This paper explores the perspectives of primary and secondary school students and how more knowledge about their experiences with sustainability education can inform and qualify a better understanding of what we call experienced quality as a contribution to the Environmental and Sustainability Education Research-field (ESE) (Brückner et al., Forthcoming; Elf, 2022). Based on a current scoping review, the ESE field reflects a variety of examples of quality concerning sustainability education (Brückner et al., forthcoming). Examining the diversity in different approaches and discussions of quality in relation to sustainability education, we argue that there is emphasis on studies focusing on mainly two dominating trends: Firstly, examples of quality representing an intended quality view e.g. the development of quality criteria building on values and norms such as ‘participation’ and ‘democratic decision making’ but also qualities in terms of acting, reflecting, communication, cooperation and teamwork (Breiting et al., 2005; Breiting & Wickenberg, 2010). Secondly, we also identified a range of examples stressing dimensions of documented quality (Brückner et al., forthcoming). These examples are of a more evaluative character, illustrating different cases of motivated initiatives with an emphasis on how different indicators, standards or criteria can ensure quality enhancement while being indicative of the implementation of an ESE process (Roberts, 2009; Rode & Michelsen, 2008; Singer-Brodowski et al., 2019). Examining the representations of the trends mentioned above of quality views, we identify a gap in studies representing experienced quality in ESE, and we especially see implications toward a lack of studies examining the student perspective (Brückner et al., forthcoming). Other researchers have previously pointed out that despite being the primary concern of education, the students’ perspectives often figure in the background of theory and research concerning sustainability education (Payne, 1997; Rickinson, 2001). Therefore, this paper aims to place the student perspective in the foreground by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at three different primary-level schools in Denmark that explicitly work with sustainability in their teaching (CHORA, 2024). Based on focus group interviews with 30 students in 5-6th grade, including participatory observation, we present key findings and themes on how students participate, perceive and experience sustainability education (Gilliam & Gulløv, 2016, 2022; Gulløv & Højlund, 2015; Lehtonen et al., 2019; Verlie, 2019). The ambition is to explore how the students’ experiences can inform discussions of different qualities in sustainability education and the potential in how this can qualify the generation of knowledge about teaching green transition.

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