Introduction
Effective sustainability teaching and learning across Higher Education (HE) is critical in enabling graduates to navigate the natureculture challenges of the Anthropocene. Academics’ teaching is always a work in progress, responding to rapidly changing contexts. Their teaching experiences and observations matter, and are never settled. It’s therefore important to regularly attune to their emergent experiences in teaching sustainability, so that successful curricular and pedagogical strategies and concerns can be shared collegially. Teachers’ ongoing experiences offer lively perspectives to inform both bottom-up practice and top-down policy across cultural, managerial, administrative and disciplinary aspects of the university ecosystem. We bring to our exploratory study a methodological commitment to a relational and connected onto-epistemology, referencing Barad’s (Reference Barad2007) conceptualisation of being and becoming as being mutually implicated. Underpinning a putatively conventional qualitative method with this relational understanding opens up possibilities for generating richer accounts of teaching experiences. In this we are encouraged by Gough & Gough (Reference Gough and Gough2022, p. 394), in being “experimental and even transgressive” in bringing theory to meet methods and data.
We conducted indepth interviews with six academics who embed sustainability concepts in their teaching practice, at one Australian university. The overarching research question was, “What can we learn about teaching sustainability from the contemporary experience of individual academics within their teaching ecologies?” In service to this question, the study attended to current academic experiences, nested within their teaching ecosystems. Also encouraged by Hart & White (Reference Hart and White2022), who note that “different theoretical perspectives can expand the boundaries of educational research” (p. 208), we leavened our ostensibly humanist qualitative interview method with a posthumanist sensibility. This move may seem a little strange, even risky: inviting censure from both qualitative and postqualitative orthodoxies.
The term “humanist” here refers to the paradigm of Cartesian separability and human exceptionalism that underpins ‘conventional’Footnote 1 qualitative inquiry, with “posthumanist,” therefore referring to what comes after, in the form of a seamless onto-epistemology. We bring this posthumanist framing to both our interviews and data analysis. Semi structured interviews are approached, not as transactional data collection events but rather as a performative practice of co-constructing understandings. Thinking relationally also extends to the data analysis in this study. For example, where divergent interview data could be seen as indicative of contradictions and confusions to be resolved, a relational and processual view embraces emergence and difference, accepting with Deleuze and Guattari (Reference Deleuze and Guattari1994), Latour (Reference Latour2010) and many others that the world is messy, immanent and always in process. Perhaps these philosophers would welcome our theoretical positioning, sitting not quite within either qualitative or postqualitative inquiry.
The literature review that follows frames the study: the promise and uptake of sustainability education (SE) frameworks; current empirical studies of academics incorporating sustainability concepts into their teaching; and the significance of methodological choices in our research. The methodology discussion argues for the commensurability of a relational and processual onto-epistemology in conducting and thinking through qualitative interviews.
Literature review
Sustainability educations: Endlessly emerging (and perhaps rightly so)
Since the 1970’s, the many iterations of environmental SE have been well-documented (for example Gough, Reference Gough, Stevenson, Brody, Dillon and Wals2013). Early cognitively oriented frameworks had prompted Jickling (Reference Jickling1992) to claim that HE should offer a critical approach, teaching students how to think instead of what to think. Later conceptualizations re-envisaged sustainability as an emancipatory and emergent discourse (Bawden, Reference Bawden, Corcoran and Wals2004), with “variable and contested meanings” (Ryan et al., Reference Ryan, Tilbury, Corcoran, Abe and Nomura2010, p. 107). Expositions of Education for Sustainability (EfS) arising out of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), pointed to a transformative ethos (Rieckmann et al., Reference Rieckmann, Mindt and Gardiner2017). Recent approaches speak to relational and processual onto-epistemologies: with ecological and more-than-humanFootnote 2 approaches to place learning (Lynch & Mannion, Reference Lynch and Mannion2021); relational approaches to preservice teacher training on sustainability (Malone & Young, Reference Malone and Young2023); and the ethics of care for community and environment in Indigenous knowledges (Poelina et al., Reference Poelina, Paradies, Wooltorton, Guimond, Jackson-Barrett and Blaise2023). These approaches offer fresh educational research responses to the Anthropocene, as called for by Gough and Gough (Reference Gough and Gough2022).
Within such emergence it’s nevertheless useful to articulate a heuristic EfS framework, as a departure point. EfS as we know it concerns itself with transformative learning, focusing on values, attitudes and worldviews; micro skills such as creative, critical, reflective, systems and future thinking modes; and enacted through trans/interdisciplinary modes. While EfS embraces an eclectic suite of experiential and participatory pedagogies, there are also diverse curricular entry points related to sustainability, such as environmental and social justice, climate crisis, and urban transformation (Mulà & Tilbury, Reference Mulà and Tilbury2023).
Uptake of sustainability education frameworks: Why so slow (and does it matter)?
The uptake of EfS, (amongst other acronymic versions) has remained patchy in HE (Evans et al., Reference Evans, Inwood, Christie and Newman2023). Gough et al. (Reference Gough, Mor, Sowter, Vare, Barth, Michelsen, Rieckmann and Thomas2016) earlier commented that: “…much sustainable development education in HE takes place in partial or absolute ignorance of the existence of something called ‘Education for Sustainable Development [ESD]’” (p. 114). Persson et al. (Reference Persson, Einarson and Melen2023) found that for academics, the “concept of SD [Sustainable Development] was vague in relation to their teaching practice” (p. 104). Perhaps this is not such a bad thing: like the unstable context in which it operates, SE must continually reinvent itself, avoiding sedimented educational formulae.
Challenges bring opportunities
Even if teachers in HE are clear on the relevance of EfS-style propositions, they can nevertheless find overwhelming the task of making conceptual, curricular and pedagogical shifts (Cardiff et al., Reference Cardiff, Polczynska and Brown2024). Disciplinary silos and research specialisations remain obstacles to the more eclectic and transdisciplinary focus of sustainable planetary futures (Figuero & Raufflet, Reference Figueiró and Raufflet2015; Mulà & Tilbury, Reference Mulà and Tilbury2023). There is also considerable variability and confusion in understandings of sustainability (Beasy et al., Reference Beasy, Richey, Brandsema and To2024). Seatter and Ceulemans (Reference Seatter and Ceulemans2017) noted a tendency to steer students towards a particular agenda or solutions, rather than understanding and respecting the complex and contested nature of sustainability. “A paradox arises when educators approach a sustainability curriculum that has the potential to transform students’ thinking and actions, with a reductive and non-substantive pedagogy” (Seatter & Ceulemans, Reference Seatter and Ceulemans2017, p. 47). The “it’s irrelevant to my discipline” dismissal is still evident amongst teachers, with a reluctance to stray from siloed disciplines towards inter or transdisciplinary approaches (Coleman & Gould, Reference Coleman and Gould2019, pp. 223–224). There are also pressures of external accreditation requirements and other compliance-focused curriculum policies, especially in professionally focused degrees such as teacher education (Tilbury, Reference Tilbury2019). Finally, there’s a reluctance to make changes from academics who are time-poor, wrangling curricula already packed with mandatory content, and perhaps wary of implementing what they might see as formulaic pedagogies.
However challenges shine a light on opportunities. Mulà et al. (Reference Mulà, Tilbury, Ryan, Mader, Dlouhá, Mader, Benayas, Dlouhý and Alba2017), in acknowledging the key role of educators, found that academics needed deeper understandings of sustainability, inter and trans-disciplinarity and curriculum transformation for diverse learning opportunities. Seatter and Ceulemans (Reference Seatter and Ceulemans2017) argued for stability of staffing, experiential activities, a positive perspective on subject matter and theoretically informed teaching practice. More recently Annelin and Bostrum (Reference Annelin and Boström2024), conducting 26 Zoom interviews across European universities, conclude that HE sustainability teachers need more support in terms of resources and time; a renewal of guidance from senior sustainability specialists; more collaboration across departments, institutions and sectors; an ethics driven and interdisciplinary curriculum framed around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2030 agenda (SDG’s); more community engagement; along with experiential learning and actionable knowledge. Others believe that SE needs a holistic approach: a whole of curriculum rather than a piecemeal approach; and pedagogies that “…favour dialogue, empowerment and student responsibility over the learning process.” (Mulà & Tilbury, Reference Mulà and Tilbury2023, p. 7).
Research methodologies: Part of the solution or part of the problem?
Christie and Miller (Reference Christie, Miller, Barth, Michelsen, Rieckmann and Thomas2016, p. 398) earlier noted that “Much of the sector wide research investigating ESD in higher education has largely been based on information gathered from policy documents, university websites, or administrators, rather than seeking the opinions and experiences of current teaching academics.” Where literature on sustainability inclusion in HE does focus on teacher perceptions and attitudes, this is often through mixed or qualitative methods: surveys, interviews and coding software-mediated analysis (e.g. Christie et al., Reference Christie, Miller, Cooke and White2015). Empirical studies that do stay close to teacher experiences include Evans et al. (Reference Evans, Inwood, Christie and Newman2023), investigating conceptions of SE amongst academics providing initial teacher education. They find a lack of consensus on understandings of SE, and a need to go beyond cognitive approaches to empower students as citizens. Beasy et al. (Reference Beasy, Richey, Brandsema and To2024) use collaborative autoethnography to investigate how top-down initiatives of care can support Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students in integrating ESD into the curriculum. Argento et al. (Reference Argento, Einarson, Mårtensson, Persson, Wendin and Westergren2020) carry out auto-ethnographic research with six colleagues, finding differences in SE teaching across disciplines and a need for transdisciplinarity.
While all methodological approaches provide valuable insights, humanist and reductive analytic methods do set the researcher and reader at a distance from data – the lived experience of teachers. It is easy for data to be “lost in translation”: subsumed to interpretations and generalisations in the analytic process and therefore losing the potency of immediate experience. Hart and White (Reference Hart and White2022) suggest that “…we might reconceptualise inquiry where researchers and participants become entangled as living assemblages in ways that disrupt and deterritorialize and that move beyond linguistic poststructuralist discursive thinking toward the material and matter of uninterpreted lived experience” (p. 201). This means staying close to interview data.
In this study we wanted to keep that teacher experience tangible. Thus, the effort of this study was towards an intimate focus on “up close and personal” bottom up lived experience, and keeping our hands in the data soil throughout analysis and representation. Academics are adult learners just like anyone else: identifying with the visceral experience of proximal others helps orient them in finding their own way towards the transformative teaching and learning embodied in EfS. In this way the representation of interviewee experience is performative in speaking to their peers.
Methodology
We enliven a “conventional” qualitative interview method with a relational and processual lens, in an onto-epistemology that understands the world as wholeness, continuously intra-acting within itself (Barad, Reference Barad2003). This philosophical shift is not a rejection of qualitative methodology but rather a thinking differently with/in it. In talking back to the separability of a humanist qualitative methodology, we felt no need for oppositional thinking but rather an opportunity for enriching both the interview process and analysis.
The qualitative interview is described by Brinkmann & Kvale (Reference Brinkmann and Kvale2018) as a “construction site for knowledge” (p. 9). We choose to experience this construction site as relational and performative. The very term “construction site” already implies that there is something interesting and performative going on! Valorised within qualitative methodology as a productively conversational space (Brinkmann & Kvale, Reference Brinkmann and Kvale2018), interviews within the framing of a relational and process philosophy open even further: to unexpected connections and nomadic trains of thought, as “intra-views” (Kokorudz, Reference Kokorudz2022; after Kuntz & Presnall, Reference Kuntz and Presnall2012). This approach applies Barad’s (Reference Barad2003) conceptualisation of “intra-action” to interviews, as a mutual entanglement of meaning-making. Through this lens, interviews allow “those one visits [to] intra-actively shape what occurs,” and for interesting things to happen (Haraway, Reference Haraway2015, p. 6). Applying such a capacious onto-epistemological lens, understandings are co-constructed within the interaction of interviewer and interviewee as “purposeful entanglements” (Marn & Wolgemuth, Reference Marn and Wolgemuth2017, p. 373), with indeed the possibility of both refining their ideas through the process of the conversation. This theoretical recasting shapes both our semi-structured interviews and the subsequent analysis in which we think through academic experiences of teaching.
The complication of qualitative methodology implied by the conjunction with a relational and processual worldview, manifests in a subtle way: in a sensibility that keeps one’s awareness open to the connectedness and flux of the world. Once open to the infinite and emergent connectedness of the world it’s not possible to think otherwise (M. Somerville, personal conversation, September 19th, 2018). We see and become in the world differently, with “a flattened (non-hierarchical) and heterarchical way of seeing human and more-than-humans beings and doings.” (Germein, Reference Germein2022, p. 12, Note 6). The decisions, actions, and understandings of the research process flow naturally from this onto-epistemological sensibility. This reconceived relationship with a data-ful world activates Rautio’s (Reference Rautio2021, p. 228) call for postqualitative inquiry to not replace qualitative inquiry but rather to bring a different attitude towards it. We therefore stay close to the sociomaterialities of academic teaching experiences while at some analytical points overlaying a strategic and pragmatic reductionism to identify outcomes that might influence practice and policy.
Research design
The research design allowed for one-hour semi-structured conversations, conducted via Zoom. The selection of participants was based on a non-random convenience sampling, guided by the key inclusion criterion of current experience of incorporating sustainability into teaching, along with factors such as timing and availability. The number of six participants was appropriate for this in-depth and exploratory interviewing process (Creswell, Reference Creswell1998).
Participants came from diverse disciplines, straddling applied science, education, geography, sociology, visual communication and design and industrial design. All six had long-term teaching experience from 5 to 20 years, academic tenure and were Senior Lecturer or Associate Professor band. The interviews focused on their experience within a current undergraduate teaching subject. The subjects they taught varied from being a large-scale mandatory requirement to smaller electives, with student numbers varying from approximately 40 to 600. Interviews were conducted by the lead author, who has extensive EfS subject-matter knowledge, was unknown to the participants and not part of the university hierarchy. The interviews were framed by clear privacy and confidentiality commitments, with a relaxed and equal conversational space in which the interviewee could safely talk candidly.
The semi-structured conversations allowed participants to: “say as much or as little as they like, and to allow subjective conceptualizations of the subject matter” (Christie & Miller, Reference Christie, Miller, Barth, Michelsen, Rieckmann and Thomas2016, p. 402); for divergent or nomadic trains of thought to be followed; and for the consequent generation of rich and varied data. These interactions could be characterised in humanist qualitative terms as “semi-structured life-world interviews” (Brinkmann & Kvale, Reference Brinkmann and Kvale2018, p. 14), seeking descriptions of everyday teaching experiences – but in our case alongside the generative possibilities of relational and performative intra-views. We say “possibilities” because we turn up knowing (as with Despret’s polite practice, in Haraway, Reference Haraway2015) that all interviewees bring their own interests to the party, and these need to be respected.
The Zoom environment created a contained yet workable stage for conversation, with mutual mobility of face, eyes, hands and torso (the latter occasionally moving forwards to emphasise a point). The music of voices of was its own assemblage of cadence, melody, timbre, pauses, hesitations and laughter. The responsibility of the interviewer was to hold an affective space in which anything could be said or not said. This meant engaging in deep listening, knowing when to make a substantive point, a provocation, or a probe – or just to keep quiet. “Talk me a little bit into what you are doing with this subject… what do you love about it?” “Sounds like you’re using systems thinking…” Intra-views required attention, both intellectual and affective, to what the guest was saying: empathising, attending, reflecting, speculating, and the ability to facilitate and be part of the flow of a generous and generative conversation. There was no room for that lurking Cartesian separation between interviewer and guest…. And yet the interviewer is, in the final analysis, the responsible agent, or “choreographer,” as Haraway (Reference Haraway2015, p. 6) would have it.
Data analysis
Interviewees participated in the analysis phase, firstly through a Socratic maieutic method used during the interview (Brinkmann & Kvale, Reference Brinkmann and Kvale2018). From the Greek “of midwifery,” maieutic simply refers to the use of questions or suggestions that facilitate the process of interviewees with arriving at and sometimes clarifying their own understandings: the beginnings of an analytic process in the interview itself. Later the interviewees participated, as a variant of member validation, in reviewing and editing their transcript before any formal researcher analysis took place.
The subsequent approach to analysis, could be described (in qualitative terms) as a bricolage. Brinkmann and Kvale (Reference Brinkmann and Kvale2018) describe this concept as: “an eclectic combination of multiple forms of analysis, and a theoretically informed reading of the interviews as a significant mode of analysis” (p. 120). This approach allows for the inclusion of a diversity of experiences rather than generation of fixed homogenous categories: a conceptualisation that married nicely with our interest in the pluralities of teaching experience. In other words, we were able to bring along our relational bent to support an eclectic, intuitive and connected work of thinking with data. As part of our process we stayed alert to outlier or divergent data, thinking with Maggie Maclure about data that jumps out at us or ‘glows’: that confounds or surprises us. Maclure describes this divergence as “something – perhaps a comment in an interview, a fragment of a field note, an anecdote, an object, or a strange facial expression – seems to reach out from the inert corpus (corpse) of the data, to grasp us” (Maclure, Reference Maclure2013, p. 228).
Descriptions of the stages of qualitative analysis (adapted from Brinkmann & Kvale, Reference Brinkmann and Kvale2018 and Miles & Hubermann, Reference Miles and Huberman1994, pp. 245–246) were perfectly adequate for describing the what: the procedural steps of our analysis. Reading over the transcripts to gain a general impression; revisiting interesting instances; individually and together recursively sketching out broad clusters of raw data, and then emergent themes; looking at both commonalities and outliers; collaborating on heat mapping; representing data through interviewee accounts; and articulating those emergent themes and questions. It was especially within the how of data analysis that we could in all of these steps, engage our posthumanist sensibilities, experiencing data in terms of relationality and process.
We then thought through the data in a fresh and intersubjective way, “as happening in the middle of things, in the threshold, as theoretical concepts and data constitute one another in our analytic practice of thinking with theory” (Mazzei, Reference Mazzei2021, p. 198). We followed Barad (Reference Barad2007, p. 47, Note 15) in the matter of representing, understanding representation “as part of discursive practice rather than reflection of ‘reality’,” thereby doing its own performative work in producing the researcher/writers and readers.
Encountering data: Clusters and themes
Five broad clusters of experience emerged out of the researcher/data interplay: the academic’s teaching role and responsibility; their experience of the students; their teaching approaches; their touch points; and the university as enabler.
Teaching responsibilities. “It’s not just dusting off my old slides!”
These academics all had a long-term commitment to their subject matter and teaching, radiating passion, dedication and hopefulness. They engaged in continuous improvement of content and teaching, realising that areas such as climate change, urban transformation and social justice are dynamic and emergent areas. “I work very hard to connect with the students. Teaching is hard and some of the time, I think tutors rock up, deliver the material and … walk away, mark the assignment, and that’s professionalism. I’m doing it because I believe in it” (P2).Footnote 3 “[I like to be]…well organised, fast and loose. So I can respond to things in real time, and we can have a really good discussion… my favourite thing to do is to walk into a classroom, say what happened on the radio [that morning], and then take it back to a school of thought and analysis in real time” (P3). Another lecturer likes to get their students involved in real-life environmental problem-solving: “I’m working right now on a problem…. where a gold and copper metal mine is polluting and contaminating people’s water tanks. So I hit my students with material like this. And it does help when they see me grappling with real world problems … It’s not just dusting off my old slides and giving the same lectures I gave 15 years ago” (P1). Some saw their responsibility as helping students build competencies to take action in their world. Others characterised part of their teaching responsibility as role-modelling: “…being an academic advocate for a more sustainable world” (P1). The experience of these teachers suggests that diverse notions of best practice need to be continually expanded, refreshed and shared, in response to emergent challenges.
Experiences of the students. “The more we talk…the less they want to know about it.”
Four interviewees said that their students are sick of “being taught sustainability” with inclusions of well-worn concepts such as the three (+) pillars. They pointed out that this kind of teaching about sustainability comes at the students from too many directions –schools, the media, and then the university. They said that students do have ethics and values, and they do care about the world, however need fresh approaches. “You know, young people have switched off. They’re politically disenfranchised, they’re financially disenfranchised. From my observation, the more we start talking about sustainability, climate change, toxic pollution, the less they want to know about it” (P2). “… it’s as if we are giving these young students a problem to solve, which is not of their making” (P5). “I don’t think there’s a problem with the word sustainability. I think there’s a problem with our pedagogy… They don’t need to be told we’re in a disaster” (P4).
On the flipside, the teachers evidenced that the students loved being taught these ideas in a fresh way. They responded to active, engaged learning, weaving theory and real-world data to construct their own learning. “… the students really enjoy the unit. We make sure it’s structured, supported, engaging, but fun…they present on their team’s solution for addressing water quality issues. And that is my favourite day at the whole university” (P1).
One teacher challenged his first year, first semester students with a deep dive into theoretical frameworks. “They’re horrified! But after the initial shock, they love it…what I’m doing is giving them a way to conceptualise. It was as if they were crying out for a theoretical engagement that took them beyond the pillars” (P3).
The interviewees said that students need educational responses to their current experience of the world, and to be empowered to engage with all these big issues on their own terms. They need to construct their own understandings out of real-life experience, and to be afforded the space to take a critical approach to received ideas. They do not want to be talked at. “Young people are definitely disconnected from mainstream politics but it doesn’t mean they lack ethics, values and care… and the “want” to do good. It’s the way you pitch it. And pitched in a way that they feel they can pick it up on their own terms” (P2).
The experiences articulated by the respondents tell us about the importance of understanding the life experience that students bring to university; and about their need for fresh approaches.
Teaching approaches. “I don’t want vanilla!”
Diversity was evident in teaching approaches: in terminology, framing of concepts and pedagogical strategies. None of our interviewees explicitly used EfS (or similar) terminology with students, and most were unfamiliar with formal UN-generated EfS or ESD frameworks. Five of them avoided using terms like “sustainability,” being wary of clichés and student fatigue with the terminology. Rather, the teachers used terms such as “planetary health,” “life sustaining,” or “education for environmental action.” “If we go to a group of students and say, “OK we’re going to do an assignment on climate change,” they say “OMG, not another one.” They immediately think of coal-fired power, bushfires and disaster … all the negative connotations” (P2). One interviewee commented that “…there’s a lack of rigorous engagement with … sustainability beyond the three pillars model. And that model takes us back to 1987 – the Brundtland report. And students have had it shoved down their face for years, and they still do not have the capacity to apply it.” (P3).
Rather, the teachers used diverse terminologies and pedagogical approaches, preferring to explore concepts in a nuanced way that enabled the students to construct their own knowledge and values shifts.. “I don’t teach directly about the word sustainability except for the element of being life sustaining…” (P4). “For me sustainability is something with social, cultural, economic and environmental elements…consumption, unsustainable patterns of living, and the links to capitalism and consumerism and those sorts of things.” (P5).
These six teachers used an exciting array of pedagogical approaches. “I’m very interested in field-based learning … interrogating what we mean by experiential learning …that’s really important for me at a time when virtual worlds are coming online and threatening to undermine our engagements with the field” (P3). “…peer-to-peer learning, I think is so incredibly important…And I’ve told my students, I want you to have either good experience or bad. I don’t want anything in the middle. I don’t want vanilla, I don’t want you to just forget about it…So it’s literally and metaphorically immersion, going out and visiting a real living river system.” (P1).
Our interviewees encouraged students to think speculatively, beyond the given, in a futures thinking mode. “The most important part of the whole unit is “What are you going to do about it? And I don’t really care what they do, whether they talk about monitoring, management, policy, initiatives or better education for the community” (P1). Another lecturer aims to “help them engage with the world… you know, a lot of the subjects we teach, they come in, it’s set out for them, they can google most of the stuff, they can write their stuff up, they can take a few photos, manipulate them a bit and they’re done. My aim is to see how I can get them to think more deeply about things” (P2). “If you give people respect for what is important to them and you listen to them, the way that the unit is designed is to nurture and scaffold them into thinking “What is important to me?”. So from the very outset, it’s treating them as a leader, someone that has agency” (P4). “It’s a win if a student comes away saying ‘I’d never considered this from that perspective.” (P5).
About the teaching academics’ touch points. Beyond disciplines, beyond the university
What were the teachers touch points or support systems? Where did they turn for inspiration and motivation? Partnerships, collaborations and networks, whether internal or external to the university, were seen as vital for inspiration, resources and inter/transdisciplinary pedagogical projects. In Christie et al’s. (Reference Christie, Miller, Cooke and White2015) comprehensive Australian study only 3.8% of respondents had mentioned interdisciplinarity as a strategy for EfS inclusion in their teaching and there was no mention of community partnerships. Ten years on, interconnectedness in all its forms has emerged in this study as a key teaching strategy, representing an important shift in thinking.
These partnerships were most often found beyond disciplinary silos and beyond the university. External collaborations included community groups, scientists, arts bodies, funding bodies, conferences, industry and local councils, as well as more-than-human entities such as a river. An important element was a solid and ongoing working relationship with collaborators. Internal university touchpoints included communities of practice (CoPs) and outreach collectives. There were informal and personal touchpoints such as specific colleagues and community connections – and even a random meeting in a lift that led to an interdisciplinary project! “So in the lift I pitched what I was about in 25 words or less, and they did the same. And we went on discuss a collaboration… That was a very short ride that turned into a project” (P6).
Three interviewees named their students as important touchpoints for inspiration and motivation. “The new students. This is the ultimate rejuvenation of the place.” (P1). Five interviewees reported using sustainability frameworks provided by the university, such as a Decadal Strategy and Sustainability Graduate Attributes, as conceptual touchpoints. Several interviewees noticed that research was in itself a source of insight and motivation.
Given the patchy uptake of United Nations (UN) generated ESD/EfS frameworks evidenced in the literature, there was an almost surprising enthusiasm amongst some of the interviewees for the UN SDG framework as a touchpoint. They used the SDGs in diverse ways: as a programme evaluation tool; mapping units to the SDGs as a curriculum review exercise; or simply as a useful and inspiring curricular framework. “… they’ve visualized something that makes it simple and clear, and … I think they’re brilliant, and they’re the bit that we should teach more.” (P2).
Several interviewees felt that teaching academics need better communication within and across disciplinary silos in the university. They need to know what others are doing in this space, in order to gain inspiration and a sense of shared purpose, but also to be able to scaffold and integrate what they are doing with the work of others. A unified front, remarked one respondent, would be useful in promoting this work in their School or across the university.
Academics’ experience of the university ecosystem. And do rankings matter?
The university was named #1 globally from 2022–2025 (inclusively) in the Times Higher Education Impact rankings, and some noted that this ranking had brought with it opportunities for resources, interdisciplinary collaborations and other institutional supports. “…institutionally, it’s great to be at the university from this perspective because we’re being rewarded – within the context of a broader neoliberal university environment we are competing in this area very well. And so that frees up resourcing, and so that’s great…We’ve gone beyond window dressing. You can’t be #1 and just have window dressing” (P3). One person commented on the acceptance of sustainability as business-as-usual in their discipline. “So every time the engineers had accreditation, they […] would bring us out and say, ‘Well, if you could respond on the sustainability and sustainable design and curriculum, that would be fantastic’. They’ve come full circle where sustainability is part of their programme” (P6).
Other institutional opportunities discussed were: awards and recognition; networks; theme champions; and CoP’s. While some of the respondents accessed these enablers, others either did not have the time to participate or were not sure how they functioned. “…recognition is nice but it’s not really what motivates me, and neither are awards. And universities are funny places, where awards take a lot of time and energy to apply for” (P5).
Reported disenablers within the institutional context reflected the broader literature on the topic: the neoliberal context with its attendant drivers and constraints on creativity and divergent thinking; external quality or accrediting professional frameworks as a roadblock to doing anything different; disciplinary silos as a constraint for the wilder thinking of inter and transdisciplinary work; and lack of time to collaborate and develop curriculum. Sometimes there was a lack of understanding and support for what these participants were doing within their own discipline. Finally, something like creating a co-design project with external community can meet with red-tape roadblocks through a lack of understanding amongst university middle management.
What then did teaching academics need from the institution? They needed to know that the university “has their back” – because their teaching and research, especially if it is transdisciplinary, is going to be embedded in the real world and is designed to change (disrupt) the world. Academics needed support (time, funding, recognition) to develop diverse and “ahead of the curve,” research-informed teaching. They needed scaffolding across their School and the university, so that they could build on each others work, not just replicate it. They needed assistance with funding and resources; implementation of SDGs beyond box-ticking; and professional development. They needed unifying one-off events – community celebrations, exhibitions, workshops that would unite and inspire. They needed understanding and support at all levels of the university: executive and middle management as well as academic colleagues. They needed more / better opportunities for communication with their peers.
Emergent themes as glowing data: Diversity, collaboration, hopefulness
Themes of diversity, emergence, and collaboration towards inter and transdisciplinarity jumped out as glowing data. Connectedness in all its forms was seen as an essential aspect of teaching. The ability to respond to the changing needs and contexts of students and their world was also essential, and exciting. If we experience life as relational and in process, then none of this this comes as a surprise. An overarching perception was that of the complexity of the teaching ecosystem, providing creative possibilities as well as challenges.
Diversity of practices as “agonistic pluralism”
What struck us in talking to these six academics was the plurality in all aspects of thinking about and teaching for sustainable futures: diverse understandings, usage of and responses to sustainability concepts; diverse pedagogical approaches; and diverse touch points for resources, inspiration and motivation. With Jones et al. (Reference Jones, Selby and Sterling2010) we could see the contestation of ideas and definitional vagueness as productive and integral to transformative learning. One of our interviewees introduced us to the agonistic pluralism of Chantelle Mouffe (Reference Mouffe2013), through which while accepting the inevitability of difference and contestation, we find a way to move forward together in a heuristic yet productive fashion. “…what’s the point of saying we’re going to have consensus? Because we fundamentally disagree. That’s the nature of the world. But what we do is get stuff done…instead of this world of antagonisms, which is unproductive, what we seem to do is we seem to get together and agree across difference” (P3).
This plurality leads to the questions: How can we better support diversity of pedagogy and curriculum, and productive contestation of ideas? How can we extend or re-envisage notions of best practice?
Teaching in a dynamic and emergent context. Real life, real time
These teachers developed curriculum and pedagogy responsive to the realities of both present and future life-worlds of students. They took care to tune into what students think and feel in the current environment, creating learning experiences through real-life, experiential and trans/interdisciplinary approaches. This responsiveness to the present life-worlds of students reflects the advice of John Dewey (1938/Reference Dewey1975), who advocated for using the present as a starting point, rather than a suppositional future, saying: “We always live at the time we live, and not for any other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future” (p. 14). The academics’ sense of responsibility and commitment to start from students’ current life-worlds was palpable.
How can we better connect to the life-worlds of our students, and equip them to move forwards? How can we imbricate present and futures perspectives in our teaching?
Partnerships, collaborations, networks
All the interviewees had a variety of connections, both within and outside of the university. Those connections are the basis of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. Extending one’s networks requires conversations within and across disciplines, at community events, in lifts - and takes time, often years, to develop. These academics expressed the need for support from the institution: time to talk to each other about what they are doing; time to work together on scaffolding learning to avoid repetition; and research funding directed to innovative and paradigm-shifting work. This sense of partnership also embraced more-than-human connections: the rivers, creatures, urban spaces, arts practices and industrial design materials that ground learning in the material world.
Several questions emerged from these expressed needs. What current structures, policies and organisational values obstruct the ability to develop productive partnerships, collaborations and networks? How can the university better support collaborative work? How can the institution ensure that managers and decision-makers at all levels are on board with this work?
Enthusiasm, optimism and hopefulness
The glowing data that jumped out most powerfully was the passion and commitment of our interviewees, along with the heterogeneity of their creative approaches and their commitment to meeting the life-worlds of their students. Our interviewees loved their subject matter and loved their students. Several interviewees explicitly expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to engage with sustainability through their teaching units. They had a strong commitment to continuous improvement, responding to current events in the world at large, and continually refreshing content and pedagogies. Their enthusiasm and creativity spoke to a sense of hopefulness.
How then do we support academics to maintain their creativity and that spirit of hopefulness?
Conclusion
This study addresses the gritty “bottom up” experiences of those teaching sustainability concepts in HE. The experience of teaching academics needs to continuously inform “the top down”: the policy, management, cultural, administrative and disciplinary aspects of the university ecosystem. These six academics were able to actualise creative possibilities for fostering eclectic approaches when engaging students on sustainability issues.
They structured real world learning where students could engage viscerally with culture, nature and the built environment; created diverse partnerships and connections; built agency and empowered students in thinking with their worlds; and looked to students and diverse more-than-human contexts for inspiration.
We were surprised and excited by the data that emerged from this exploratory study. As well as the practical strategies that emerged from the experience of these six academics, what also emerged were areas for further research. These include understanding and support of SE and pedagogies at all levels of the university, amongst both academics and professionals; working with/in community, through a diverse range of collaborations; and even the role of external rankings in driving/enabling teaching and learning.
A relational and process onto-epistemology as a theoretical foundation for interviews, provided a capacious platform for exploring the ecologies of teaching academics. It produced our thinking all the way through the research, analysis and representation. It enabled us to make a novel contribution to the literature in staying very close to the lived experience of individual academics in teaching sustainability, against a lack of this close attention in the literature. This research and its representation underlines the value of a posthumanist theoretical framing in enabling those visceral experiences to be surfaced and understood. Readers can access the immediate experience of six academics, and say “Ah, yes, this is what I experience!” Finally, pulling back from the specifics of this research, we do assert, through our experience of doing this work, the commensurability of a posthumanist framing, in enlivening qualitative interview methods.
In summary these teachers seemed to be enacting what Stephen Sterling (Reference Sterling2010) described as “an extended and participatory epistemology, a connective ontology and an integrative praxis, affording a deeply relational sense of what it is to be human at this most challenging of times” (p. 217). In the face of an uncertain world, the experience of these academics left us feeling hopeful for the role of HE in equiping students to navigate their uncertain futures.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the generous participation of our six interviewees. We also wish to acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by our anonymous reviewers.
Ethical statement
This research was conducted under Western Sydney University HREA Ethics Approval # H15698.
Financial support
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Author Biographies
Susan Germein is an Adjunct Fellow in the School of Education, Western Sydney University. Susan’s doctoral research was situated in a small girls’ school with a large community and environmental outreach program, in the Himalayan mountains of Uttarakhand. This posthumanist ethnography focused on sociomaterialities, affect and performativity in inhabiting place, with an emergent methodology of ethical intercultural research. Her current research interests span Education for Sustainability principles and practice; gender/water sustainability intersections in India, and transformative educational philosophies and pedagogies across transdisciplinary and transcultural spaces.
Annette Sartor is a Lecturer in the School of Education, and a member of the Education in the Anthropocene research group at Western Sydney University and the NSW Institute of Educational Research. Her research interests include sustainability education in higher and school education, teacher education, and planetary futures education and participatory action at a community level. She designs and implements innovative and interdisciplinary curriculum in sustainability and inclusive education, and is the recent recipient of a Western Sydney University Teaching Excellence Award and Senior Fellowship with Advance HE.
Jen Dollin is an Adjunct Fellow with the Institute of Culture and Society, Western Sydney University and a Senior Advisor at international development agency Institute for Study and Development. She has over 20 years’ experience of working with grassroots community groups and developing participatory, innovative approaches to collaborating with diverse human and more-than-human communities. Her research interests focus on multispecies ethnography, transdisciplinary and transformative learning and ecofeminism.
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