Abstract
To make an educational situation meaningful for students necessitates more content than just subject content (Östman, 1995). Subject matter is always taught within an educational context (Roberts, 1982). The context, which could be seen as an indispensable part of the content, is communicated to students by teachers through speech and action during the conduct of teaching (Sund & Wickman, 2008). The context in which subject content is taught is here called the socialization content (Englund, 1998). Policy level discussions are often focusing mainly on subject matter integration (UNESCO, 2005).
One important point of departure for this exploratory and empirical study is that the learning of subject content and socialisation content occurs simultaneously, and together they constitute the educational content. This study focuses on the socialization content communicated by upper secondary teachers, which is studied through their messages to students. These might be different messages about the subject content or different messages in the teaching process.
The aim of this study is to contribute to a better developed knowledge of the socialization content, which is an indispensable part of the content in environmental education and education for sustainable development. By using an analytical tool developed in earlier research (Sund, 2008) is possible to discern some important differences in the socialisation content within three selective traditions of environmental education (Öhman, 2004).