Social studies’ perspectives are needed in order for Education for sustainable development (ESD) to be cross disciplinary. Regarding climate change, industry, consumer cultures, demographics, food production, finance and transportation are all social phenomena that need to be scrutinized in the process of finding means to reduce global warming, as well as adaptive measures. Despite the central position of the social sciences in order to explain and counter climate change, the Norwegian school system and curriculum has framed sustainability first and foremost as a science issue (Andresen et al. 2015).

This paper explores how social studies, as it is practiced in a Norwegian context, can contribute to ESD. The paper builds on an analysis of two focus group conversations on the topic of quality in teaching among Norwegian social studies teachers in lower and upper secondary school. The teachers emphasize engagement, critical reflection and the ability to draw connections between theoretical content, news of current affairs and experiences outside the classroom. These are skills that can easily be seen as conducive to relevant ESD competencies, such as systems thinking and normative competencies (Wiek et al. 2011), as well as to student’s ability to practice their environmental citizenship (Dimick, 2015).

Our research question asks how social studies teachers construe quality in teaching and how these qualities can contribute to anchor ESD within social studies in Norway? The teachers’ discourse indicates that their emphasis on engagement and critical reflection is under pressure due to the Norwegian education system’s required focus on assessment and fulfillment of learning goals. They describe how the real achievements of their teaching manifest themselves through collective experiences of participation and engagement as well as the students’ personal growth and increased maturity, and they do not see these aspects of their teaching as something that can be measured and assessed. Neither do the teachers believe that the keys to ‘what works’ in teaching can be codified and standardized, as they perceive teaching as a highly creative performance reflecting their own personal strengths. The focus group discussions appear to be structured around two competing discourses about social studies teaching. The teachers’ discourse on quality corresponds to a bildung discourse (Willbergh, 2015), and they perceive these qualities to be under pressure from a hegemonic discourse on learning, emphasizing assessment and learning goals. As one of the teachers expresses it: “measurable knowledge makes the insignificant significant and the significant becomes insignificant”.

Sinnes and Eriksen’s (2015) work support the teachers’ notion that student assessments are insufficient to measure educational qualities conducive to ESD. They find that while OECD’s PISA initiative has caused widespread policy reforms to meet a particular understanding of what constitutes quality in education, climate change and ESD have not made any similar impact, despite international recognition of its importance. This paper shows how social studies teachers are resisting what they see as the education system’s incitement to “value what we measure” (Biesta 2008:33). The paper argues that in order for social studies to contribute to Education for sustainable development, the qualities associated with a bildung perspective ought to be recognized and further developed as anchor points for ESD.

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