En stor andel svenska barn mellan sex och nio år gamla går efter skolan till ”fritids”. Fritidshem kännetecknas av både utbildning och omsorg, och därmed av både formella och informella aktiviteter. På senare år har verksamheten blivit mer och mer influerad av skolan och numera finns ett eget kapitel för fritidshem i den nationella läroplanen för grundskolan. Fritidshemmen genomgår därför en förändring som kommer att medföra att mer formella aktiviteter införs, exempelvis inom teknik, samtidigt som praktiskt taget ingen forskning har gjorts på detta. Syftet med det här kapitlet är att presentera några resultat från en pågående forskningsstudie om teknikens roll i aktiviteter på fritidshem. Observationerna fokuserade på de dagliga aktiviteterna på fritidshemmen där teknik hade en central roll. Vi använder begreppet gränsobjekt för att analysera teknik i aktiviteterna. Resultaten visar att det är en speciell sorts teknikundervisning som uppstår i fritidshem, på gränsen mellan den informella och formella verksamheten: från det informella lekrelaterade byggandet med Lego och träklotsar till den mer formella datorundervisningen. I dessa aktiviteter finns ett tydligt fritidsinslag, framför allt i form av ett fritt val av teknik och vad man vill lära sig. Det faktum att barn kan välja fritt pekar inte bara på att teknik i fritidshem är ett gränsobjekt med en stor tolkningsflexibilitet, utan också att teknikundervisning i fritidshem skulle kunna vara en lustfylld och effektiv väg till teknisk allmänbildning.

Background: Sustainable development, as an area of knowledge, appears in several different places in the curriculum and does not fit neatly within the scope of traditional subject areas. In many countries, including Sweden, it has long been upheld as an important tool for increasing understanding of, and dealing with, environmental problems. It is not clear, however, what role education can actually have in the making of a more sustainable future. Even though there are several potential ways for sustainable development to be involved in education, the concept raises many questions when transferred to the school context.

Purpose: This paper investigates how teachers deal with the difficulty of defining and approaching sustainable development as an area of knowledge in Swedish schools.

Sample: This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 40 teachers, 13 of whom were lower secondary school teachers (pupil age 12–15) and 27 were upper secondary school teachers (pupil age 15–18). The study involves teachers in all subjects where sustainable development is a goal in the syllabus. The study is also based on participant observation in one upper secondary class. A total of 17 different schools were involved, from a wide range of locations in Sweden.

Design and methods: The paper builds on qualitative data and the analysis of transcribed interviews and group interviews with teachers in Swedish lower and upper secondary schools. Group interviews, involving three or more people, were conducted on eight occasions. The pupils at an upper secondary school were also observed while they were working on a course called ‘policy and sustainable development’. Data were transcribed and analysed thematically.

Findings: The analysis suggests that, according to the teachers’ experiences, the demands of equivalence and measurability in school have increased and that this affects how sustainable development is approached in teaching and learning. Three main categories of knowledge were identified. The study also presents two representations that model how teachers may approach knowledge about sustainable development – metaphorically termed ‘the Accountant’ and ‘the Adventurer’ – and their different effects on knowledge.

Conclusions: There is a tendency for complex knowledge areas such as sustainable development, which do not fit seamlessly into traditional curriculum subjects, to become oversimplified when translated into teaching situations. According to the representations that we described metaphorically, the teacher, as an accountant, is characterised by ‘knowledge instrumentalism’, which means that teachers administer knowledge and the pupils consume it. In this transactional model, the accountant is also very dependent on external governance and control. Alternatively, the teacher, as an adventurer, is characterised by authority, knowledge and self-control. In this model, knowledge sometimes grows in an unpredictable way in the meeting between people who share common experiences. For adventurers, sustainable development is a matter of commitment and awareness, and it involves an explicit stance. The metaphors can be placed on a continuum which describes how teachers manage the demands of the school system in relation to the knowledge area of sustainable development.

This paper investigates human–animal relations in sustainability education. To understand what educational relationships and boundaries are challenged and/or strengthened in education promoting future sustainable societies, we argue that educational theory and practice must move beyond the anthropocentric framework’s sole focus on relationships between humans. Drawing on focus group interviews with teacher instructors at eight Swedish universities, we discuss cases in which sustainability education benefits from being understood as crafted via human–nonhuman relations. By concentrating on human–animal relations, we discuss the political and ethical implications arising from relationships being created in certain ways and not others. The empirical examples illustrate how the relations between teacher instructors and various animals can be a critical starting point for understanding the limitations and possibilities fostered by sustainability education.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the different strategies used by teachers in handling sustainable development (SD) as an area of knowledge in Swedish schools. A dominating idea in Western school systems is that knowledge is somewhat separated from the subject. Regarding this idea, the task of the school system is to deliver necessary packages of knowledge and bring forward the subject’s ability to make rational and autonomous choices. When it comes to SD, this becomes a problematic standpoint.

The paper builds on the analysis of transcribed interviews and focus interviews with teachers in Swedish high schools and upper secondary schools as well as on observations and sound recordings in classrooms while working with sustainable development as an area of knowledge. The coding was done by identification of key concepts, tensions and meaning fixations and their relations to each other.

The study presents two models for how the teachers handle - and are allowed to handle - knowledge about SD: the Accountant and the Adventurer. The accountant counts, distributes and summarizes knowledge; it is the results that matter. The adventurer goes into the wild, with a more flexible map; where the experiences are the ones that count. The school system pressures the teachers to become accountants, but it is in the wild that routines and patterns are shaken and boundaries are tested; where students acquire understanding and deeper knowledge.