As a federalist and multilingual State, Switzerland delegates responsibility for public education to the cantons. It was not until 2006 that the people accepted an intercantonal agreement on the harmonization of the compulsory school. The intercantonal agreement resulting from this agreement provides for the drawing up and implementation of harmonized curricula at the level of the linguistic regions and the definition of training objectives at the level of the whole country. It is in this context that the gradual entry into force, from the summer of 2011, of the Plan d'études romand (PER) in the cantons of Francophone Switzerland takes place. In addition to the disciplinary fields, the PER refers to five themes of general education, corresponding to as many education. Among them, the theme of education for sustainable development (ESD) occupies a prominent position, as it should tint the entire training project. On the other hand, the PER postulates that ESD contributes to the development of competence to think and understand the complexity, complexity of the world to be systemically understood in its social, economic, environmental, scientific, ethical and civic dimensions. This contribution reports on the results of the analysis of data collected in the framework of a collaborative research project which aim is to explore teaching-learning processes that can promote the development of complex thinking in pupils of the lower levels of compulsory schooling (13 to 15 years). Eighteen partner teachers have developed, in collaboration with the researchers, didactic sequences dealing with societal problems that can be apprehended through the lens of sustainable development. Various data were collected between 2012 and 2015, including ante and post interviews with teachers, preparation sheets and course materials, classroom video recordings and semi-structured interviews with groups of pupils at the end of the sequence (focus groups). The tools used for the qualitative analysis of our data are based in part on our previous work on the challenges of ESD (Pache, Bugnard & Haeberli, 2011), on the contributions of school disciplines to ESD (Audigier , Fink, Freudiger & Haeberli, 2011, Audigier, Sgard & Tutiaux-Guillon, 2015), the principles defined by Morin (1999, 2005, 2007) and the levels of change defined by Sterling (2011). Generally speaking, it appears that the partner teachers request rather transversal tools than resources specific to disciplines instituted to approach complex societal themes from the perspective of education for sustainable development.

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