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Environmental and sustainability education (ESE) and science education are both essential for addressing global sustainability challenges, and a convergence between them is widely encouraged. Yet the interdisciplinary approaches that ESE promotes often conflict with existing school structures, curricula, and pedagogical practices of traditional schooling, revealing a gap between ESE’s ideals and conventional education. This study responds to calls for investigation into pedagogical and strategic difficulties related to ESE by exploring barriers science teachers face in implementing interdisciplinary approaches and examining implications. Through individual interviews with ten Norwegian lower secondary science teachers and employing reflexive thematic analysis, we identified four themes related to their experiences with ESE: weak consistency in ESE practices, insufficiently transformative ESE, challenges with coworker collaboration, and adverse framework factors. Reflecting on Stevenson’s contradictions from 1987, we observe that responses from participants reveal persistent gaps between the intentions of ESE and traditional schooling, which continue to challenge teachers in their efforts to implement ESE. However, we propose potential solutions aimed at addressing barriers associated with the four themes identified in this study. By exploring the challenges of ESE implementation, this study contributes to a broader understanding of ESE and supports its practical application.
Arntzen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.