Global challenges - an interdisciplinary and compulsory course in teacher education, Malmö University, Sweden

Malmö University (MU) is a relatively young university, only 15 years old. In 2014 a new strategic platform, Strategy 2020, was launched. MU believes that the future needs HEIs that contribute to the development of a sustainable community by creating new methods of working in collaboration with others. MU shall stimulate life-long learning and skills for action in an ever changing society. Our aim is education and research for a sustainable society. Our educational programmes are based on students actively seeking out and developing knowledge, with the purpose of achieving expertise that is in demand locally as well as globally. One example regarding our strategy is the interdisciplinary course, Global challenges in a subject context, 9 credits, a compulsory course for teacher students training for upper and upper secondary school (SS and USS). The course content is focusing on citizenship, intercultural issues, sustainable development and learning. Besides lectures, literature seminars and workshops, the students focus on two tasks; a short article on a learning resource suitable for education in SS or USS, and a minor research project. The articles, with practicing pedagogues as stakeholders, are published in a web magazine after approval. The second task is an interdisciplinary group work on pedagogues approach to the perspectives of citizenship, intercultural issues and/or sustainable development in the Swedish school system. The findings have to be discussed in connection to the Swedish syllabus of SS or USS. The results are presented as a paper or a poster at a student driven conference with invited participants, e.g. practicing teachers, school leaders, teacher students and university lecturers