7. Surveying Teachers’ Educational Approaches

Since our work is aimed at supporting practitioners, a priority has been given to listen to what teachers say about their practices — how they teach sustainability and what kind of obstacles (if any) they encounter when planning, carrying out, and evaluating teaching sustainability. To do this, we chose to use the seventeen UN SDGs as our base for enquiring into teachers’ experiences in teaching sustainability in the context of a survey. The first dataset was collected through an online survey among practising teachers in the Nordic countries.

The survey was designed around an idea of wanting to know how teachers teach sustainability as well as what they teach when they teach sustainability, and what kind of obstacles – if any – they encounter in planning and carrying out teaching related to sustainability. To capture data that could help us in the quest, we used a combination of both closed and open-ended questions. Where closed questions served as the main data source for statistical analysis, respondents’ answers to open-ended questions served as a trail into learning from teachers.

After a rigorous pilot testing of the questionnaire in all seven Nordic languages, the final version contained eighteen questions. With the help of various channels in each country, primarily teacher unions, the questionnaire was made available to randomly selected teachers across the Nordic region (Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Åland Islands). The survey was available to teachers between the end of November 2023 and the beginning of March 2024; three reminders were sent out to teachers in that period. A total of 676 teachers from across the Nordic countries completed the questionnaire.

The design of the questionnaire allows for the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. In this section of the report, findings from the quantitative part of the survey will be presented. Due to the limited number of respondents from all the eight Nordic countries (n=676), findings from the quantitative section of the survey will be presented for the Nordic region as a whole, and as descriptive data only.

The findings from the questionnaire are centred on teachers’ experiences in teaching sustainability and will be presented through three themes related to sustainability:

To understand how teachers relate to the issue of sustainability, we inquired into which of the seventeen UN SDGs they considered to concern sustainability. In answering this question (see Figure 10), they had the opportunity to tick more than one of the seventeen items.

Figure 10: Responses to the prompt: “In my mind sustainability concerns (mark all the options you relate to sustainability).”

Teachers’ responses to the question on which of the seventeen UN SDGs they relate to sustainability reveal that UN SDGs such as ‘reduced inequalities’, ‘decent work and economic growth’, and ‘gender equality’ are considered less related to sustainability than UN SDGs such as ‘climate action’, ‘life on land’, ‘affordable and clean energy’, and ‘responsible consumption and production’. The data suggests a division in what teachers consider a sustainability topic. It seems that issues related to the environment and climate are valued higher than issues related to human systems, such as ‘zero hunger’, ‘inequality,’ and ‘peace, justice, and strong institutions’. This division of opinions on sustainability issues might be an indication of their understanding of urgency; natural systems are under tremendous stress while a changing and warmer climate has had an increasingly violent impact on the entire planet during the past few years. This interpretation resonates with Demant-Poort and Berger’s 2021 findings that student teachers in Greenland and Canada were very worried about how climate change affects both the natural world and their future as teachers.

Analysis of teachers’ qualitative responses to this question reveals two themes in what ‘sustainability’ means to them: a ‘nature first’ theme and a UNSDG theme. In the ‘nature first’ theme, teachers express a deep concern for the natural world and a nature-human connection. In the questionnaire, one teacher wrote that “natural resources must be sufficient for us and future generations across the entire planet, and this includes plants and animals – conservation of species and biological diversity.” Another teacher expressed the human-nature connection as a close interdependency:

According to the quotation above, sustainable living is a foundation for human existence, a dependency that is deeply rooted in a concern for an uncertain future. A third teacher expressed a need for change in how people live, that current ways of living are incompatible with a sustainable future, and if it is to be more sustainable “most likely we will have to decrease standards of living in our part of the world.”

The UN SDG theme comprises teachers’ understanding of sustainability as the combination of the seventeen UN SDGs. They express both a difficulty in choosing between the seventeen UN SDGs and also that choosing all is ‘what one must do’. Many of the responding teachers consider sustainability first and foremost as something having to do with the natural world: climate change, biodiversity loss, and changes to ecosystems. There are, however, also teachers who express a broad sense of sustainability regarding all seventeen UN SDGs as equally important.

Related to the previous topic – what teachers consider a sustainability issue – we wanted to probe into what influenced their understanding of what sustainability is. Are teachers influenced by the media, social media platforms, or other digital sources? Are their students or their own children their main source of influence? Those were some of the considerations we had when we designed this particular question (see Figure 11). The teachers could indicate any number of items on the list.

Figure 11: Responses to the question: “What has influenced your understanding of sustainability?” Participants could indicate as many options as they liked.

The data suggests that ‘the news’, ‘documentaries and science programs’, and their own reading of the seventeen UN SDGs are the sources that have most influence on teachers’ understanding of sustainability. Fewer teachers are influenced by friends and family, students, and specialist magazines. What is particularly worrisome is that only 18% of the respondents indicated that sustainability was part of their teacher education program. That figure is, however, understandable given the lack of focus on sustainability in teacher education across the Nordic countries as described in Chapter 5 of the report Mapping Education of Sustainability in the Nordic Countries.

Teachers’ qualitative responses on the question revealed a similar broad variety. Some teachers were influenced by online media platforms and social media, whereas others were influenced by courses, their own academic work, and lectures. A few of the responding teachers relayed a story of how their understanding of sustainability is influenced by their own observation of changes. As an example, one respondent said that “I can see the changes in climate and nature with my own eyes.”

Though relatively few of the responding teachers have indicated that they have worked with sustainability in their own training, it has not, however, had an impact on their own ambition to teach sustainability in their schools and to their students. More than 80% of the responding teachers indicated that they have taught sustainability (see Figure 12), when asked: “Have you taught sustainability in your class?”

Figure 12: Responses to the question: “Have you taught sustainability in your class?”

Answers to this question gave us two directions for further inquiry: ‘Yes (I have taught sustainability)’ led to questions about what topic of sustainability they had taught, and how they had taught sustainability. ‘No (I have not taught sustaina­bility)’ led to questions about what reasons they had for not including sustainability in their teaching and whether they experienced hindrances to doing so.  

Teachers giving a positive answer to having taught sustainability then indicated which topic related to sustainability they included in their teaching (see Figure 13). For an answer, participants were given the option of indicating which of the seventeen UN SDGs they had focused on, with a further option of describing topics beyond the seventeen SDGs.

Figure 13: Responses to the question: “What topics related to sustainability have you taught?” Participant could mark as many options as they found relevant.

When teachers indicated which of the seventeen UN SDGs they had included in teaching, a preference emerged for issues related to the environment such as ‘climate action’, ‘life below water’, and ‘life on land’ as well as issues closely related to living conditions such as ‘clean water and sanitation’, ‘good health and well-being’, ‘affordable and clean energy’, and ‘responsible consumption and production’ which is the item most respondents mentioned (70%). What stands out among the seventeen UN SDGs are a few items concerning inter-human relations – or more conventionally political items – which received much less attention than the above-mentioned items concerning the environment and living conditions. Thus, the items ‘reduced inequality’, ‘no poverty’, ‘zero hunger’, and ‘peace, justice, and strong institutions’ were only indicated by around a third of the respondents.

The preference of teaching topics related to environmental issues as opposed to issues of inter-human relations may be an indication of how sustainability is comprehended as concerning human-nature on the one hand and lifestyles (consumption) on the other. Answers to the question about which topics teachers have included in their teaching may reflect issues that are not directly related to their understanding of sustainability, such as availability of teaching material (this can influence choice of topics), conventions, or timetables, but also reluctance to bring controversial political issues (conflicts or lack of peace, inequality, poverty, and hunger) into the classroom. When answering the open question about what topics the teachers focused on when teaching sustainability, many mentioned ‘fast fashion’ and the clothing industry.

Aside from an educational focus on content through teachers’ indication of which of the seventeen UN SDGs they have taught, it is of equal interest to understand how sustainability is taught. We therefore also asked the teachers what their focus is when they teach sustainability (see Figure 14).

Figure 14: Responses to the prompt: “When I teach sustainability, I focus on …” Participant could mark as many options as they found relevant.

* Arrange communication and collaboration with people from other contexts than the school
** Making arrangements for students to practice sustainability

Teachers could select any number of items on the list above. The first two items concern content, i.e. whether the teachers consider sustainability an environmental or a social issue. Between the two overarching items, there is a clear preference for ‘environmental issues’ (80%) over ‘social issues’ (46%). Looking at these results from the perspective of the head-hand-heart approach, we see a relatively strong focus on content knowledge (55%) – the ‘head’ – but there is also a clear prevalence of the ‘hand’ through participatory methods (‘encourage discussion’ at 71%), engagement-oriented methods (‘make students take action’ at 60%, ‘making arrangements for students to practise sustainability’ at 35%), and the ‘heart’ through reflection on ethical values (‘ethical values’ at 47% and ‘encourage reflection’ at 68%).

In developing the questionnaire, we wanted to know more about how teachers across the Nordic region teach sustainability; how have they considered teaching a topic on sustainability, what kind of approach have they developed, and what range of materials have they considered necessary for their students to learn about a specific topic related to sustainability. We therefore included an open question where we asked teachers to describe a teaching approach on sustainability that they had developed. Around a quarter of those who responded chose to describe one or more lessons on sustainability they had developed, taught, and evaluated. Among these descriptions are a myriad of approaches to teach various aspects of sustainability.

Teaching ‘sustainability’ in all the varied aspects present within the UN SDGs can be difficult to comprehend for students. To help young students in that quest, many teachers have approached sustainability through a lens of teaching activities that are hands-on, close by, and relatable to most students from a local or regional perspective. Below, we will briefly describe what we see as three major trends emerging from these responses.

One approach is ‘recycling’ activities in their school, local community, and household. One teacher wrote, “My students have worked with recycling, the recycling station, animals and plants.” A theme closely connected to recycling is ‘waste’. Collecting waste on a beach and categorising plastic in different fractions is an approach to sustainability that is easily comprehensible to students. It is easy for the students to see the difference their clean-up of a beach makes. One teacher wrote, “We look for waste close to the school. We follow waste through the waste-handling system.”

Several teachers described a problem-based approach to sustainability where students identify an issue or a problem at school and then work towards a solution. A teacher described this approach from a school meal perspective: “[The students] investigate why school food is thrown away, and then they work on how to solve the problem.”

Some teachers address sustainability in teaching through critical reflection on the consequences of modern life. Several teachers focus on the clothing industry where they have developed content and methods to address the ‘fast fashion’ aspect of modern life. Although fashion is perhaps best thought of as a social issue, these approaches often also reflect on how new fashion trends have a negative impact on the environment.

Problematising ‘fast fashion’ as an aspect of modern life resonates with a second minor trend – ‘consumer lifestyle’. A teacher described how students have examined their own consumer habits. Such an approach might include not only what people consume but also how food is produced, making students research how local foods are produced, increasing awareness of sustainable growing techniques, and actively engaging students in growing their own food through a project with school gardens and a plant-based diet.

The teachers’ responses to the open question on teaching approaches show impressive creativity in teaching. However, though many have described approaches to teaching sustainability, they also encountered a range of obstacles when working with students.

Although the majority of those who responded to the survey said they had taught sustainability (83%), there were still 17% who said they had not done so. We were interested in knowing some of the reasons why those 17% had not taught sustainability. Was this due to systemic features? Was it a lack of subject-matter competence? Or did teachers not see sustainability as relevant? To probe this further, we presented the teachers with a range of statements on why they have not taught sustainability (see Figure 15). The items in this category ranged from lack of student interest to lack of priority on a national level.

Figure 15: Responses to the question: “Why have you not taught sustainability?” Participant could mark as many options as they found relevant.

* The school (where I work) doesn't allocate resources for developing new sources
** I do not find the time - curricula is overloaded with other priorities
*** The agenda for my teaching is already decided by others than myself
**** In my school, sustainability is the responsibility of other teachers/​subjects

Four different reasons for why teachers have not taught sustainability stand out (with a response rate of 25% or more). Of these four, ‘It is not part of my subject’ is by far the most common (48%). In light of the UN SDGs which comprise a wide array of issues, it is surprising that so many teachers should consider sustainability outside their subject area.

The number is perhaps less surprising if we consider how sustainability is presented in the curricula in the Nordic countries. Apart from the mention of sustainability in general or abstract terms as a cross-cutting theme, fundamental pillar, or in relation to transversal competencies, sustainability is often closely related to environmental issues and many subject curricula do not mention sustainability at all. In other words, there seems to be a lack of attention to what sustainability is in schooling, and this is reflected in teachers’ arguments for not teaching sustainability.

Two other items on the list which get a high mention included ‘I do not have enough knowledge or training’ (25%) and ‘I do not know how to relate sustainability to my subject’ (27%). These indicate that there are teachers who might want to teach sustainability but are limited in their professional capacity, whether due to lack of knowledge or pedagogical skills. In addition, 28% of those saying they do not teach sustainability also answered ‘I do not have the time — curricula is overloaded with other priorities’. We can perhaps conclude that at least some of those who lack the knowledge or skill do not find the time to overcome this barrier. The problem would, then, not only be lack of training but also lack of opportunities for professional development.

Among teachers who have indicated they teach sustainability, we were interested in knowing if they had experienced obstacles or hindrances in their teaching. Teachers’ answers to this question would provide knowledge of systemic barriers to include a sustainability focus in teaching – outside teachers’ responsibility (see Figure 16).

Figure 16: Responses to the prompt: “Possible hindrances to teach sustainability” Participant could mark as many options as they found relevant.

The teachers who say they do teach sustainability still experience a range of hindrances that affect what and how they teach. The most common hindrance is an overcrowded curriculum (‘The curriculum is full of other things’ at 47%). Teaching interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary issues that cut across conventional subjects adds to the complexity of teaching which often is organised along traditional subject categories. Teachers also experience a lack of competence (29%) and lack of equipment/materials (38%), which makes the overcrowded curriculum an even greater challenge to teaching sustainability.

The report Mapping Education for Sustainability in the Nordic Countries revealed how sustainability appears either as a cross-cutting theme or a fundamental pillar without a direct implication for teaching and not connected to specific sustainability content. When sustainability is given a more tangible interpretation in curricula, it is often mainly in the natural or environmental sciences, making the curricula appear more as a hindrance for teaching sustainability in other subjects rather than as a supporting document.

Speculation could lead to a coherence between two distinct items: ‘lack of competence’ (29%) and ‘pupils/students are not interested in the topic’ (27%). Teachers who teach sustainability but experience lack of competence may not be able to motivate their students. The link between these two items could be strengthened by the relatively high number for ‘lack of equipment/material’ (38%). Teachers’ indication of lack of equipment and competence might stem from what Albert Paulsen refers to as a lack of subject imagination (faglig fantasi) and subject pedagogic imagination (faglig-pædagogist fantasi) (2006, p. 80). This lack of imagination means that teachers cannot free themselves from a more traditionalist approach to teaching – being too dependent on pre-determined content and material, i.e. bound to what would be the conventional interpretation of the PACK model where teaching is heavily dependent on curricular representation of expert knowledge.

When answering the open question about barriers to teaching sustainability, teachers elaborated on issues having to do with lack of time and overcrowded curriculum, saying ‘there is not time for preparation and evaluation’, ‘not enough time for thorough work', and ‘so much else I need to cover in a school year’. When such conditions are combined with lack of education and support material, what might be a challenge that pushes teachers to be more creative in their teaching instead becomes a hindrance and undermines their professional agency.