Work

From margin to center? Rural students’ engagement and future imaginaries in designing a sustainable city

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Sustainability education has become central to curricula worldwide, yet little is known about how students in rural contexts experience and make meaning of sustainability. This study addresses this gap by examining how a sustainability project was enacted in a rural Swedish primary school. Drawing on classroom observations, field notes, and interviews with 22 students aged 10–12 and their two teachers, the analysis explores how students engaged with global sustainability discourses through locally grounded practices and multimodal design work in Minecraft. Informed by Bourdieu’s sociology and the New London Group’s multiliteracies framework, the findings show that students reimagined sustainability on their own terms, integrating rural values such as self-reliance, care for nature, and community belonging into their designs. The study contributes to sustainability education by illustrating how place-based and digital practices can enrich curricular work and challenge urban-centric assumptions about where sustainability knowledge and innovation reside.

Source: Cogent Education

DOI: 10.1080/2331186x.2025.2594839

Author: Anne Kjellsdotter

Institution: Linnaeus University

Language: English

Topic: Environmental and sustainability education

Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Quality education, Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,165