Attitudes to sustainable development among Swedish pupils

The preconditions for education for sustainable development (ESD) differ according to contextual factors. This paper discusses the sources of values connected with sustainable development and also presents findings from a Swedish survey about how attitudes to some aspects of sustainable development are distributed among Swedish pupils. The results show significant differences related to gender and education programme. Boys and students in vocational programs hold stronger anthropocentric values than girls and students in theoretical programmes. There is also a positive correlation between solidarity and biocentric values. Comparison with earlier studies indicates that the differences mentioned above are increasing.