Special Issue: Acta Didactica Norden, spring 2025: Sustainability in Teacher Education

2023-08-16

The concept of sustainability in the context of United Nations, is associated with sustainable development that aims to protect and nurture life on Earth, today and in the future. The UNs sustainable development agenda was established in the 1980s and 1990s. It has been embedded in numerous international conventions and agreements, the most recent being the UN document Transforming our world: Agenda 2030 for sustainable development (United Nations, 2015), which argues the need to  respond to  current global challenges; the climate crisis, ecological crisis, global inequity, and threats to biodiversity, cultural diversity and peaceful co-existence.

Education is part of the sustainable development agenda, as an aim in itself and as a means to achieve other aims. In Agenda 2030 quality education is Sustainable Development Goal 4, and teacher education is linked to this aim (UNESCO, 2016). In this way teacher education plays a key role in UNs endeavor,  and teachers and teacher educators now are engaged in developing educational structures, content and practices both to meet new educational requirements and, not the least, out of a concern for life on Earth. We hope many of you who take part in this endeavour would like to share your research, experiences and ideas in this special issue.

The aim of this special issue is to collect and make visible research on current processes that establish sustainability as an issue and perspective in teacher education, in the Nordic region and beyond. In this way we would like to contribute to the research field of sustainability education in ways that open up for the development of knowledge and the sharing of this knowledge between the Nordic countries and, hopefully, beyond our borders as well.

Internationally, the sustainability agenda is increasingly being embedded in legislation and institutional frameworks. In a Norwegian context the renewal of University and University Colleges Act in 2021 exemplifies this, stating that the aim of universities and colleges are to “contribute to an environmental, social and economic sustainable development” (University and University Colleges Act, 2021, § 1-1, our translation). The equivalent Swedish version states: “In the course of their operations, higher education institutions shall promote sustainable development to assure for present and future generations a sound and healthy environment, economic and social welfare, and justice.” (Högskolelag, 2021, § 5, official translation). In Denmark, sustainability was included in The Executive Order of Teacher Education in 2022 with the formulation: “The teacher education prepares the students to actively, self-determined, and responsibly engage in the development of primary and lower secondary school in accordance with its purpose and a democratic and sustainable perspective.” (Bekendtgørelse om uddannelsen til professionsbachelor som lærer i folkeskolen, 2021, § 1, our translation).

In other words, a number of actors within the field of education are currently engaged in strengthening sustainability as an overall purpose on all levels of the educational system. In Norway for instance, the incorporation of sustainable development as an interdisciplinary topic in the new national curriculum LK20 (Ministry of Education and Research, 2019) has led to a renewed interest in challenges of sustainability in teacher education. 

The term sustainability didactics (Kvamme & Sæther, 2019), demonstrates that political ambitions of sustainable societies constitute a challenge for the field of subject didactics (fagdidaktikk) as well as for general didactics (allmenndidaktikk). With regard to subject didactics this raises concerns about the content, methods and purposes of education. At the same time, within the research field it is well-established (Jones, Selby & Sterling, 2010) that sustainability constitutes an interdisciplinary challenge that involves the overall purpose of both school and higher education, in the Nordic countries expressed in the Bildung ideal (Sjöström & Tyson, 2022). Several research contributions within the field report that the establishment of sustainability as an issue and perspective in teacher education is a demanding task (see for instance Buchanan, 2012; Dyment & Hill, 2015; Karrow, DiGiuseppe & Inwood, 2019; Ødegaard, Knain, Kvamme & Sæther, 2021). This is development work that challenges established knowledge structures, conceptualizations of the professions involved, and, not to mention what constitutes the societal mandate of teacher educations. These challenges, and tensions and conflicts they have engendered, are of particular interest for this special issue. We are also interested in research that addresses what knowledge that is included and emphasized, and what is left out when the sustainability agenda is gaining influence in teacher education.

Possible issues connected to sustainability in teacher education may be, but is not limited to:

  • Sustainability in subject didactics in teacher education
  • Interdisciplinary educational practices connected to sustainability in teacher education
  • Sustainability in the practice component of teacher education
  • Research & Development engaged in establishing sustainability in teacher education
  • The position and meaning of the Bildung ideal with regard to sustainability in teacher education
  • Normative perspectives in a sustainability didactics in teacher education
  • Comparative studies of sustainability in teacher education within and between the Nordic countries
  • The reproducing and critical function of teacher education with regard to sustainability
  • Sustainability in legislation, curriculum and syllabi involving teacher education
  • Global perspectives on sustainability in teacher education

We welcome manuscripts that build on empirical studies, but are also open to review articles and theoretical contributions that discuss established positions within teacher education from the perspective of the sustainability challenges of our time. With regard to language, Acta Didactica Norden is committed to publishing articles in Scandinavian languages as well as in English.

This special issue is a follow-up on Acta Didactica Norway´s special issue on Education and sustainability: Various didactical perspectives from 2019 (Volume 13, no. 2).

The special issue has a background in the Norwegian research network for sustainability and education (NABU) and the network conference 19–20 October 2023 that is to address teacher education. However, this is an open invitation to the research field in Norway, the Nordic region and beyond that does not require participation on the NABU conference or membership in this particular network.

References

Bekendtgørelse om uddannelsen til professionsbachelor som lærer i folkeskolen [(Executive Order on the professional bachelor degree for teachers in the Folkeskole] (2021). Retsinformation. https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2023/374

Buchanan, J. (2012). Sustainability education and teacher education: Finding a natural habitat? Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 28(2), 108–124. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26422799

Dyment, J. & Hill, A. (2015). You mean I have to teach sustainability too? Initial teacher education students’ perspectives on the sustainability cross-curriculum priority. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 20–35. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol40/iss3/2/

Högskolelag (2021). Högskolelag [The Swedish Higher Education Act] (1992:1434, siste endring SFS 2021: 1282). Sveriges Riksdag. https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/hogskolelag-19921434_sfs-1992-1434/

Jones, P., Selby, D. & Sterling, S. (2010). More than the sum of their parts? Interdisciplinarity and sustainability. In P. Jones, D. Selby & S. Sterling (Eds.), Sustainability education: Perspectives and practices across higher education (pp. 17–39). Earthscan.

Karrow, D. D., DiGiuseppe, M. & Inwood, H. (2019). Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education: Canadian Perspectives. In D. D. Karrow & M. DiGiuseppe (Eds.), Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education (pp. 1–18). Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25016-4_1

Kvamme, O. & Sæther, E. (2019). Bærekraftdidaktikk [Sustainaibility Didactics]. Fagbokforlaget.

Ministry of Education and Research (2019). Kunnskapsløftet 2020/2020S. Nye læreplaner – grunnskolen og gjennomgående fag vgo. https://www.udir.no/laring-og-trivsel/lareplanverket/Nye-lareplaner-i-grunnskolen-og-gjennomgaende-fag-vgo/

Sjöström, J. & Tyson, R. (2022). Didaktik för lärande och bildning [Didactics for learning and Bildung]. Liber.

UNESCO (2016). Education 2030: Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000245656

United Nations (2015). Resolution 70/1. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_70_1_E.pdf

Universitets- og høyskoleloven [University and University Colleges Act] (2021). Lov om universiteter og høyskoler (LOV-2005-04-01-15, siste endring ikr. 1. august 2021). Lovdata. https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2005-04-01-15

Verdensmål [Global Goals] (2022). Danmark har brug for en handleplan for uddannelse og bæredygtig utvikling. Verdensmål. Danmarks officielle side. https://www.verdensmaal.org/handleplan-for-uddannelse

Ødegaard, M., Knain, E., Kvamme, O. A. & Sæther, E. (2021). Making sense of frustration and complexity when introducing sustainability in teacher education. Acta Didactica Norden, 15(3), Art. 6. https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.8184

Guest editors

Ole Andreas Kvamme, associate professor, Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo.

Biljana C. Fredriksen, professor, Department of Visual and Performing Arts Education, University of South-Eastern Norway

Lise Granlund, editor for social sciences, Acta Didactica Norden, senior lecturer, Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen, associate professor, University College Copenhagen

Vibeke Gilje Sanne, assistant professor, Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Time schedule (may be subject to adjustments)

World limit is 500 words; the abstract should provide background, research question, theoretical perspectives, empirical material and method (if included), tentative findings and implications.

  • Editorial response on abstracts and offer to contribute with a complete manuscript: 1 December 2023
  • Deadline for submitting a full manuscript: 1 April 2024
  • Response to authors after peer review: 1 July 2024
  • Deadline for revised manuscript: 1 October 2024
  • Expected publication: Spring 2025