Teaching for Community Sustainability: Opportunities and Limitations as Seen from a Cross-analysis of Teachers Teaching in Schools in Rural Areas in Spain and Sweden

Abstract Education policy is always at risk of working at cross-purposes toward education goals. Using a meta-ethnographic methodology and Massey’s geometry of space theory, the present article addresses this in relation to a particular policy realisation problem of teaching for sustainability in schools in depopulated rural areas with identified population challenges. Specific attention has gone to research addressing the enacted curriculum and teachers’ experiences of working with sustainability goals. The results highlight features for goal realisation such as the presence of and attention to rural natural and cultural environmental heritage, having local access and giving curriculum attention to local employment and sustainable vocations and professions, and having community support from the local community and engagement of the school in the community. Working against sustainability were global epistemic rural marginalisation, performative curriculum relations, market competition and competitive exclusions from market participation, tepid community involvement in schools, and socially isolated schools insulated from the local community.