from the core curriculum, or may even be seen to threaten academic objectivity and liberty. Even where such high‐level objectives as tackling social justice exist at a university or program level, few courses teach strategies for engaging in social change (Brinkman and Hirsch 2019), highlighting the potential, and we would argue, need, for more development of activist learning opportunities across the formal, non‐formal/informal, and hidden curriculum domains.
2.1.3 Aim
This chapter explores the concept of “activist learning for sustainability,” drawing on staff reflections and student interviews of a student‐led project to explore and promote “sustainable student living.” Reflecting on the experiences of this project and related literature, the chapter considers the students' motivations and experiences of the project, the students' learning and development, the role of the formal, informal, and hidden curricula in creating campus‐based activist learning opportunities for students, and considerations of staff and student interactions across the public and private spheres of student life and campus‐based activism. The chapter concludes with recommendations for ESD practitioners engaging with the development of activist learning opportunities.
2.2 Methodology and Case Description
2.2.1 Case Description: The Sustainable Student House
The Sustainable Student House (SSH) project was conceived by four first‐year students of a sustainability‐focused undergraduate degree at Keele University, UK in 2010. These students expressed that they wanted the opportunity to live on the university campus in a more sustainable way than they felt was possible in traditional student halls, and they particularly wanted a space to grow food. With encouragement and coaching from their course directors, the students wrote a proposal detailing their vision and presented it to university management. After several months of lobbying and negotiation, they were permitted to rent a 1960s bungalow on the campus for the following academic year.
The designated bungalow had four bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen, and a large garden. It had no specific eco‐efficient features or credentials prior to the project. Transforming it into a genuinely more SSH involved a significant amount of work indoors and out. This included establishing a vegetable garden with raised beds, a polytunnel, and a compost heap, supported by alumni funding and labor from student volunteers organized by the students themselves.
To make changes to the interior of the house, the students gained sponsorship from an energy company who donated energy‐saving appliances, and then installed other small energy‐saving measures, such as reflective radiator backing. The university also installed new double‐glazed windows and a new, more efficient boiler. With a view to making the bungalow a learning space for visitors, the students posted signs and labels around the house explaining different aspects of sustainable living and the environmental (and financial) savings that could be made from different measures.
Beyond making their living space as sustainable as possible, a key objective of the students was to make an impact on the wider student community. They communicated the project via a website, a blog, articles in the student magazine, and social media. Over recent years, housemates have utilized Facebook to reach the student population and created an Instagram account, regularly producing video content and collaborating with university social media teams to do “takeovers” of the main university Instagram account. The house itself has become an important hub and meeting space for student activities, bringing students together to organize new sustainability‐related projects. The project has attracted media attention (e.g. Zoo and Steed 2019), and the university uses the project to promote the university's sustainability activities. The project is still active at the time of writing.
In the first few years of the project, only students from the undergraduate sustainability or environmental science program were invited to apply to live in the SSH. However, in later years, to make the opportunity available for a wider range of students, students from other disciplines were invited to apply, although in order to maintain connection with the curriculum, a minimum of one “environmental student” was required. Applications were viewed preferentially if they came from groups of four students rather than individuals to ensure that the students in the house would get along and be willing to collaborate on projects.
Existing literature about sustainable student housing (e.g. Hassanain 2008; Watson et al. 2015) or sustainability within student housing (e.g. Parrott et al. 2011; Li et al. 2015; Botsaris et al. 2021) tends to focus on the implementation and effectiveness of sustainable technologies in student residences and environmental impacts of student behaviors. However, equally important is understanding how the non‐formal and informal learning about and for sustainability that inevitably takes place in student housing can shape the extent to which students are and feel competent to enact pro‐sustainability changes in their lives and professional work in future.
The SSH differs from the norm in sustainable student housing developments in that the house itself is not inherently sustainable. Many sustainable student housing projects do not principally consider the dwellers as active agents of change within their own living space. Instead, the spaces are designed to be environmentally friendly both architecturally and technologically (e.g. the HSB Living Lab at Chalmers University, University of Victoria's Sustainable Student Housing and Dining). As most graduates will be unlikely to move into the few eco‐friendly homes on the market, and do not have access to funds to build such a home even if they would like to, it is much more likely that they will live in rented accommodation (Knight Frank Research and UCAS 2020) with limited opportunity for environmentally friendly retrofitting and minimal eco‐friendly features. Living in the SSH, therefore, provides students with opportunities to learn from experiences they will be more likely to encounter in post‐university homes following completion of their degree.
2.2.2 Method
We used a single, holistic, descriptive case study (Yin 2003) focusing on the SSH to describe an instance of sustainable student living as a potential example of activist learning. Given that using on‐campus housing for activist learning is relatively unique, the case can be considered a revelatory case (Yin 2003). We draw on two main sources of information for our analysis: interviews with students who were residents in the bungalow and reflections from the authors who have been closely involved in the project.
The interviews were carried out in 2012 with five students, two of whom were involved in setting up the project and lived in the house in the first year of the project (2010–2011), and three who lived in the house in the second year of the project (2011–2012).
We (the authors) have relevant reflections, having worked with the SSH in a professional capacity. Robinson was one of the Course Directors that supported students in their interactions with the university when initially securing access to the house, and in working with the early years of the project. She has also led research and dissemination related to the project and advised and supported the Project Officers who became more closely involved in the project. As a result of her role in the project and as teacher to students on the undergraduate sustainability course, she was able to observe both students' learning associated with the SSH and how the project was perceived by academic, operational, and student support staff.
Laycock Pedersen supported managing the SSH as a Sustainability Project Officer between 2013 and 2015. This mainly included supporting students with gardening activities, organizing tours of the house, and helping with the transition between groups of housemates. She conducted her doctoral research about student‐led food growing projects that focused on a related project (see Laycock Pedersen 2019), which meant that the SSH came up in some interviews she conducted. While these interviews were not analyzed for this chapter, they provided depth of understanding into the project.
Between 2014 and 2017, Briggs was a student of the sustainability‐focused undergraduate program that gave rise to the SSH. She did not live in the SSH during her studies; however, she was engaged in SSH activities, such as gardening and social events. Following her studies, she became a university‐employed Sustainability Project Officer (her current role at the time of writing). In this