Hållbara läromedel för hållbar utveckling? : En läromedelsstudie om dimensioner av hållbar utveckling

The UN has decided that between the years 2005-2014 education for sustainable development should be a priority and that efforts to integrate sustainable development into education at all levels should be strengthened. Textbooks have a very strong position in schooling and in 1991 the state’s intuition for review of textbooks was closed down. Today, the responsibility to review teaching materials lays on the teachers. The purpose of this study is to examine the teaching materials for the grades 1-3 in the subject society orientated subjects. We want to examine if the three dimensions of sustainable development (social, ecologic and economic) interact with each other. Through teaching materials analysis and based on theories of sustainable development the similarities and differences between the textbooks was compared. The following questions are answered: - How are the textbooks and the workbooks treating the concept of sustainable development through the three dimensions of sustainable development? - To what extent does the teaching materials correspond with the curriculum for geography in grades 1–3 within the sustainable development? The result of the analysis shows that all teaching materials are dealing with all three dimensions of sustainable development, but in different amounts. Boken om SO, SO-boken and Samhällskunskap deals with the most concepts selected within the dimensions. While Geografi – Vårt land almost only deals with the ecological dimension. The results have also shown that the Boken om So, and SO-boken covers almost all the key content in tre curricula that has been selected. Even Samhällskunskap treats many of them while Geografi – Vårt land only treats two. In only one of the textbooks, Boken om So, all the dimensions of sustainable development interact together. Our conclusion is that none of the books should be used by itself in education for sustainable development. A combination of learning materials is needed to get an overall perspective of sustainable development and to deal with all the core content