Students’ discussions in sustainable development based on their own ecological footprints

Within Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) various skills and knowledge arediscussed, both in policy documents and in research reports. Therefore the aim of this studyis to investigate what skills and knowledge students actually use in discussions related tosustainable development. Groups of students were observed when they worked with a taskabout Ecological footprints, within the subject Science studies. The subject is mandatory inall programmes in the upper secondary school and is about science for citizenship. Groupdiscussions were audio recorded and transcribed.A content analysis was performed and thereafter a specific search for utterances which couldbe interpreted as critical thinking, conflicts of interests or ability to use cause andconsequences.Results show that the students have ideas about ―environmentally friendly behaviour‖ andshows interest in equity issues. There was some science in the discussions, for examplefood-chains and population growth. The skills critical thinking, cause and consequencereasoning and ability to see conflicts of interests were not frequently used.The students were surprised and unaware of their own and Sweden‘s ecological footprints.The most common conflicts of interests were between their lifestyle and environmental impact