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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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This paper reports from a study where a teacher and researchers collaborated on designing science teaching promoting scientific inquiry (processes of science) and science content (product of science) for a group of students (age 11 – 13). A wide range of data from students’ performance in combining science product and processes were collected during a two year period. Results indicate that students combined product (matter and change of matter) and processes of science (making hypotheses, suggesting research design and evaluating evidence) and that these aspects support each other in science learning. The ability of linking product and process differed among students and varied from one scientific method to the other. To succeed in linking science content and processes of science it is important to scaffold student understanding, like providing templates and asking rich and relevant questions.

The basis for this study is to use students' creative texts in science as a mean to gain insight into their conceptual ideas. Eight grade students' creative writing tasks (n = 26) were analyzed with respect to the conceptual metaphors that were used to describe the abstract concept chemical bonding. The conceptual metaphors were identified and sorted into two main categories; location event-structure conceptual metaphors and object event-structure conceptual metaphors. Results show that most metaphors can be categorized as location event-structure conceptual metaphors. Embodied concepts and everyday language rooted in senso-motoric experiences from students' daily life as well as from former science education seem to play a central role when they attempt to make meaning of the abstract concept 'chemical bonding' within a creative writing context. Creative writing tasks in science may have an unutilized potential for both uncovering and developing understanding of abstract phenomena on sub-microscopic level, such as chemical bonding.