2. The Mandate and Definition of the Work

This project, Sustainability Education in the Nordic Countries (SENC), is situated within the previously mentioned paradoxical situation. Under the title “Sustainable Living”, the Nordic Council of Ministers initiated a multi-annual programme focusing on sustainable lifestyles in the Nordic countries that covers many different sectors. One of its sub-projects, Education for Sustainable Development, has the goal of making sustainable development an integral part of all education, for every age, from preschool to adult learning. All students shall acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for the enhancements of sustainable development, e.g., through education for sustainable lifestyles, human rights, equal opportunities, a culture of peace and global citizenship as well as the appreciation of cultural diversity and cultures’ contribution to sustainable development.

The Icelandic Centre for Research (RANNÍS) had the responsibility of coordinating the current project, Education for Sustainable Development. A part of this project was to establish a group of experts to investigate the situation of sustainability education in the Nordic region. Seven experts from Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Åland were appointed to the group. These experts were responsible for defining the work, carrying out the research and contributing to the final document. In addition, two experts from the Swedish and the Norwegian Teacher Unions contributed to the work of the expert group.

The SENC project had two distinct aims. First, to gather information on how teachers in the Nordic countries think about and teach sustainability issues and how they relate their practice to the current United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Various case studies on sustainability education in the Nordic Countries have been carried out, and they shed light on good practices and innovative ways to teach sustainability. Nevertheless, the broad picture is unclear and there is little knowledge on how teachers in general view their work in relation to sustainability. The first aim, thus, was to begin to fill in this gap by sending a survey to teachers in all the Nordic countries (see chapter 7).

The second aim was to bring about actual change — or at least try to progress closer toward sustainability. This second aim was vague and, within the time frame of the project, we did not expect to see any major development. Rather, the aim was to initiate a few processes which then will continue past the present project and gradually lead to real change.

Building on a previous project which produced, among other things, the report Mapping Education for Sustainability in the Nordic Countries (Jónsson et al., 2021) SENC aims at strengthening sustainability education with a focus on the role of teachers and their abilities and challenges. More specifically, SENC was given four broad goals:

Previous work laid the ground by mapping sustainability education as a concern for policy and teacher education. The present project takes a more practice-oriented stance by focusing on what teachers think and do, and how they can be supported to make real change. To reach the aims of the project, educational administrators and teacher organisations were included alongside researchers and teacher educators. The work was organised with a focus on three different groups:

The project work called for organisation along two dimensions. On the one hand, the organisation is according to the intended audience (administration, academia, practitioners) and, on the other, according to some concept of educational design and educational change (Bildung, sustainable education, PACK). The latter will be discussed in the next chapter.

The project group was formed by scholars, teacher students and people from various administrative levels as well as people working for teacher unions. With such a challenging topic — sustainability education — it was necessary to include various stakeholders. The challenges of sustainability education cannot be met at a single level or by merely one group of professionals within the education system but require joint efforts from the entire system.

To cover the Nordic region, members of the SENC group come from all the Nordic countries, including the autonomous areas except for the Faroe Islands.

Søren Witzel Clausen, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Teacher Education, VIA University College

Lili-Ann Wolff, Associate Professor, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki

Riku Oras, Executive Director, Teacher Student Union of Finland SOOL

Lars Demant-Poort, Associate Professor, Institute of Learning, University of Greenland

Ólafur Páll Jónsson, Professor of philosophy at the School of Education, University of Iceland.

Guðný Jórunn Gunnarsdóttir, Teacher Student,School of Education, University of Iceland, and a teacher at the elementary School at Kleppjárnsreykir in Borgarbyggð.

Marianne Lindheim, Special Adviser, KS (Kommunesektorens organisasjon)

Trond Harsvik, Senior Advisor, Union of Education Norway

Ida Large, Head of Department, Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training

Ann-Britt Sten Hodin, Director of Education, Swedish National Agency for Education

Veronica Persson, Senior Adviser, Swedish Teacher Union

Emilia Walk Johansson, Special Adviser, Department of Education and Culture, Government of Åland.

The group met three times in person, first in Iceland on June 29–30, 2022. At this meeting the group worked on defining the project and planning the work ahead. The second in-person meeting was in Oslo, September 8, 2022, in conjunction with the conference Framtidens lærerrolle i Norden (https://nordicteachers.no/). The third meeting was again in Oslo on April 8–9 2024. In between the face-to-face meetings, the expert group met several times online to discuss various issues related to the project as a whole — composing the questionnaire and determining practical matters on how to conduct the research.

Members of the expert group also presented the work of the group in two conferences, first at NERA Conference in Oslo March 15–17 2023 (https://nfpf.net/blog/2022/10/03/nera-conference-2023-15-17-march-oslo-2/), and then at the  Arctic Congress in Bodø from May 29 to June 3 2024 (https://www.arcticcongress.com/).