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.