Education for sustainable development (ESD) provides crucial opportunities for young people to be involved in complex sustainability issues. This study contributes to existing knowledge about primary school teachers' approaches to ESD across a range of subjects.Norwegian schools can join the Sustainable Backpack programme (SBP), which supports teachers to develop projects that promote a holistic understanding of sustainable development across school subjects. The present study set out to examines teachers' interdisciplinary approach to ESD and the SBP teachers' perceptions of how their curriculum units promote environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.The study is a multi-case study, with curriculum units designed for students aged 10-13 years from 14 Norwegian schools. Content analysis suggest that the units used several subjects to ESD, but the teachers could have challenged the students' reflection to a greater extent in terms of argumentation and critical thinking. The units succeeded to some extent in pursuing a holistic approach. Sustainable DevelopmentIn pursuing the goals of sustainable development (SD), the United Nations has focused its efforts on improving social conditions, solving environmental problems and reducing

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Asking questions is an important way of acquiring information and knowledge and plays a significant role in a child's learning processes. In this study, we examine what characterises the questions asked by children to their teachers in two kindergartens (4-6-year-olds) and six primary school classes (2nd-4th grade) when situated in a natural outdoor environment. Recordings are undertaken by means of action cameras and audio recorders. We also examine the contexts in which the questions are asked. We found that whereas the preschool children's science topic questions mostly concerned subject matter (74-95%), the schoolchildren more often asked practical questions. Our findings indicate that providing the children with activities that open for the children's own explorations of a variety of nature elements seems to elicit subject matter questions in the children. We also found that children ask subject matter questions to gain factual information, as well as first-hand experiences about the object being studied, and that they ask few questions of higher cognitive levels. By providing answers to the children's basic information questions, this seems to elicit questions of higher cognitive levels. In all the question-asking settings, it is important that the teacher follows up on the children's explorations.

People's contact with nature has become less frequent, and their experience of nature has become less comprehensive than earlier. The level of knowledge about species has significantly decreased and teaching biology outside the classroom has become less common. The motivation for this study is to try to counteract these trends: its aim is to evaluate a teaching sequence in teacher education where a field course and the collection of organisms were central components. Seventeen months after the teaching sequence, fifteen students took a species identification test and responded to a questionnaire, and four of them were interviewed. Findings indicate that although their level of knowledge about species had decreased by 39.1% since they had finished the course, the teaching had positively influenced the students' interest in nature, their pleasure at being out in nature, and their overall experience of nature. Their ecological understanding and understanding of biodiversity and sustainable development was less influenced. The teaching was perceived as relevant for their own future work as science teachers.Innledning «Det var først på ekskursjonen til Fjelldalen at det løsnet, og jeg fikk åpnet øynene for planteverdenen. Det var en ny verden som ble synlig. Da jeg var med familien min på fjelltur en uke seinere, spratt jeg rundt og kommenterte navnet på alle artene jeg kunne. Jeg opplever å ha fått erfare den opplevelsen vi ønsker å gi elevene gjennom artskunnskapen» (Guro, laererstudent, GLU, 1 -7). PER IVAR KVAMMENHøgskolen i Innlandet, Norway per.kvammen@inn.no ELI MUNKEBYE NTNU, Norway eli.munkebye@ntnu Per Ivar Kvammen er dosent i realfagsdidaktikk ved HINN, Høgskolen i Innlandet, Fakultet for laererutdanning og pedagogikk. Han underviser og veileder på barnehagelaererutdanning, grunnskolelaererutdanning og master i realfagenes didaktikk. Hans interesseområder er uteundervisning i naturfag og undervisning i naturfag i det flerspråklige klasserommet.Eli Munkebye er førsteamanuensis i naturfagdidaktikk og er ansatt ved Institutt for laererutdanning ved NTNU. Der underviser og veileder hun på masterutdanning. Hun har et bredt interesseområde, som strekker seg fra den utforskende samtalen som finner sted mellom laerer og elev, bruk av naturen som laeringsarena, baerekraftig utvikling og naturvitenskapens egenart.