Since sustainability is subjective and context dependent, sustainability education should focus on the development of a personal understanding of sustainability through critical reflection of values and behaviour. Emotions can motivate value clarification -- a prerequisite to transform worldviews and behaviour. The article presents the disruptive learning theory, aiming to inspire educators to design pedagogical interventions that stimulate initial emotions, triggering deep learning within sustainability. Inspired by transformative learning, pedagogic interventions (visual cues) were designed and implemented with the intention of stimulating an initial emotional reaction. Here, different teaching strategies and methods were combined to stimulate deep learning. Using constructivist grounded theory, this research explored the impact of these pedagogical interventions on student teachers' thoughts and emotions. The analysis of students' experiences revealed that initial emotions progressively stimulated more critical thinking about anthropocentricism and existing interdependencies among nature, self, society and economy, which in turn triggered value clarification and change agency. Based on the findings, the disruptive learning theory emerged. It contains three processes: (1) disruption (2) deep learning and (3) change agency. Practically, disruptive learning initially evokes emotions that foster personal connections with lecture content, opening space for deep learning to evaluate the need to change perspectives and/or behaviour.