Sustainable Development Teaching: Ethical and Political Challenges

The aim of this book is to support and inspire teachers to contribute to much-needed processes of sustainable development and to develop teaching practices and professional identities that allow them to cope with the specificity of sustainability issues and, in particular, with the teaching challenges related to the ethical and political dimension of environmental and sustainability education.

Bringing together recent scholarship on the topic, this book translates state-of-the-art academic research into teaching models, methods and tools. Starting with an outline of the challenge of sustainability, it offers insights and models for understanding the interesting yet ambiguous concept of ‘sustainable development’ and the complex process of transforming society in a more sustainable direction (Part I). It then goes on to provide a guide to preparing courses and lessons as well as tools for reflection about teaching practices and the multiplicity of approaches to addressing ethical and political challenges in sustainable development teaching (Part II). Finally, the book offers useful conceptual frameworks, models and typologies about the concrete design and implementation of sustainable development teaching (Part III).

This book will be essential reading for students of education, as well as teachers in compulsory and higher education and sustainability education researchers.

Katrien Van Poeck is a senior researcher on environmental and sustainability education at Ghent University’s Centre for Sustainable Development, Belgium.

Leif Östman is Professor of Curriculum Studies at Uppsala University’s Department of Education, Sweden.

Johan Öhman is Professor of Education at Örebro University’s School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Sweden.