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

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