The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) draws to an end. During this decade, numerous schools in Sweden have implemented Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as an explicit guiding approach in teaching. In this study, we investigate what impact this teaching approach has had on pupils’ holistic viewpoint of sustainability in comparison with pupils´ taught in regular schools. In order to accomplish the investigation we introduce the concept of sustainability consciousness to represent the holistic viewpoint of sustainability.

In order to accomplish a better implementation of ESD in Swedish schools there has been several external initiatives (‘Eco-schools, ‘Schools for Sustainable Development, ‘School on sustainable way’ The Global School’) that worked together voluntarily with schools to achieve this goal. The schools participating in these endeavors (“ESD-schools”), which include certifications, in-service training and concrete plans to work with these issues in the classrooms, can be regarded as the schools that made most progress with the implementation of ESD in Sweden, and has therefore been selected for the present study.

The globalization process in last decades made it important to educate through an ESD approach in order to broaden the scope of environmental education to also incorporate economic and social dimensions (Borg et al., 2013; Sandell et al., 2005; Walshe, 2008). Moreover, ESD is considered as an action competence approach that aims to empower students so that they can take action in complex issues regarding SD (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). To nurture this action competence it has also become important to incorporate affective aspects and not just cognitive aspects of learning (Littledyke, 2008; Sandell et al., 2005). The goal for sustainability education is not only to change students’ behavior, but to prepare them for sustainable decision-making in their future lives through social learning (Wals 2011). To further emphasize the importance of including both cognitive and affective components in learning Warburton (2003) claim: “Effective education for sustainability prompts students to reflect on their learning and leads to changes in values, attitudes and behaviors” (Warburton, 2003, p. 50).

Research that in a larger scale investigates cognitive and affective aspects of SD from a student perspective is limited. Previous research in Sweden has mostly focused on classroom studies (Rickinson & Lundholm 2008; Rudsberg & Öhman 2010) or teacher perspectives (Borg et al. 2012; Sund & Wickman 2008). Internationally, a number of surveys focus on the effects of environmental education (i.e. Negev et al. 2008; Boeve-de Pauw & Van Petegem 2013) or have a more qualitative approach with fewer students involved (i.e. Walshe, 2008; Summers et al. 2004).

Therefore to be inclusive of the vast goal of ESD-implementation and study it in large scale we have developed the concept of sustainability consciousness which investigates the representation of the environmental, economic and social dimensions of SD, from students’ point of view, by connecting each of these dimensions to aspects of: knowingness, attitudes and behaviors, i.e. both cognitive and affective aspects. In that way we hope to reflect a more comprehensive as well as generalizable view of students’ capacity building and action competence regarding SD-issues than presented before.

This study aims to investigate the effects that the implementation of ESD has had on students’ views on sustainability consciousness in comparison to students in comparable regular schools.

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