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Sustainability education is mandatory in Swedish preschools, yet young children often experience sustainability issues as frightening, complex and beyond their influence. This study explores how preschool children (ages 3–5) can exercise agency and influence in teaching activities focused on sustainable consumption. Using video observations, teacher documentation, and children’s drawings, we analysed two teaching sessions involving six children and one preschool teacher. The analysis uses Practical Epistemological Analysis and Epistemological Moves (direction-givers) to examine how influence emerged during the process. Findings reveal a three-step progression – anticipation, exploration, and fulfilment – in which children actively deliberated and proposed solutions for transporting fruit to their preschool in sustainable ways. Teacher moves, especially generative, confirming, instructional and reconstructive strategies, support children’s participation and sustain a pluralistic, dialogic inquiry. The study illustrates how early childhood education for sustainability can foster agency and democratic engagement by treating children’s proposals as epistemically relevant and by keeping the sustainability problem open to deliberation.

Eleverna i dagens grundskola är morgondagens beslutsfattare. De har livet framför sig och de kommer att få leva med de konsekvenser vårt sätt att leva idag får för vår planet. Därför är hållbar utveckling klart framskrivet i skolans styrdokument, men hur kan du som lärare undervisa för att ge eleverna förutsättningar för att verka för en mer hållbar framtid? 

Undervisning för hållbar utveckling handlar om alla de val vi gör och de beslut som vi fattar i vardagen. Den lyfter fram vårt ansvar för såväl nuvarande som framtida generationer samt hur våra relationer till andra människor och till naturen kan bli mer rättvisa och hållbara. Undervisningen handlar om komplexa frågor som inte har några enkla och entydiga svar, och kännetecknas därför av att vara kreativ och att arbeta nära verkligheten.  

I den här boken finns ett antal undervisningsexempel, både från undervisning i ämnen, från ämnesövergripande undervisning och från samverkan med externa aktörer i närsamhället. Boken ger lärare och lärarstudenter underlag och redskap för reflektion och samtal genom att presentera ett antal didaktiska modeller utifrån olika perspektiv på undervisning för hållbar utveckling. Förhoppningsvis kan den inspirera till att tänka längs hittills oprövade vägar.

The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute knowledge about teaching and learning for sustainable food consumption in the Swedish school subject Home and consumer studies. Four research questions have guided this investigation: I. How is the content of sustainable food consumption constructed in Home and consumer studies textbooks from 1962 to 2011? II. How do students make choices when foodworking in Home and consumer studies, and how does it affect their meaning making for sustainable food consumption? III. How do teachers and students make meaning of taste in their foodwork in Home and consumer studies? IV. What are the didactic implications of the sub-studies in terms of teaching for sustainable food consumption? The four research questions are addressed in three studies: one textbook study (paper I) and two case studies where the empirical data is constructed through video observations of students in Year Nine classrooms working with food. The thesis has a theoretical basis in curriculum studies, and the didactical triangle that represents the mutual relationship between content, teacher and student serves as a model to understand the complexity of teaching. Also, a transactional approach to meaning making and taste are used. The findings show that content for sustainable food consumption can be understood through the lens of different discourses that construct three ideal food consumers, and depending on the discourse used, the students are educated differently. However, all discourses focus on health and contain an idea of instrumental rationality. The findings also show that taste is the factor that has the greatest influence on the students' choices during their foodwork. Furthermore, in the teacher's and students' conversations, meaning is made through taste assessments or texture. Moreover, the results show challenges in education for sustainable food consumption concerning the continuity of teaching and normativity in teaching. These challenges are discussed in terms of didactic implications in order to strengthen and develop teaching for sustainable food consumption in Home and consumer studies. Progress in this area may involve raising the democratic mission of education by making teaching more pluralistic. Another way forward could involve putting aside the traditional task of preparing a complete meal and, instead, working on the process through more exploratory tasks. The sensory aspects of food is also a possible starting point for teaching sustainable food consumption, and a transactional perspective on taste can be a tool to bring this into the classroom. 

Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) is a subject in the Swedish compulsory school that has sustainability issues clearly enrolled in its syllabus. Among other things, students should learn to make sustainable food choices, i.e.they should understand the consequences concerning health, finance and environment of what food they choose to consume. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about education for sustainable development (ESD) by investigating how students act in different decision-making processes during foodwork in HCS. Subsequently challenges when teaching sustainable food consumption are highlighted. The empirical material consists of video-recorded students (year 9) foodworking in an HCS classroom. Based on John Deweys philosophy, Practical Epistemological Analysis (PEA) is used to analyse how the students make choices and proceed in their work. The taste of food is decisive for how the students move on in their foodwork. Sustainability aspects are raised to some extent but do not have the same significance. It is concluded that it is complex to teach sustainable food consumption and possibilities to modify the teaching so that taste become part of the content when teaching sustainable food consumption is discussed.

Is the ideal food consumer, educated in Home Economics in Sweden, one who makes sustainablechoices? By examining Home Economics textbooks for lower secondary school published from1962 to 2011, we explored what kind of food consumers emerged and thus open up a discussionon sustainability and food consumption. One standard textbook from each decade, in total six,was included in the study, and the passages dealing with food, as core content, were analyzed.Discourse analysis was used to reveal different characterizations of the ideal consumers, specifi-cally in relation to sustainable food consumption. Three different discourses emerged: (a) thehealthy and obedient consumer, (b) the healthy, thrifty, and caring consumer, and (c) the healthy,thrifty, and environmentally conscious consumer. There were both similarities and differencesamong these consumers, specifically regarding what knowledge they are shown to need and howthey are supposed to learn. All three consumers are primarily motivated by health arguments,even though health is related to finances in the second and to both finances and environment inthe third case. Furthermore, we found a common tendency for textbooks to express knowledge ina prescriptive way, with the implied belief that people are rational food consumers. This tendencyleads us to suggest that the discussion about future consumer education and textbooks could bebroadened and strengthened by the inclusion of a participative and critical approach and social responsibility.