Guarding the boundaries: a Swedish policy debate about geography and education for sustainable development

In this article, we analyse how educational policy debates regarding specific school subjectsare related to the demarcation of science. Utilising boundary-work theory we analyse materialfrom a later abandoned revision process for the Swedish upper secondary school curriculumin 2004–2006. During this process a new subject – Sustainable Development – was proposedby the Swedish National Agency for Education. As a consequence, the Geography subject,potentially a suitable arena to naturally handle education for sustainable development, wouldbe given a very peripheral role in the upper secondary school curriculum. From the sugges-tion a debate about scientific boundaries arose, with arguments that may be traced back tothe theoretical concepts; ‘exclusion’, ‘expansion’ and ‘protection of autonomy’.