teaching SD requires educators to have a strong understanding of SD themselves. Existing research focuses on analyzing the understanding of SD by science teachers but does not include teachers from other disciplines. This research investigated Swedish upper-secondary educators teaching a range of subject areas with varying experience levels to understand how those differences correlated to educators' conceptual understandings to holistic SD.

The authors of this study, along with many other scholars, agreed that sustainable development should be conceptualized from a holistic perspective, meaning that environment, society, and economy are interwoven and equally important. Holistic SD is the primary framework used in government documents in Sweden, including guiding documents for academic programs. However, the focus on holistic SD was relatively new in Sweden and globally, indicating that recently qualified teachers may have a stronger conceptual understanding of holistic SD in comparison to teachers who were trained prior to the introduction of holistic SD. Past research shows that educators typically associate environmental concepts with SD more than economic and social concepts.

This study took place in Sweden. The authors divided upper secondary schools in Sweden into 3 categories by size and 4 categories by region. While ensuring that sizes and municipalities were represented evenly, 297 secondary schools were randomly invited to participate in the study. Out of the 297 schools selected to participate, 224 schools responded, including 3,229 individual teachers. The participant teachers represented 20 different disciplines, which were grouped into subjects: 1) natural science (669 participants), 2) social science (373 participants), 3) language (483 participants), 4) vocational (713 participants), and 5) other (739 participants). The participants were also classified based on whether they were “recently qualified” (fewer than 5 years teaching) or “experienced” (more than 5 years teaching). An online questionnaire was sent to the school principals at participating schools, and the principals then sent it out to the teachers within their schools. The questionnaire included a range of statements and asked participants to identify if the statements represented components of SD by agreeing or disagreeing on a Likert scale (completely agree, partially agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree). The questionnaire also included questions about educator background information and a section which asked educators to self-evaluate their own understanding of SD. The data from questionnaire responses were analyzed using statistics.

The data suggested that participants did not recognize environmental, social, and economic factors as equally relevant to SD, which implied that educators lacked a holistic conceptualization of SD. Especially considering holistic SD is a key concept in Swedish guiding documents and recently qualified teachers received training in SD, the researchers highlighted that it was concerning how few educators recognized social and economic factors as aspects of SD.

The data showed significant differences in conceptual understanding of SD among participant educators of different subjects, but no differences based on experience level (recently qualified versus experienced). Environmental statements were most commonly recognized as SD components across all subjects and experience levels. About half of the participants recognized social statements as components of SD; language and vocational teachers recognized social dimensions more than social science and natural science teachers. Educators across all subject groups showed the greatest level of uncertainty regarding economic components of SD. Again, language and vocational teachers recognized economic components of SD more frequently than social science and science teachers. The data from the self-determined understanding of SD responses showed that the majority of educators ranked their understanding as good (44%) or very good (29%). Participating science and social science teachers tended to rate their understanding as higher than educators from other disciplines.

This research has several limitations. The teachers and schools who responded to the questionnaire may have been more interested and/or more knowledgeable about SD. In order to increase response rate, the study authors used a shorter questionnaire that did not deeply explore participants' understanding of SD. Also, most of the statements in the questionnaire only addressed one or two dimensions of SD, so the study is limited in measuring whether educators truly have a holistic perspective of SD. This study focused on upper-secondary schools in Sweden; a study undertaken in a different grade level or a different country may have different results.

The authors recommend instructing teachers in holistic SD by identifying bridges among environmental, social, and economic components, rather than teaching them as separate concepts. In addition, they recommend creating cross-disciplinary teams to incorporate holistic SD into curriculum.