A Comparative Study of the Integration of Sustainability in the Lower Secondary Science Curriculum of Sweden and South Korea

Abstract

This research examines how sustainability is integrated in science curricula for Sweden and Korea. At this time, increasingly recurrent extreme weather events have wreaked havoc on peoples lives and sustainability of the planet. Sustainability has become an important issue within the education field. Analysis of curriculum could offer an understanding of various social aspects, and science education has gradually incorporated social issues in its curriculum. The analyses were guided by the basic content analysis of learning content in both curricula, and the interpretive content analysis in the light of four aspects of the curricula: presence of sustainability, views of the student, human-environment relationship and philosophical/theoretical underpinnings. The integration of sustainability in learning content of the curriculum was significantly higher in the Swedish science curriculum than the Korean one. As for sustainability presence, the Swedish curriculum adopted more explicit languages than the Korean curriculum. And both curricula viewed the student as an agentic individual with focusing on competencies for sustainability. With regard to human-environment relationship, the Swedish curriculum stated reciprocal relationships between human and nature, while the Korean curriculum showed a more anthropocentric view. Both curricula mainly embodied sociocultural and human-centered views of learning when it comes to philosophical and theoretical underpinnings. There is a need to consider a more sustainability integrated science curriculum framework with enough knowledge, descriptions of students as active agents, thought-provoking with regard to human-environment relationships, and the establishment of philosophical basis and theories underpinning sustainability.