208
implementing Education for Environmental Citizenship in formal secondary education, it is important that different disciplines contribute their different disciplinary
perspectives in order to give a more holistic view of Environmental Citizenship
instead of merely teaching the same thing in different classrooms.
As shown in this chapter, teaching Environmental Citizenship in formal secondary education is a task for teachers of different disciplines, and they need to be able
to work together for that effort. One way of coping with the multidisciplinary issues
of Education for Environmental Citizenship is to organise teaching through teams
of teachers representing different school subjects. However, as shown from largescale studies, cross-disciplinary work including teachers from different subjects is
not commonly used by secondary schoolteachers when teaching on sustainability
issues (Borg et al. 2012). There might be institutional obstacles to overcome, such
as scheduling, exam and tests in the subjects, teaching traditions, etc. Fullan (2001)
found that teachers are heavily affected by the school organisation and the norms,
values and structures of the school in which they are working. These factors will
have a huge effect on how individual teachers teach. If they were to work together
in teams to implement Education for Environmental Citizenship, it is important that
working this way becomes part of the regular school culture.
An important issue to address is what should this teamwork look like? Should it
be based on interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teaching? Multidisciplinary
teaching is a cooperation without common aims, while interdisciplinary collaborations have a more coherent common mission (Blaye et al. 1991). Collaboration
across subjects and subject areas in a school context is often referred to as crosscurricular teaching (Hudson 1995). Another important issue to address is then the
differences in the subject areas contributing to Education in Environmental
Citizenship in terms of the content, methods and purposes that students encounter
in teaching. In what way is it possible to organise education in order to facilitate
teaching approaches such as SSIBL described in this chapter, or other approaches
like place-based education, civic ecology education, ecojustice pedagogy, etc., as
outlined in Chap. 14. There are two different ways of understanding cross-curricular
work in practice between different teacher groups: co-operation and collaboration
as illustrated in Fig. 13.2 (Sund and Gericke n.d.).
In Fig. 13.2, a representation is shown of how three different school subjects
cooperate on a common theme such as Environmental Citizenship but offer their
own specific knowledge, teaching methods and perspectives to students. Hence, the
teachers bring in their respective disciplinary perspectives and skills that provide a
broad and holistic perspective on Environmental Citizenship, but they do not overlap making it difficult for students to relate the perspectives to each other. In
collaboration, some parts are common for all three subject areas relating to
Environmental Citizenship, whereas other parts are specific subject contributions to
Environmental Citizenship (Fig. 13.2).
We argue that the collaboration model can be considered as ideal for crosscurricular teaching within a Future 3 trajectory, because the different subject perspectives complement each other holistically, while at the same time address
commonalities relating the perspectives to each other providing possibilities for
N. Gericke et al.
implementing Education for Environmental Citizenship in formal secondary education, it is important that different disciplines contribute their different disciplinary
perspectives in order to give a more holistic view of Environmental Citizenship
instead of merely teaching the same thing in different classrooms.
As shown in this chapter, teaching Environmental Citizenship in formal secondary education is a task for teachers of different disciplines, and they need to be able
to work together for that effort. One way of coping with the multidisciplinary issues
of Education for Environmental Citizenship is to organise teaching through teams
of teachers representing different school subjects. However, as shown from largescale studies, cross-disciplinary work including teachers from different subjects is
not commonly used by secondary schoolteachers when teaching on sustainability
issues (Borg et al. 2012). There might be institutional obstacles to overcome, such
as scheduling, exam and tests in the subjects, teaching traditions, etc. Fullan (2001)
found that teachers are heavily affected by the school organisation and the norms,
values and structures of the school in which they are working. These factors will
have a huge effect on how individual teachers teach. If they were to work together
in teams to implement Education for Environmental Citizenship, it is important that
working this way becomes part of the regular school culture.
An important issue to address is what should this teamwork look like? Should it
be based on interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teaching? Multidisciplinary
teaching is a cooperation without common aims, while interdisciplinary collaborations have a more coherent common mission (Blaye et al. 1991). Collaboration
across subjects and subject areas in a school context is often referred to as crosscurricular teaching (Hudson 1995). Another important issue to address is then the
differences in the subject areas contributing to Education in Environmental
Citizenship in terms of the content, methods and purposes that students encounter
in teaching. In what way is it possible to organise education in order to facilitate
teaching approaches such as SSIBL described in this chapter, or other approaches
like place-based education, civic ecology education, ecojustice pedagogy, etc., as
outlined in Chap. 14. There are two different ways of understanding cross-curricular
work in practice between different teacher groups: co-operation and collaboration
as illustrated in Fig. 13.2 (Sund and Gericke n.d.).
In Fig. 13.2, a representation is shown of how three different school subjects
cooperate on a common theme such as Environmental Citizenship but offer their
own specific knowledge, teaching methods and perspectives to students. Hence, the
teachers bring in their respective disciplinary perspectives and skills that provide a
broad and holistic perspective on Environmental Citizenship, but they do not overlap making it difficult for students to relate the perspectives to each other. In
collaboration, some parts are common for all three subject areas relating to
Environmental Citizenship, whereas other parts are specific subject contributions to
Environmental Citizenship (Fig. 13.2).
We argue that the collaboration model can be considered as ideal for crosscurricular teaching within a Future 3 trajectory, because the different subject perspectives complement each other holistically, while at the same time address
commonalities relating the perspectives to each other providing possibilities for
N. Gericke et al.