FöRFATTARE
Jonsson, Gunnar

INSTITUTION
Utbildningsvetenskap

SAMMANFATTNING
This thesis focuses on complex understanding of sustainable development: what it is, how it can be understood by student teachers, and what affects the complexity that is discernible among pupils taught by student teachers. Three different substudies based on one another, give answers to the research questions.

In a survey study, 195 students were given the task of answering on a question-naire the question: What is to be sustained? A quantitative content analysis resulted in eight different thematic areas covering the student teachers’ associations. These areas were nature, natural resources, environmental problems, society, future generations, actions, ethics and economy.

In a interview study the students were interviewed about sustainable develop-ment. A phenomenographic analysis method was used to describe differences in the student teachers’ attitudes. The analysis led to the conclusion that there were two qualitatively different attitudes to sustainable development among the eight student teachers whose interview answers were analysed: A, as an action-oriented normative attitude and B, as a content-oriented normative attitude.

In a video documentation study, five student teachers were given the task of teaching about a complex issue relevant to sustainable development, namely the world’s water supply. The aim was to describe their understanding, how it mani-fested itself in a teaching situation, and what affected the complexity that was pos-sible for the pupils taught to discern. With the aid of intentional analysis it was possible to describe connections among the complexity of the staged learning ob-ject, how they conceived of the whole of the water supply problems and their pro-ject of becoming good teachers. The result shows that the four students that ex- pressed a segregative holistic conception staged a linearly constructed learning object. The student that expressed an integrative holistic view realized an integrated learning object.

In the discussion implications of the result are discussed in terms of conse-quences for teaching and learning in schools. What all this boils down to is thus that an approach full of nuances is advocated

ISSN 1402-1544 / ISRN LTU-DT--07/13--SE / NR 2007:13