Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible en las clases de ELE

The aim of this papper is to investigate how spanish teacher understand the concept of Sustainable Development and how they implement the Education for Sustainable Development in their lessons. For this purpose we have used two different methods: the first was to analyze Swedish school policy documents (Education Act, Lgr 11 and Lgy 11) to see if they promote the Education for Sustainable Development in foreign language classes. The second was to analyze the perceptions of the teachers in terms of understanding and application of Sustainable Development in their teaching. A questionnaire study was conducted with 12 spanish teachers representing 11 secondary- and high schools in Växjö. The questionnaire contains 8 questions about personal information, 3 open questions about understanding of Education for Sustainable Development and 27 affirmations about Sustainable Development which measure teacher´s levels of agreement or disagreement (Likert ordinal scale). The results showes that Swedish school policy documents don´t make it clear that teacher in general and spanish teacher in particular have to educate for Sustainable Development (in the Education Act the words 'sustainable development' are not even mentioned). They also showes that 58 % of the teachers implemet in their teaching the Sustainable Development; 100 % of the teachers consider the lack of knowledge, the lack och time and the irrelevance of Sustainable Development in the spanish lessons as factors who difficult the Education for Sustainable Development; 92 % of the teachers would like to get more education about how to educate for Sustainable Development.