During two years, 30 lower secondary school teachers in Sweden (Malmö and Lund) and Denmark (Copenhagen) have been involved in a network to empower Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the region. The network of teachers are a part of a an Intereg-project - “Öresundsklassrummet” (ÖKL) - with a focus on sustainable urban development and integration Sweden-Denmark. Municipality civil servants have organized meetings between teachers participating in ÖKL, their students and civil servants working with sustainable urban planning, traffic planning, garbage services etc. During the project researchers have been working together with the teachers in small groups to reflect on the educational process, from the teachers’ perspectives and also from their students’ responses.

The research question is::

- In what ways are the teachers expressing changes in their teaching, in relation to the focus on sustainable development? Strengths and difficulties?

The theoretical foundation is built on experiences from the OECD project Environment and School Initiatives (ENSI), that developed a framework for learning for sustainability in the 90’s. John Elliott from Norwich University in England and Peter Posch from Klagenfurt University in Austria realized an action research program in 19 countries to accomplish a decentralization of school development to the school level. (OECD 1991 and 1995). This project was a study of systematic reflections on education for sustainability and how these reflections could contribute to development.

Fullan et. al. (1991) discusses the complexity of educational change and how the variables counteract with each other. For the empowerment of teachers and a continuing development, frequent reflecting meetings between actors like teachers and researchers, are emphasized. This has been part of the basis to form groups of teachers and researchers in ÖKL as has Schön´s (1987) ideas about learning in action. Teachers together with researchers, work jointly as colleagues, to share experiences and reflect on the processes. Responsibility for what happens in these groups is equally distributed between the participants. Beinum (1993) shows that even if very little is decided at the beginning the talk concentrates on four dimensions: a question about what is important, what methods to use to find out more, how the participants look at the described situation and what preconceptions each one carries into the project. It is also important that everybody takes responsibility for her/his own professionalism. The researcher has for example the responsibility to use her knowledge of theory in formulating questions to make teachers look at the problem in a new way (Altrichter et. al. 1993).

Altrichter, H. Posch, P. & Somekh, B. (1993). Teachers investigate their work. London: Routledge. ISBN 0- 415-09357-0. Beinum, H. van. (1993). The kaleidoscope of workplace reform. I F. Naschould (ed.). Constructing the New Industrial Society. Social science for social action: toward organizational renewal. Volume 3. Stockholm: Arbetslivscentrum. ISBN 90-232-2819-7. Fullan, G. & Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The New Meaning of Educational Change. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. ISBN 0-8077-3060-2. OECD (1991). Environment, Schools and Active Learning. Paris: OECD, CERI. ISBN 92-64-13569-3. OECD (1995). Environmental Learning for the 21st Century. Paris: OECD. CERI. ISBN 92-64-14478-1 Schön, D. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. London: Jossey-Bass Publishers.