Education for sustainable development has been implemented more strongly in the Norwegian teaching curriculum the recent years (Ministry of Education and Research, 2017). When implementing sustainability, teachers are in a key position (Munkebye & Gericke, 2022), and teacher education is crucial (Arneback & Blåsjö (2017). Sustainability issues are often complex and can be seen from various perspectives. Socio scientific issues (SSI) involve the deliberate use of scientific topics that require students to engage in dialogue, discussion, and debate. They are usually controversial in nature but have the added element of requiring the evaluation of ethical concerns in the process of arriving at decisions regarding possible resolution of those issues (Zeidler, 2003). Interdisciplinary teaching in teacher training provides many opportunities to engage future teachers in teaching related to societal challenges and sustainability issues.

Effective elementary generalist teachers who teach multiple subjects are required to be competent at motivating students to learn, sustaining students’ engagement, planning, and implementing lessons with clear objectives, presenting content through multiple methods, and helping students make meaningful connections within and across subject areas. Shulman (1986) characterized teachers’ knowledge by formulating the importance of pedagogical knowledge (PK), content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) respectively. By extending Shulman’s (1987) model of PCK, An (2017) introduced an additional component of teachers’ PCK across different disciplines—the interdisciplinary pedagogical content knowledge (IPCK). IPCK includes four additional categories of pedagogical capacity: (a) representing and demonstrating concepts based on themes from other subjects, (b) addressing content from multiple subjects simultaneously, (c) highlighting connections among different disciplines, and (d) assessing students’ learning of content from multiple subjects (An, 2017). Previous research has indicated that the development of teachers’ IPCK requires specific training experiences focused on interdisciplinary pedagogy. Teachers’ development of PCK for interdisciplinary education involves seeking, building, and evaluating pedagogical strategies that link disciplines in an adaptable manner (Park & Oliver, 2008). For instance, teaching about sustainability issues requires the capacity of linking knowledge relevant for these issues from different disciplines. In addition, all teachers are responsible of promoting student skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, reflection, and argumentation (Sinnes, 2015). However, there has been little cooperation across subjects in teacher education, and there is a need for restructuring and change of work habits in how teaching is carried out (Biseth et al., 2022).

This proposal is part of a larger research project engaging with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and OECD’s call for 21st Century Skills. The goal of the research in this project is to develop, strengthen and systematize interdisciplinary teaching and learning activities in teacher education in the interdisciplinary themes including the theme sustainability. In this paper, I will investigate how teacher students implement and reflect on interdisciplinar teaching about sustainability issues in one teacher education programme in Norway. Sustainability and interdisciplinary is implemented in two courses (Science, 4^th Semester and Pedagogy, 8^th semester). In both these courses students plan an interdisciplinary teaching program with focus on sustainability, this being the main assignment.  This paper will examine what sustainability perspectives and interdisciplinar teaching methods students emphasise in these assignments, and how they reflect about these perspectives. I aim to address the following research questions:

• What interdisciplinary pedagogical content knowledge (IPCK) in sustainability do students emphasise in their interdisciplinar teaching program assignment and to what extent do student perspectives develop from the first assignment to the second?
• How do students reflect about interdisciplinar sustainability content and interdisciplinar teaching methods?

The data is collected in one teacher education programme in Norway and consists of student assignments and interviews. The two assignments both aim to plan interdisciplinar teaching program for primary or secondary schools. The first assignment is a part of a science course, in which education for sustainable development is the main theme in addition to content knowledge in science. Students were asked to develop a teaching program with a sustainability issue as a starting point, including aims from science and other subjects, teaching methods and reflection about their choices in the plan. I have collected all student’s assignment from this course (n =25). The second assignment is a part of a pedagogy course, in which interdisciplinarity is one of the main themes. Students were again asked to develop an interdisciplinar (any theme) teaching program, including aims from different subjects and teaching methods. Only students who had chosen sustainability as their interdisciplinar theme in the teaching program and who had written the first assignment were selected for data collection (n = 8). Students’ choice of sustainability issues, different subject perspectives on sustainably and teaching methods in the assignments have been examined for both assignments. The analysis focus on the four categories of interdisciplinar pedagogical capacity: (a) representing and demonstrating concepts based on themes from other subjects, (b) addressing content from multiple subjects simultaneously, (c) highlighting connections among different disciplines, and (d) assessing students’ learning of content from multiple subjects (An, 2017). For students also writing the second assignment, these categories have been compared in the two assignments, looking for development from the first teaching program to the second. In addition, data will be collected through interviews with the selected students (n=8) to gain in-depth knowledge of their choices and thoughts about their interdisciplinary teaching programs. These interviews will focus on the four categories of interdisciplinar pedagogic capacity linked to sustainability.

Preliminary results show that students starting point in the teaching programs are sustainability issues of different types. Most of them are complex socio scientific issues (SSI), addressing content from multiple subjects simultaneously. Students choose complex issues within sustainable development within the themes of energy sources, climate, species diversity, food production and consumption. However, they do not highlight connections among different disciplines, and plan for assessment of students’ learning of content from multiple subjects (An, 2017). Furthermore, students include perspectives from science, social science, and language in their plans, but rarely religion, ethics, and art. Thus, we can say that there is a danger of ethical concern missing out in the teaching programs about sustainability. Sustainability issues often involves the element of requiring the evaluation of ethical concerns in the process of arriving at decisions (Zeidler, 2003). Since students often use socio scientific issues (SSI) as their starting point in the teaching program, this naturally involves involve deliberate use of scientific topics that require students to engage in dialogue, discussion, and debate. Preliminary results from the coding, shows that students emphasize teaching methods such as debates and discussions, but not so much inquiry and scientific practices. In the interviews, I will have the opportunity to get a deeper insight in student teachers interdisciplinary pedagogical content knowledge (IPCK) concerning sustainable development

An, S. A. (2017). Preservice teachers’ knowledge of interdisciplinary pedagogy: the case of elementary mathematics–science integrated lessons. ZDM, 49(2), 237-248. An, S.A. & Tillman, D.A. (2018). Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Use of “Gerrymandering” to Integrate Social Studies and Mathematics. Journal of Mathematics Education (11(3), 33-53. https://doi.org/10.26711/007577152790031 Arneback, E. & Blåsjö, M. (2017) Doing interdisciplinarity in teacher education. Resources for learning through writing in two educational programmes, Education Inquiry, 8:4, 299-317. doi: 10.1080/20004508.2017.1383804 Biseth, H., Svenkerud, S. W., Magerøy, S. M., & Rubilar, K. H. (2022). Relevant Transformative Teacher Education for Future Generations. Front. Educ. 7:806495. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.806495 Ministry of Education and Research (2017). Core curriculum– Interdisciplinary topics. National Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion in Primary and Secondary Education and Training 2020. Munkebye, E. & Gericke, N. (2022). Primary School Teachers’ Understanding of Critical Thinking in the Context of Education for Sustainable Development. I B. Puig & M. P. Jimenez-Aleixandre (red.), Critical Thinking in Biology and Environmental Education: Facing Challenges in a Post-truth World (s. 249–266). Springer Park, S., & Oliver, J. S. (2008). Revisiting the conceptualisation of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): PCK as a conceptual tool to understand teachers as professionals. Research in Science Education, 38(3), 261–284 Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–23 Sinnes, A. T. (2015). Utdanning for bærekraftig utvikling: Hva, hvorfor og hvordan? Universitetsforlaget. Zeidler, D. L. (2003). The role of moral reasoning on socioscientific issues and discourse in science education. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Press