Vår stad 2030 och efterföljande rådslag : om kapacitet för utbildning och delaktighet ; Our city in 2030 and subsequent Council: on capacity for education and participation

This report is the result of an external assessment based on qualitative interviews with 5 city planners, 9 teachers and 22 pupils participating in the project in 2015 and 2016. The empirical evidence indicate an appreciated project where city planners highlight the ability to reach out to young city dwellers, usually a difficult group to engage in city planning; teachers that stress the projects concrete but at the same time flexible design as a valuable resource in their present and future work; least but not last the pupils talk about the project as something that was real which in turn spurred their commitment to reach for quality in their work. At the end of the project these pupils expressed increased knowledge and engagement in sustainable development. Especially the social dimensions and the local perspective were seen as fresh and inspiring. At the same time teachers highlighted the solid frame of the project giving them more time to cooperate with each other and attend to supervise the pupils along the way. The assessment also finds that the different time-scales that guide the practices of city planners’, teachers’ and pupils’ pose a challenge for cooperation between the groups, as they work together for the first time. Here teachers has to become brokers between the longer time-horizons of the city planners and the much shorter time-horizon providing meaning to the pupils. Another obstacle is the institutional structures of the education system. Firstly it concerns the information infrastructure. The interviews show that the invitation reached teachers via informal channels and thus only reached teachers that was already known to be engaged in education for sustainable development. Secondly, and especially at the Gymnasium level, the organisation around courses prevented interdisciplinary approaches to education for sustainable development. Looking ahead the assessment finds a consensus among the participants that it has been a valuable experience. That all participating city planners and teachers .