When Farmers Teach and Teachers Farm: Community-Rooted Pedagogy in the Face of Environmental Crisis

Abstract The growing emphasis on socially responsible science education has intensified calls to integrate socioscientific issues (SSIs) into classroom practice. However, in many Global South contexts, environmental issues remain depoliticised and disconnected from students’ lived realities. This study examines how middle-school science teachers from agrarian communities in Panipat, Haryana (India) engage with the SSI of stubble burning while navigating their dual roles as educators and community stakeholders. Using a reflexive qualitative case study design, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with eight teachers, supported by classroom observations and contextual fieldnotes. Findings reveal a persistent disjunction between curricular representations and lived experience. While textbooks frame stubble burning in abstract and moralised terms, teachers interpret it as a complex issue shaped by economic constraints, policy pressures, and community practices. Classroom engagement remains constrained by time, curriculum demands, and socio-cultural sensitivities, resulting in intermittent but meaningful efforts to connect scientific concepts with local realities. Teachers’ identities as members of agrarian communities both enable empathetic, context-sensitive interpretations and constrain explicit critical engagement. The study argues for science education that is place-based, politically informed, and responsive to lived realities, offering empirical insights for reimagining SSI pedagogy in agrarian Global South contexts.