Att mötas i tid, rum och tanke : Om ämnesintegration och undervisning för hållbar utveckling

This study has investigated teachers’ apprehensions of interdisciplinary collaborations, education related to sustainable development and their conditions in education. When interviewing teachers, working in the vocational programmes in upper secondary schools in Sweden, the apprehensions illuminate diversity in how schools approach and implement aims and requirements in the curricula. Apprehensions of interdisciplinarity and sustainable development reflect content and methods in the classroom.The main purpose of the thesis is to study how teachers apprehend interdisciplinary education and the relation to education on sustainable development. The second part of the study aims to identify teachers’ apprehensions of the conditions for interdisciplinary approaches in education.The results show the connections and relations between apprehensions of interdisciplinary approaches, school organization and the ability to implement education for sustainable development in the classroom. Deliberation, participation, time and distance are essential for the planning and implementation process. Teachers’ knowledge in school subjects as well as an understanding for connections between different fields of knowledge is also essential. A team teacher organization as well as support from headmasters, are framing conditions for an open climate which enables meeting each other across disciplinary borders and barriers. Interdisciplinary collaborations in education are mostly described in terms of multidisciplinary approaches, with additive knowledge development. This often means that students are left to identify connections between subjects themselves. Some collaborations are, however, described with more enthusiasm. This study identifies a relationship between integration level and collaborations that are described as successful. In the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) a holistic view is essential to be able to identify the complex relations between man and nature. In terms of education related to sustainable development, the ecological dimension is the most associated dimension among teachers in this study, while the sociological and economical dimensions in general, are implicit. Concerning the environmental education traditions, many apprehensions in this study can be related to a fact-based tradition as well as a normative tradition.To be able to categorize apprehensions in the third tradition (education for sustainable development), abilities as emancipation and transformation have to be more explicit in the learning process.