Sustainable development in geography related education : A study of primary school teachers’ interpretation and management of sustainable development in geography-related teaching

The purpose of this study is to examine how primary school teachers in preschoolclass - 3rd grade interprets and handle sustainable development in geography related education. Furthermore, the purpose is to examine how teachers think their teaching to sustainable development will be affected in the future, owning to the new syllabus-22. Previous research related to teachers´ adaptions to new syllabuses, points out that teachers often falls back to using the previous edition of the syllabus instead of using the new one. Six teachers from preschool up to third grade participated in the investigation. Two of the teachers in the study work in a private school, and the rest of the teachers work in public schools. The qualitative interviews with the respondents in the study were performed over email. The theoretical approach is based on the three aspects of sustainable development, four teachingtraditions and the theory of pragmatism. The result of this study shows that teachers interpret the concept of sustainable development mainly from the ecological aspect, and that the normative enviromental teaching tradition, is the most prominent. The motivation is that the teachers want their pupils to create good habits. The result also concludes that teachers strive to get their pupils to achieve actioncompetence. During the lessons, practical work in forms of recycling and local area studies were a common form of education according to the teachers. The study also reveals that most of the teachers will not change their education according to sustainable development when the new syllabus - 22 in geography will be applied (Skolverket, 2022)