Sustainability challenges are complex, where values and knowledge form the basis for the decisions made (Block et al. 2019). In a teaching and learning perspective, sustainability education (SE) therefore includes more than a specific knowledge content. According to Vare and Scott (2007), SE must also be about developing students' skills, such as the ability to think critically and to test ideas and explore the dilemmas and contradictions that are built into sustainability issues.  

A pluralistic approach to sustainability issues is emphasized as beneficial if the goal is to develop students' ability to relate critically and at the same time democratically to different perspectives on environmental and development issues (Öhman, 2004). In a pluralistic teaching tradition, students get the opportunity to actively participate in social discussions, and teaching focuses on a more democratic approach that involves examining and discussing different opinions and perspectives on issues (Sandell et al., 2005; Öhman & Öhman, 2013). The teaching focuses on illuminating different perspectives on sustainability issues, and that these are given room to be explored, discussed, and critically examined. Research has pointed to the potential of a pluralistic approach to SE in order to create a critical and exploratory classroom climate around fundamental contradictions about, for example, economic growth, economic development and environmental and social sustainable development (Berglund & Gericke, 2022).  

To be able to participate in a pluralistic approach to SE, students must be open-minded to taking on different perspectives. Students' open-mindedness is therefore an important prerequisite for the success of pluralistic sustainability education.   

According to Baehr (2011) an open-minded person is characterized by being able and willing to transcend cognitive standpoint in order to take up or take seriously the advantages of a cognitive standpoint that differs significantly from one's own. Baehr (2011) emphasizes that it is not enough to be able to show open-mindedness, but there must also be a willingness to do so. Riggs (2016) extends Baehr's (2011) definition. An open-minded person is aware that there are other points of view than his own when it is not expressed explicitly or is confrontational, which requires that an open-minded person is sensitive to various clues that indicate other points of view (Riggs, 2016). Furthermore, the person must be able to assess which points of view are worth opening up to, so that the person does not have a standard that is so high that no point of view is taken into account or that the person underestimates most points of view so that they are not seen as worth opening up to. This study builds on Riggs' (2016) definition of open-mindedness. 

An approach for pluralistic teaching about complex sustainability issues can be deliberative or agonistic. Both approaches include tolerance and respect for alternative points of view but with a deliberative conversation the goal is to reach a common agreement through rational arguments. In an agonistic conversation, emotions are recognized and the goal here is to position oneself in relation to the others' perspective, without the goal being consensus. Both approaches presuppose students' open-mindedness to listen to and explore others' perspectives, and that they show willingness to critically evaluate their own perspectives. 

Our question is: Are younger students (9-11 years) open to listening and taking in others' perspectives than their own? This leads to the following research questions: 

RQ1: How do students (9-11 years old) respond to opinions that differ from their own?  

This study was conducted within the project CriThiSE (https://www.ntnu.no/ilu/crithise), which is supported by The Research Council of Norway, project number 302774. 

The study is an exploratory qualitative study based on a social constructivist stance, where meaning is co-constructed between researchers and our participants. Data was collected from semi-structured focus group interviews with 9-11years old students, from four different primary schools in Norway. The interviews were part of the pre-test that took place before the start of an intervention. The schools at which the study was conducted can be described as convenience samples. The focus groups consisted of 3-4 students who had consented to participate in the study, were put together based on grade level, and distribution between girls and boys. Based on the teachers' knowledge of the students the groups consist of both strong and weak students and with students who worked well together socially. Eight researchers conducted a total of 60 group interviews. All interviews were conducted in-person and lasted between 30-45 minutes in duration. This study focuses on the interview question: What do you think when others have different opinions than you? All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data was inductively analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, guided by the steps outlined by Braun and Clarke (2021) and Terry et al. (2017), and with consideration of our research questions. This approach was chosen as it enabled the identification of patterns across our entire data set, while also allowing a theoretically informed interpretation of the data. The first step involved familiarization with the data, where the authors immersed themselves in the data, re-reading and making notes on the content of the interviews. The data was then coded inductively, to highlight relevant passages of texts with a descriptive code. The authors coded independently, generating a diversity of codes, and thereafter met regularly to review and discuss codes. The dataset was encoded with an initial open coding, and then the initial codes were grouped, and new categories were developed. Through repeated, systematic reviews of the dataset considering the categories and codes, themes were gradually developed that represented the content of the dataset. The regular meetings were important for reflexive engagement to challenge interpretations that could arise from potential biases and to examine data from multiple perspectives.

Preliminary results show that 25 % of the utterances expressed open-mindedness to opinions of others. Quotes like “accepting the opinion of others”, “both are right, I am right or the other is right. It makes it difficult” were categorized in this group. A large part of the utterances (41 %) expressed anger, frustration or irritation. Quotes like “I just say against them”, “I start talking very very loudly” were categorized in this group. Our findings advocate that many students react with negative feelings to the fact that others have opinions that are different from their own. Some utterances also reflect a passive resistance in that students pretend to be listening to others, without being so. They also defend their opinions to a large extent by trying to convince for their own views. Our results indicate that a pluralistic sustainability education must take into account that there may be a lack of open-mindedness to opinions that deviate from the individual student's opinion among students in primary school. There will therefore be a need for the teaching to initially focus on the students' open-mindedness to other perspectives, as well as helping students to listen and look at both their own and other people's opinions in an open, respectful, but also critical way.

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