Sustainable development was defined by the Brundtland Commission as a development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (UN, 1987). In this definition three pillars of the conception of sustainable development can be identified: economic development, social development, and environmental protection (UN, 2005). According to Agenda 21 (UNCED, 1992), education is considered as having a critical role for promoting sustainable development and improving students’ competences to deal with all pillars of sustainable development in an effective way. The starting point for education for sustainable development implementation was the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development proclaimed by UNESCO for 2005-2014, according to which the integration of Sustainable Development in national curricula was of the greatest importance to the future for succeeding generations, and in accordance to which most countries developed their own national strategies for the implementation of education for sustainable development.

As a follow up to this Decade, the Global Action Programe (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development has been developed to contribute to the post 2015 development Agenda. One of the five priority action areas of the GAP is related to educators, as “…one of the most important levers to foster educational change and to facilitate learning for sustainable development” (Ibid.:4).

Since it is expected from teachers to implement the principles of education for sustainable development into their everyday teaching, it is crucial to understand their conceptions of sustainable development. Recent studies showed that teachers do not possess holistic, comprehensive understanding of the notion of sustainable development, but rather equate sustainable development with environmental protection or social dimension only (Borg, Gericke, Hoglund & Bergman, 2013; Gustafssona, Engstromb & Svensonc, 2015; Spiropoulou, Antonakaki, Kontaxakaki & Bouras, 2007). In a study done with teachers in UK, it was obtained that 72% of teachers mention ecological aspect of sustainable development in their personal theories of sustainable development, whereas only 15% of teachers provide a definition of sustainable development around all three pillars (Summers & Childs, 2007). In a research conducted in Germany, qualitative content analysis yielded seven categories of teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development –  No understanding, Abstract understanding, Educational interpretation, Single right idea, Basically right idea, Good understanding and Confusion of concepts, with only 6.7% of participants showing a good, holistic understanding of this notion (Burmeister & Eilks, 2013). 

Qualitative analysis of teachers’ definitions of sustainable development performed in 2016 within the empirical study with teachers at the University of Belgrade, resulted in seven categories: from mono-dimensional, through those comprising two dimensions, towards holistic definitions, encompassing three dimensions of sustainability. Almost 40% of inquired university teachers defined sustainable development around three dimensions, but 15% of them belong to the group showing misunderstanding (“education and technology development”) or negative attitude towards the concept of sustainable development (“new ideology”, neomarxism”, etc.) (Orlović Lovren, 2016).

Like in most countries, in Serbia sustainable development is not a separate school subject but the elements of sustainable development are integrated in the objectives of a number of subjects such as Chemistry, Biology, Geography, Physics, Sociology, Civic Education and Foreign Language (Petrović, Jovanović & Purić, 2016). However, teachers are rarely well prepared to include this topic in their everyday work, due to the lack of learning opportunities during their pre-service and in-service training, nor they have clear guidelines on the national level how to achieve this.

Since there were no studies related to primary and secondary school teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development in the Serbian context, the main objective of this research was to determine what conceptions of sustainable development teachers employ.

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