Doing Agenda 2030: Transformative learning in professional school development perspectives.

• Most Swedish higher education institutions are far from their commitment to equip students with adequate sustainability thinking according to UKÄ's evaluation in 2017. Static silo thinking has dominated, but some systematic efforts focus on different dimensions of sustainable development. Within the framework of Agenda 2030 meaningful cross-sectoral holistic and phenomenon-based knowledge formation is needed, combined with the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Nordén & Avery`s (2021) review in the special issue "South/North Perspectives on Global Learning for Sustainable Development" that the challenge for higher education, lacking competence in what of and how the UN SDGs can be implemented on advanced level - threatens the existence of the students' trust, risking being lost if they encounter ignorance in school contexts. Still, informal global and local networks for educators and students want to change and strengthen knowledge formation on sustainability (Sonesson & Nordén, 2020). Nordén (2016) has applications of theoretical approaches linked to transdisciplinary teaching, as a foundation for the research question focusing on empirical mapping of initial understanding of the SDGs analysed regarding teacher students' transformed prior knowledge conceptualized in interaction with teacher students' knowledge formation through previous education offered. The study meets the need to specifically understand and develop transformative learning in a professional and school development perspective, as a contribution to creating an in-depth transdisciplinary knowledge formation at the advanced level in teacher education. The study focuses on how transformative learning develops in practice, how the learners interpret and reinterpret their experience of the world around them to create new meaning and thus learning. In Mezirow's research theory and as a qualitative method here, transformative learning has been revised to the study of external learning; progression of existing frameworks of reference, development of new frameworks of reference, reformation of intellectual experience and changed perception and focused mainly on teacher students. Additional knowledge contributions are obtained through the project's design, when contingency, opportunities and application of SDGs in local-global learning contexts are described and analyzed with a phenomenographic approach. Extensive digital "on-site content" is developed in collaboration between faculties and sustainability developers at Malmö University and the IIIEE at Lunds university masters and MOOC programs. The analysis is deepened in knowledge formation on Agenda 2030 in interaction with theory and previous research to construct a theoretical model via participatory action research (Kemmis, 2009) in challenge-driven transdisciplinary teaching. The research is expected to result in urgent empirical and theoretical contributions to it the field of educational science research with a special focus on strengthening the teaching profession on advanced level, in the field of development of transformative learning, critical knowledge skills and subject didactics for the design of transdisciplinary Agenda 2030 transition in teacher education.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Sustainable studies

Hållbarhetsstudier

Naturvetenskapernas didaktik

Science education

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)