Empowering Student Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education: Looking Internally to Find Ways to Foster Change Agents

Many HEIs struggle to find meaningful ways to include students in the journey of integrating sustainability and fostering student leadership for SD. The TLS framework (Cavagnaro and Curiel, 2012) emphasizes the need for taking responsibility and accepting the role of a change agent for sustainability. Students can be apt to take on this role as change agent for SD want to engage, but peripheral roles, disregard for their “lay” knowledge, and lack of space to take responsibility can inhibit their engagement in SD in HEI. HEIs need to engage student populations from the beginning of their higher education career by informing them of the HEI perspective, respecting and meaningfully incorporating their insights through engagement interfaces, incorporating SD early enough in their curricula—by means of student-activating learning, and by creating space for students to take on responsibilities for SD within the context of the HEI and beyond. The learning potential of volunteerism and active, out-of-class activities needs to be further explored and exploited by HEIs. Modern day student perceptions of SD are sophisticated, and require a holistic approach that recognizes the complex interactions of the three pillars of sustainability. In this paper, the collaboration between a Belgian HEI and a European student network was explored in an attempt to extrapolate concrete actions that allow HEIs to actively engage students for SD.

Jaar van publicatie:2013

Toegankelijkheid:Open