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Issues of sustainability are complex and often steeped with ethical and political questions without predefined or general answers. This paper deals with how secondary and upper secondary teachers discuss these complex issues, by analysing their aims for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). With inspiration from discourse theory, their articulations about students as political subjects are analysed. Critical thinking emerged as a nodal point in teachers' discussions. In this study critical thinking is articulated as having various qualitative meanings related to different epistemological views. On one hand, critical thinking is articulated to invite room for subjectification; but on the other hand, room for subjectification is challenged when critical thinking is articulated through the educational aims of qualification and socialisation. A consequence of changing epistemological view might be that political and ethical issues take a back seat.Keywords: education for sustainable development, environmental education, critical thinking, subjectification, functions of education Introduction and backgroundQuestions of sustainability pose challenges to education. What does this perspective mean when considering the purpose of education? The relationship between knowledge, politics and ethics is complex and sensitive, and one might ask how education should deal with questions imbedded in political and ethical interpretations. Should ESD work as an integrated aim of education, and what happens when it does?These questions, which have been asked for several decades, have been recently accentuated through the UN Decade of ESD (Jickling 2003;Scott and Gough 2003;Stevenson 2007; Jickling and Walls 2008). These are important questions to consider, because when we ask why we educate and for what purpose we keep the democratic part of education alive (Biesta 2009a).Among educational content for sustainable development, we find issues surrounding climate change, the use of natural resources, justice, human rights and democracy. It allows for the students' competence to act in the future and the vision of action competence (i.e., the vision of developing reflecting individuals with an awareness of conflicting interests). A broad and interdisciplinary obligation, Scott and Gough (2003) frame sustainability and learning as an issue of complexity, uncertainty, risk and necessity.The initiative and mission of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2004Development ( -2014 can be found on the website of UNESCO (UNESCO 2012, www.unesco.org):

There are only a few studies about how primary school students engage in socio-scientific discussions. This study aims to add to this field of research by focusing on how 9-10 year olds in Sweden and England handle climate change as a complex environmental socio-scientific issue, within the context of their own lives and in relation to society at large. It focuses on how different interpretative repertoires were used by the students in discussions to legitimise or question their everyday lifestyles. They discussed four possible options that a government might consider to help reduce carbon dioxide production. Six main repertoires were identified: Everyday life, Self-Interest, Environment, Science and Technology, Society and Justice. The Everyday life repertoire was used when students related their discussion to their everyday lifestyles. Science and technology-related solutions were offered to maintain or improve things, but these were sometimes rather unrealistic.Arguments related to environment and health frequently appeared to have a superior status compared to the others. Findings also highlighted how conflicts between the students were actually productive by bringing in several perspectives to negotiate the solutions. These primary school students were therefore able to discuss and negotiate a complex real-world socio-scientific issue.Students positioned themselves as active contributors to society, using their life experiences and limited knowledge to understand the problems that affected their everyday lives. Honing these skills within a school science community of practice could facilitate primary students' engagement with socio-scientific issues and empower them as citizens.

The aim of this paper is to describe a conceptual framework to be used as a tool for analyzing work with socio-scientific issues (SSI) and for constructing SSI cases in secondary school. The framework consists of six components describing the more detailed characteristics of SSI. The components were chosen to reflect what we know from research about what might have an impact on students' learning and interest in science. Six socio-scientific cases were then constructed and these are discussed in the article. The cases are relevant in that they both display the characteristics of SSI and meet the requirements of the Swedish national curriculum. The components and the cases are described in a table. This work is the first step in an evidence-based research project aiming at investigating if, how and why students and teachers in secondary school develop knowledge and interests when working with SSI.

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