Across the globe ’green-schools’ are working on the transfers to become ‘sustainable schools’ or ‘ESD-schools. Green schools focus usually on ecology and have often meters for water and electricity usage, waste-management systems, school gardens, vermin-composts depending on where they geographically are situated in the world. A common denominator is that these green activities are often activities outside the classroom and many times after the ordinary school day.  

This study compares the implementation efforts in two different contexts, a Swedish and an East African. It is generally complicated for a researchers with starting points in a ‘Northern (or Western-culture) - research perspective’ to conduct research in two so very different contexts (Bak, 1995; Gough & Gough, 2004). One important unifying factor for this study is that the East African schools have been supported by a Swedish NGO, for more than eight years. The in-service education projects have been conducted by experienced Swedish educators with good connections to higher education and ESD research.

This is not a study of the change process from greening to ESD but a study of differences in the ESD-school teaching ‘outcomes’. The selected schools have been working for quite some time which makes this study a comparison of the schools’ ESD teaching. The concept of ESD is contested and it has been debated internationally since early 90’s. The concept used here is a well elaborated and pluralistic approach towards teaching and learning applicable in the whole society(Breiting, 2000). This comparison is looking for contextual differences.

The research question is:

In a comparison between Swedish and East African ESD school contexts, what differences become visible in teachers’ ESD teaching approaches?

The aim is to build a basis of qualitative educational aspects (Sund, 2008) for discussing ESD teaching close to practice in different cultural contexts. This is a way to approach and understand what an East African ESD teaching consists of compared to a ‘Western ESD’. What differences are there regarding teaching approaches? What are the differences in teaching outcomes?

The pragmatist theoretical framework is inspired by Dewey’s discussions about habits (Dewey, 1922) which is elaborated into research regarding teaching traditions in two earlier studies (Sund & Wickman, 2011a, 2011b). Selective traditions in environmental education can be understood as collective habits. What are usually called beliefs or views are approached as habitual ways of arguing or acting. A habit is something that is continuously developed as a result of encounters between earlier and current experiences. Individuals develop their personal habits on the basis of the current contextual situation. ‘An individual does not live in a vacuum’ (Dewey, 1938/1997). This is an important starting point for research about ESD in different contexts. ESD is context sensitive and the purpose here is to make discussions of differences possible in terms of qualitative aspects of teaching traditions.

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