The present study explores how school improvement in combination with a teacher professional development (TPD) project influenced the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) in five Swedish schools, when employing a whole school approach. Interviews were conducted with three teachers from each school. Shulman and Shulman's four forms of capital for capacity building were used as a framework for the data analysis. The impact of the project on the schools' pedagogical activities varied considerably between the schools. The transformative potential in ESD was realized to a greater extent in the schools characterized by high levels of moral capital - i.e. trust - than in the schools characterized by more individual and traditional ways of working. Three general conclusions concerning ESD implementation are drawn: 1) Prior to launching a whole school project for ESD, it is desirable to make an inventory of the capacity building capital at participating schools, and to identify contextual factors constituting external pressure on the building of capital. 2) The school improvement project and the TPD need to be locally adjusted to the available capital. 3) A strategy for adapting the project to the various external pressures needs to be developed.

This article centers on a local school reform project aimed at implementing a transformative approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The study investigates the project in terms of how the design criteria of a continuous professional development program and critical factors of the implementation process influenced the actual teaching practices. Data were collected through interviews with 15 teachers from five schools, and a thematic analysis was conducted. The results showed that the local school reform had limited effect. Trust between school actors, strategic management, and reflexive collaboration appeared to be the most important enablers of transferring the reform agenda into teaching practice. Skepticism, ambiguous management, and local contexts were identified as obstacles, hampering the intended change. A concluding recommendation for implementing transformation oriented ESD through local school reforms and professional development is to add a novel and threefold design criterion to the existing criteria, namely that of creating and continuously negotiating a shared vision and building trust.

This study examines the perspectives of Swedish undergraduate students regarding potential conflicts between ownership rights and environmental protection. Conceptions of ?ownership? are relevant in relation to the environment and environmental protection as they can highlight a more transboundary relationship between the individual/society and nature. Students studying economics, law and political science were chosen because of their potential future transformative roles as decision makers and policy makers. Content analysis was employed to examine the written responses of 747 students from seven different universities to the open-ended survey question: Can ownership rights and environmental protection come into conflict? Students? responses were measured twice: at the very beginning of the first semester and then again at the end of the semester. The results show that students expressed a dominant view of ownership in terms of individual ownership, and associations to collective ownership were largely absent. In regards to the potential conflict between ownership rights and environmental protection, most students perceived such a conflict, and it was more common for the environment to be conceptualised as the losing party rather than the landowner. More research is needed regarding how teaching and instruction can deal with the potential conflicts between ownership (private/corporate/governmental) and environmental protection.

In this study we compare Swedish law students’ value orientation with students in economics and political science and investigate how law students’ value orientation change during their first year of training. Drawing on theories and research from environmental psychology “values” are operationalized in three main categories: altruistic, biospheric and egoistic. Considering our sample groups as future power-professionals and potential agents of environmental and social change, we believe that a better understanding regarding the impact of legal education on students’ value orientation is essential. Our starting point is that when coping with bigger-than-self problems, as climate change, self-transcendence values as altruism and biospherism are important. Our findings demonstrate that legal education beginners report weaker biospheric values than the comparison groups. Another finding is that egoistic value orientation is not strengthened after one year of law education, a result that is counter indicative to previous research and debate among law scholars from U S and other countries outside of Sweden.

This paper explores whether value orientation (VO) and trust in the state (TIS) are linked to support for environmental intervention and steering among Swedish students in economics, law, and political science. Furthermore, we considered whether environmental personal norms mediate the link between VO and support for environmental policy instruments and finally, whether TIS moderates the link between environmental personal norms and support for environmental policy instruments, testing this on a sample of over 800 Swedish students. We found a positive link between both a self-transcendence VO and TIS on environmental policy support; however, we cannot confirm a moderating effect of TIS on the relation between environmental personal norms and policy support. Furthermore, left-wing students displayed stronger support for environmental intervention. We conclude that more knowledge on programme-specific characteristics regarding environmental values, beliefs, and attitudes among freshman students can enhance sustainability teaching intended to develop the students' critical and reflective capabilities.

Problems of environmental degradation are often conceptualized in terms of collective action dilemmas, and imply an increased demand for coordination and steering by public authorities. Social science is struggling with understanding how attitudes to collective action dilemmas and state intervention actually are formed. In the literature on environmental attitude formation, education is often claimed to be an important factor. It is argued for example that people with university degrees develop certain values essential for beliefs about personal responsibility and concern for the environment. Still there are a number of questions unanswered. For example, we know little about the effects of different educational programs. In this study we test the hypotheses by using a unique longitudinal data set based on surveys distributed to students in economics, law, and political science at seven universities in Sweden. Our results show a slight decrease in ascribed personal responsibility for environmental protection among the students after one semester. Instead, students ascribe an increased responsibility to various institutions and actors.

The language children use when they talk about the environment opens a window into the societal norms and values that affect human – environmental relationship. To adapt environmental education to a specific cultural context thus requires knowledge about how the environment is defined within that context. This study investigates children´s perceptions of the environment in Sweden. In a geographical context it focuses our attention on children’s sense of place, that is, how people inhabit spaces. In an educational context the objective of the study is to examine the different discourse(s) that emerges in children`s drawings, texts and talks about the environment.  Specifically, we ask: what does the environment mean to children and what attachments, if any, do children have with the environment through their discourse about the environment? The research questions are focusing how the children visualize the present and the future environment in drawings and how they explain their drawings. Specifically, we ask: what does the environment mean to children and what attachments, if any, do children have with the environment? Drawings and interviews are used to elicit children’s responses to these questions. Study participants consist of 35 children in year 6 drawn from a school in Stockholm. After establishing inter-rater reliability, we conduct content and thematic analysis of drawings as well as open coding of interviews to generate interpretive findings. Visual methodology and social constructivism are lenses that frame this study and validate children’s sense of place. Implications for equity in geography and environmental education are discussed.