Meaning-making in higher education for sustainable development: undergraduates’ long-term processes of experiencing and learning

Abstract

Despite the increase in teaching approaches designed to integrate sustainability into higher education, the connection between students’ learning experiences and their learning outcomes remains incompletely understood. The present multi-case study complements the discussion by investigating undergraduates’ long-term meaning-making processes using the theoretical lens of significant learning and process analysis of students’ learning experience. Based on in-depth narrative interviews with 10 students at the end of a three-year study program, we analyzed how and why learning experiences become significant, differentiating perceived personal impact and the subjective value assigned to these experiences. We identified three types of sustainability-related meaning-making processes, ranging from no sustainability-related meaning-making to meaning-making as self-realization. The differentiated view on how meaning-making mediates students’ sustainability-related learning experiences and their learning outcomes enhances our understanding of the specific dynamics that may shape the how and why of significant learning. It thus supports the tailored curriculum design for integrating sustainability into higher education.

Keywords:

• Significant learning
• higher education for sustainable development
• meaning-making
• narrative interviews
• process analysis
• learning experiences

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Gerd Michelsen for making this empirical study possible. The authors also acknowledge Daniel Fischer for feedback on an early version of the questionnaire. Additional thanks to Pauline Kohlhase for her support in data collection, as well as to all participants for taking part in this study.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding details

The first author gratefully acknowledges funding from the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research through a Writing-Up Fellowship while preparing this manuscript.

Notes

1 A module in the three-year study program has the function of an organizational unit that combines individual courses, in this case a lecture, tutorials, and a project seminar from the subject area of sustainability.

2 In this study, a seminar is a learning activity in a smaller group (up to 30 people), which serves the more interactive acquisition and/or production of knowledge. Learning objectives of seminars often go beyond the mere transfer of knowledge and tend to focus on competence acquisition.

3 Lectures are understood as learning activities in which lecturers aim to transmit knowledge to students by means of speaking in front of an audience in a transmissive manner. These lectures are sometimes, but not always, supported by interactive elements such as questions to the plenum, discussion rounds or assignments.

4 A tutorial is a supporting and accompanying course to a lecture or seminar, which serves to deepen and repeat content from the lecture and seminars with hands-on exercises. The tutors are students, who are more advanced in their studies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Sundermann

Anna Sundermann is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Psychology and Education Sustainability at Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany) and a member of the Research Group Sustainable Consumption and Sustainability Communication (SuCo2; https://suco2.com). Her research focuses on the analysis of students’ learning processes in (Higher) Education for Sustainable Development. Anna Sundermann is the corresponding author and can be contacted at [email protected].

Annika Weiser

Annika Weiser has a background in sustainability science. She is affiliated with the Institute for Sustainable Development and Learning (ISDL) at Leuphana University and a postdoctoral researcher at Leuphana College. Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary study entry phase of the Leuphana Semester as well as transdisciplinary processes of learning and collaborating at the science-society interface.

Matthias Barth

Matthias Barth is President of the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development and guest professor at the Institute for Sustainable Development and Learning at Leuphana University. In his research he is interested in formal and informal sustainability learning.