Edling is a professor of curriculum theory and was rewarded as an Excellent Teacher at the University of Gävle in Sweden. She is currently a scientific leader for the research program Democracy and Equity, Learning Processes for Social Sustainability, the research group SEEDS (Studies in Education for Democracy and Sustainability), and is the head of Didaktik. A strategic research focus of Edling's research involves studying the conditions for (non)violence in educational settings.