Education for sustainable development (ESD) has become so crucial that we have tried to smear it on anything and everything that's teachable. The consequence is that almost everything we do may be said to contain weak attributes of ESD even if we know nothing significant about it. This paper attempts to reveal an understanding of ESD that is informed by an exploration of policy language and agenda and recent literature in the field. The exploration of policy reveals the possible cause for previous inadequate implementation of ESD. An exploration of policy and literature reveals some key competencies that are advocated for through ESD. Insight into how policy has shifted from an ecological to a development focus and substantiation for why this shift is important in addressing current sustainable development issues serves to inform the interpretation of ESD. Finally, the analysis of policy and literature is triangulated to develop a framework that may assist ESD stakeholders in identifying ESD competencies in policy and practice. It is hoped that through this engagement with selected texts a more informed and complex insight into ESD and its features may be developed

Soft systems methodology is commonly used in organizational research and can be very useful when attempting to understand both organizational structures and dynamics. A teacher education institution is identified here as an organization. Soft systems methodology is employed to gain a picture of the current organizational structure of a Science and Technology Education Department and to further develop a hypothetical picture of what the same organizational structures would look like if they incorporated ESD. These two pictures were presented to a group of teacher educators within the particular department during a focus group interview, where they were encouraged to reflect on three foci. This paper explores the teacher educators' responses to the hypothetical system picture which elaborates on a system for teacher education for sustainable development. The paper concludes by reflecting on teacher educators' responses and what they imply for the future of ESD at this teacher education institution. The article reveals that the following findings permeated teacher educators responses to the notional system picture for teacher education for sustainable development: (1) management's perceptions of professional autonomy differs from that of teacher educators; (2) there exist seven relevant subsystems that influence teacher educators' priority and practice; (3) teacher educators felt that research and leadership were the most powerful tools supporting the suggested ESD curriculum innovation; (4) although ESD is deemed important, it is not a priority for teacher educators owing to various reasons.

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