To Örebro University

This thesis explores students’ resistance to environmental and sustainability education (ESE) and how teachers can address resistance in their teaching. The thesis consists of four studies. The first is a study of tensions and resistance expressed on a youth internet forum. The study indicates that “sustainable development” appears economically, culturally, and socially conditioned for young people. The second and third studies are ethnographic and draw on theories of counterculture and resistance. Together, they offer a nuanced understanding of resistance, which is often inventive and meaningful while also carrying limitations. Resistance frequently gives rise to the laff — a liberating laugh that simultaneously entails something profoundly serious. The studies illuminate how students navigate prescribed requirements alongside cultural, social, and material conditions, where resistance may serve as an expression of distancing or feeling alienated by ESE. The students’ resistance exposes cracks in educational practice: environmental and sustainability education seeks to offer critical thinking and action competence, but it may, at the same time, be constrained by normative, social, and material conditions. The fourth study draws on teacher interviews and identifies three didactical strategies to address student resistance. A common aspect of these strategies is that they rely on the teachers’ didactic sensitivity, whereby teachers adopt a non-judgmental and pluralistic stance. The findings suggest that during fragile moments when resistance, meaningful content, and didactic sensitivity come together, the boundaries of pluralism become apparent and open to challenge.