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Making the hidden curriculum visible:

sustainability literacy in higher
education
a a
Jennie Winter & Debby Cotton
a
Teaching and Learning Directorate, Pedagogic Research Institute
and Observatory (PEDRIO), Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK
Published online: 13 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Jennie Winter & Debby Cotton (2012) Making the hidden curriculum visible:
sustainability literacy in higher education, Environmental Education Research, 18:6, 783-796, DOI:
10.1080/13504622.2012.670207

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 Environmental Education Research
Vol. 18, No. 6, December 2012, 783–796

Making the hidden curriculum visible: sustainability literacy in

higher education
Jennie Winter* and Debby Cotton

Teaching and Learning Directorate, Pedagogic Research Institute and Observatory

(PEDRIO), Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK
Downloaded by [Temple University Libraries] at 06:19 21 September 2013

(Received 4 October 2011; final version received 13 February 2012)

Despite strong political support for the development of sustainability literacy

amongst the UK graduates, embedding sustainability in the higher education
curriculum has met with widespread indifference, and in some cases, active resis-
tance. However, opportunities exist beyond the formal curriculum for engaging
students in learning about sustainability. Previous research has highlighted the
potential of the university campus for experiential, place-based learning about
and for sustainability. This has been conceptualised as the ‘informal’ curriculum,
consisting of extra-curricular activities and student projects linking estates and
operations to formal study. However, the impact of the so-called ‘hidden curricu-
lum’ (the implicit messages a university sends about sustainability through the
institutional environment and values) has been overlooked as a potential
influence on student learning and behaviour. This article reports on a small-scale
research project which utilised a phenomenographic approach to explore
students’ perceptions of the ‘hidden sustainability curriculum’ at a leading sus-
tainability university. The findings suggest that helping students deconstruct the
hidden campus curriculum may enhance aspects of sustainability literacy; devel-
oping students’ understanding about sustainability and creating solutions to
sustainability issues, enabling evaluative dialogue around campus sustainability
and also self-reflection, which could be transformative and translate into pro-
environmental behaviour change. This research is transferable to other contexts.
Keywords: campus; hidden curriculum; pedagogy; sustainability literacy

Introduction
In the UK, education for sustainable development (ESD) has become, at least in
policy terms, an established feature on the higher education (HE) landscape (HEA
2006; HEFCE 2005, 2009; HM Government 2005). Internationally, the United
Nations ‘Decade of education for sustainable development’ (DESD) (UN 2005–
2014) has provided a focus for development of educational programmes around sus-
tainability. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO 2005) states as an over-arching goal of the DESD, the need to integrate
the values of sustainable development into all aspects of learning and, ultimately,
encourage changes in behaviours. However, this goal is neither uncontroversial nor
unproblematic. Many early studies exploring the potential for education to change
students’ attitudes, using Likert scales before and after an educational intervention

*Corresponding author. Email: jennie.winter@plymouth.ac.uk

ISSN 1350-4622 print/ISSN 1469-5871 online

Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2012.670207
http://www.tandfonline.com
 784 J. Winter and D. Cotton

(see e.g. Uzzell 1999, and the review by Rickinson 2001) found contradictory
results, and lasting effects were rarely demonstrated. Moreover, implementation of
policies relating to ESD has been fraught with challenges: ESD has proved to be a
contentious agenda which has met with indifference and even resistance in some
quarters, primarily on the grounds of institutional and academic freedom (see e.g.
Knight 2005).
This has resulted in a gap between the political will to promote ESD and the
reality of teaching and learning development around sustainability in universities
(Dawe, Jucker, and Martin 2005).
One salient example of this rhetoric-reality gap is the extent to which sustain-
ability literacy has been embedded into HE curricula. Sustainability literacy is an
umbrella term for the perspectives and insights that enable students to ‘understand
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the symbiotic relationships between environmental, social and economic dimensions

of sustainable development’ (Parkin et al. 2004, 9). It has been argued that this is
essential for graduates’ understanding of, and capacity to cope with, the characteris-
tics of post-modern society such as climate change, social inequality, resource
depletion and the interlinked nature of these challenges (Sterling 2012). Moreover,
the UK Government has identified sustainability literacy as a ‘core competency for
professional graduates’ (HM Government 2005, 16). This emphasis on competency
is significant, since it suggests that learning solely about sustainability is insufficient
and that sustainability literacy must take into consideration students’ attitudes and
dispositions in order to develop their strategies for reasoned decision-making
(Moore 2005; Sterling 2012).
However, the key elements of sustainability literacy are somewhat disputed
(Parkin et al. 2004; Stibbe and Luna 2009). For the purposes of this article, we use
the description proposed by the HE Academy (Dawe, Jucker, and Martin 2005, 58)
which sets out the key knowledge and skills that graduates should attain in order to
contribute to a sustainable future. These include:

• Appreciation of the importance of environmental, social, political and

economic contexts for each discipline.
• A broad and balanced foundation knowledge of sustainable development, its
key principles and the main debates within them.
• Problem-solving skills in a non-reductionist manner for highly complex real-
life problems.
• Ability to think creatively and holistically and to make critical judgements.
• Ability to develop a high level of self-reflection.
• Ability to understand, evaluate and adopt values conducive to sustainability.
• Ability to bridge the gap between theory and practice; in sustainable develop-
ment, only transformational action counts.
• Ability to participate creatively in inter-disciplinary teams.
• Ability to initiate and manage change.

It is apparent that many of the elements of sustainability literacy are closely aligned
with other preferred graduate attributes (Yorke and Harvey 2005), suggesting that
its development may have wider student benefits. In addition, the inclusion of sus-
tainability literacy into the accreditation requirements of professional bodies has led
to increased infusion into certain areas of the HE curriculum and there is evidence
that students believe that skills for sustainable development will be important for
 Environmental Education Research 785

their future employers (Bone and Agombar 2011). For these reasons, universities
are coming under increasing pressure to incorporate sustainability into their teaching
and other activities and, as higher education funding council for England (HEFCE)
note, ‘There is a clear niche in the academic marketplace for institutions that wish
to champion sustainability ...’ (HEFCE 2009, 35).
Nonetheless, Lugg (2007, 102) argues that pursuing sustainability literacy poses
‘structural and cultural challenges for HE Institutions’. There is evidence of aca-
demic resistance to the term and to the notion of teaching about an area which can
be conceived as ideological (Butcher 2007). Encouraging students to adopt sustain-
ability values and promoting ‘transformational action’ can be problematic in the
context of the liberal educational ideals of HE. This is illustrated by the tension
between ‘educating for sustainability’ whilst encouraging autonomous thinking and
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self-determination, outlined by Wals and Jickling (2002). Other issues which have
hampered wider development of sustainability literacy in HE include uncertainty
about the meaning of the term; lack of time in the curriculum; the association of
time intensive, participatory and experiential pedagogy with ESD; and concerns
about the relevance of sustainability to certain disciplines (Cotton and Winter 2010;
Scott and Gough 2004; Velazquez, Munguia, and Sanchez 2005). This has led to
the situation where integration of sustainability in the formal curriculum is ‘patchy’
888(Dawe, Jucker, and Martin 2005), and where ‘more and more we are seeing the
word sustainability being added to the titles of programs, projects, activities, depart-
ments or units – however, few have actually been redesigned to address new social
learning approaches’ (Tilbury 2007, 119).
In response to the limitations posed by academic attitudes and disciplinary silos
which hinder the embedding of sustainability literacy in the formal curriculum,
enthusiasts have increasingly turned to other spaces where students share access
and experiences, the most prominent of which is the university campus. Like other
organisations, universities struggle to reconcile the challenges that sustainability
poses because of the complexities inherent in maintaining large organisations. This
is manifested through the physical campus and impacts on students’ informal learn-
ing about sustainability (Winter et al. 2012). Recognising links between informal
and formal learning for sustainability can help to mitigate Hopkinson, Hughes and
Layer (2008, 439) observation that ‘the student experience at most universities
typically has a fragmented connection of the values, ideals and practical aspects of
living, studying or working in a sustainable way’. This is also evidenced by
Kagawa (2007, 320) who suggests the campus as a possible catalyst for exemplify-
ing the interconnectedness of social, economic and environmental interests creating
a ‘sustainability orientated pedagogy of place’. The campus can therefore provide a
subject-neutral forum through which sustainability can be experienced, discussed,
critiqued and reflected upon regardless of the ‘limitations of [disciplinary] tunnel
vision’ (Jucker 2002, 13).
What has been less widely discussed as contributing to (or sometimes detracting
from) ESD and sustainability literacy is the ‘hidden curriculum’ (Jackson 1968).
The hidden curriculum describes the divergence between what is overtly taught in
educational institutions and what students actually learn: described as ‘the unpubli-
cised features of school life’ by Jackson (1968, 17). In HE, this may consist of the
values and beliefs of the institution or the individual lecturers which are uncon-
sciously transmitted to the student, or impact on the institutional environment,
thereby affecting student learning. In the case of sustainability, these impacts may
 786 J. Winter and D. Cotton

be largely negative: Orr (2004) notes that irrespective of what students are taught
through the formal curriculum, institutions often conduct their business and estates
management unsustainably, a fact that is visibly manifested through the campus.
This may mean that students receive incompatible messages about sustainability
from different dimensions of their experiences at a Higher Education Institution
(HEI) (see Djordjevic and Cotton [2011] for a discussion of the impact of ‘noise’
on communication around sustainability). To date, however, there has been little
research which investigates the impact of the hidden curriculum as it relates to sus-
tainability. This research therefore, although small scale, offers a new perspective
on ESD in HE.
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The current study

The research reported here was undertaken at the Plymouth University, UK, a ‘new
university’ (one which gained university status in 1992) with approximately 30,000
students, and with a nationally recognised reputation for sustainability: In 2010, it
was awarded the No. 1 ranking for the People and Planet ‘Green League’ for envi-
ronmental performance, and it has been consistently ranked in the top 10 since the
League began in 2005 (People and Planet 2011). Whilst it is possible to critique
this rating, the university has also received other awards for corporate social respon-
sibility, a recent ‘Green Gown’ for continuous improvement, and it is home to the
Centre for Sustainable Futures which originated as one of the HEFCE funded cen-
tres for excellence in teaching and learning focused on ESD. The university is sited
on a relatively compact city centre campus, with a wide range of buildings dating
from the early nineteenth century, to those constructed in the last few years. As
such, the institution provides a fruitful context for exploring student perceptions of
sustainability on campus. Although this is a single case study and we must there-
fore be cautious about making wider claims, the relative paucity of studies in this
area, combined with the specific context within which we were working, suggest
that this research has the potential to contribute to wider pedagogical debates.

Methodology
The primary aim of the research was to:

• Identify how the hidden curriculum of the campus influences students’ con-
ceptions of sustainability.

An instrumental case study approach (Stake 1995) was used to explore the issue of
sustainability on campus in a single HEI. The case study approach, using qualitative
methods, aimed to capture the ‘essence and ambience’ of the context, the ‘mean-
ings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols and descriptions of
things’ (Berg 2001, 3). The intention was to understand student perspectives in an
open-ended manner with the researchers’ influence being minimised as far as possi-
ble. The research therefore used a broadly ethnographic approach, with a focus on
students as participant observers in their own context in an attempt to gain access
to the hidden curriculum of campus sustainability that they were exposed to.
Students were identified to assist with the study via email requests distributed by
academics in a range of disciplines. Of those who responded to this call, six were
 Environmental Education Research 787

recruited to represent: Stage 1 only (to minimise the impact of time in HE); and to
provide perspectives from a range of disciplinary contexts (computer science,
international relations, law and geography). These students were given a small
honorarium for participation.
The student researchers were given a limited brief which deliberately did not
include a definition of sustainability; this was left to their discretion since we were
interested in exploring their interpretations rather than imposing our own. They
were given a number of tasks, including recording their observations of sustainabil-
ity on campus. Students’ initial observations were recorded using video cameras,
and their experiences were later explored further through semi-structured interviews.
The use of video has many advantages with a student population: students respond
well to the medium, are generally familiar with the technology, and can produce
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very rich data, largely untainted by the researcher’s own perspective up to the point
of interpretation (see Cotton, Stokes, and Cotton 2010). Students were requested to
make videos with a verbal commentary on their observations about sustainability as
they walked around the campus. They were also asked to video interview up to two
friends about sustainability on campus, in order to get a broader base of opinions
with which to inform the interview schedule. Finally, they were asked to provide a
brief video summary about what they had learnt through making the video. Students
were given three weeks to complete these tasks.
After a preliminary analysis of the videos, including the video interviews by the
academic researchers, an interview schedule was devised which sought to investi-
gate key themes emerging from the student data. Participants were invited to attend
an interview (of up to 1 h) which used a form of ‘stimulated recall’, in which short
clips from the video were replayed. Stimulated recall is an approach which aims to
aid recollection of events and perceptions by being presented with ‘a large number
of the clues or stimuli which occurred during the original situation’ (Bloom 1953,
164). In this context, the aim was to remind students about the research context
(which was some time earlier) and to assist them in recalling their thoughts and
feelings about sustainability on campus. Whilst the risk of ‘post hoc rationalisation’
(Yinger 1986) is difficult to avoid, the advantages in terms of depth of response
were felt to outweigh any disadvantages.
The data were analysed using a broadly phenomenographic approach. Phenom-
enography aims to describe and categorise variations in individuals’ experiences
and understandings of phenomena (Marton 1994). As such, we set out to identify
and categorise the qualitatively different experiences of students regarding campus
based sustainability, and also to identify different levels of complexity in their
conceptions of sustainability on campus. Marton (1986, 30) suggests that ‘each
phenomenon, concept or principle can be understood in a limited number of quali-
tatively different ways’ and that these differences have a logical relationship rang-
ing from ‘less inclusive’ categories to ‘more inclusive’ categories. The stages of
analysis involved transcribing interview data fully, entering them into N-VIVO 8
qualitative data analysis software and developing categories inductively, but with
reference to the research questions and literature. Using the constant comparative
method (Silverman 2005), similarities and differences in conceptions were drawn
out and data in each category were checked against each other, through an itera-
tive process of reading and re-reading data, looking for similarities and differences
between accounts and specific references to the strengths and weaknesses of sus-
tainability on campus. This approach to analysis allowed us to draw out key con-
 788 J. Winter and D. Cotton

ceptions of sustainability exhibited by our student researchers. Although the small

sample size inhibits generalisability, Hammersley (1998) suggests that it is possible
to use qualitative data to theorise about the possible wider applicability of findings
by using ‘theoretical inference’. Any theoretical understanding thus produced
should be considered provisional in nature and would benefit from further
investigation.

Findings
The different conceptions of sustainability on campus exhibited by our student
participants are described as a series of layers, outlined below. The layers are con-
sidered to be hierarchical in nature, and are presented in order, starting with the
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simplest conception and concluding with the most complex. Note that the categories
refer to expressed conceptions, not to individual students. Many students expressed
a range of different conceptions in the videos and interviews. The findings below
are based primarily on the conceptions of the six participant researchers rather than
the wider group of students interviewed – although the video interviews were used
to develop questions for the group of student researchers.

Critique of local practices

This was a very widespread starting point in students’ understanding of sustainabil-
ity on campus. All student researchers were able to identify many examples of both
sustainable and unsustainable practices around the university.

Sustainable practices
Recycling bins; energy efficient lighting; provision of bike racks; sale of fair trade
goods in cafes and the shop; automated taps; the use of electric vehicles by estates
staff and the sustainable design evident in some buildings.

Unsustainable practices
Littering and the volume of paper waste; misuse of recycling bins; energy ineffi-
ciency through excessive lighting, heating and powering computers (and the role of
building design in compounding these); water inefficiency through non-automated
taps, old toilet cisterns and hand dryers.
However, there was also evidence of some confusion and misconceptions about
certain practices: for example, whether automated or manual taps were the most
sustainable or whether revolving doors used less energy than automated opening
doors. Participants unanimously reported that although the university was clearly
taking steps to embed sustainability principles in its campus and operations, the
mixed evidence they observed raised questions about the seriousness with which
the university was pursuing this agenda:

The University campus is well on the way to becoming a sustainable campus but there
is a lot more conscious effort that needs to happen. (Law student)
 Environmental Education Research 789

You can see that they are trying to do something but I think they can do a hell of a
lot more. (International Relations student)

It was evident that although participants’ initial perceptions of sustainability were

focused on the environmental dimension (particularly energy efficiency and recy-
cling), the process of making the videos led them to think about the wider aspects
of sustainability such as sustainable procurement. However, many struggled to
observe examples of economic or social sustainability in the campus environment.
This level of understanding was very much focused on the immediate campus envi-
ronment, and strengths and weaknesses of current practices, rather than thinking
about the university’s role in a wider sense.
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Critique of the university as a learning institution

Four of the student researchers moved beyond a critique of their immediate campus
environment to develop a broader conception of campus sustainability as an issue
of importance to the university as a learning institution. These students noted wider
issues which were less obviously visible on campus, including access to education,
inclusivity and the quality of learning spaces. Participants were also critical about
how sustainability issues were communicated through the campus environment,
which they felt ought to constitute an important part of wider informal learning
about sustainability. Although they identified isolated posters about recycling, free-
range animal produce and energy efficiently around the campus, they were unable
to identify any sense of sustainability being part of either the core business of the
university or part of a purposive projected identity. It was evident in the interviews
that none of the participants were aware of the university’s external track record in
sustainability. Participants were surprised when informed about the university’s sus-
tainability credentials:

All the things I found … .it’s not like students would realise that is sustainable … I
don’t feel like there is a big message being sent or anything. (Geography student)

I didn’t see much information around the uni, in fact I did not see anything and I was
looking specifically for things so you have to make it more obvious for people to rea-
lise. (Geography student)

This provoked critique about how the university as an organisation communicated

sustainability to the student population.

The university should work on promoting what it is doing to students rather than just
having it going on in the background, all the external stuff seems to be a priority.
(International relations student)

Reflection on students’ own role in sustainability issues

A third conception was identified with respect to students’ personal engagement
with sustainability on campus. The process of making the videos encouraged four
of the participants to think creatively about what they observed and unprompted, to
suggest solutions for the sustainability ‘problems’ they encountered on campus. It
 790 J. Winter and D. Cotton

was clear that there were some aspects of unsustainable practice which occurred as
a result of student actions (not using recycling bins correctly, or ignoring energy-
saving measures), and participants suggested improvements to information provision
and communication which might change their behaviours and those of their peers.
Suggestions for improvements included embedding ESD to a greater degree in the
formal curriculum, sustainability focused campaigns, increased information provi-
sion and the purposive promotion of pro-environmental behaviour within the cam-
pus environment.
However, whilst reflecting on their own role in sustainability on campus, it was
also clear that students felt largely excluded from university decision-making (an
indicator of the challenges of introducing the more democratic elements of sustain-
ability within hierarchical institutions). Apart from being encouraged to recycle, par-
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ticipants for the most part felt disempowered, at least at the start of the study:

I don’t really feel like students have much control on campus. What we can do just
seems really minor in the scheme of things compared to what they’re using all the
excess energy for. (Law student)

There is not much say that students have about the way the Uni is run really. (Interna-
tional Relations student)

Do you feel you have a voice about sustainability at the university?

No, because I would not know how to, maybe there needs to be a way for us [stu-
dents] to express our opinion and ideas, but I would not know how or where to do
that. (Geography student)

Change in perspective and transformational action

The final conception concerned an emerging awareness amongst four students of
their own potential for action and influence with respect to sustainability on cam-
pus. This enhanced awareness impacted not only on their actions at university but
also in their wider lives, and illustrates the potential of university education for
encouraging behavioural change:

Because I’ve seen it and filmed it and questioned people its proper drummed into my
head now so it’s like made me really more aware of it now, like even at home I’ve
asked my Mum and Dad ‘oh what light bulbs do you use?’ and things like that so
yeah, it has made me like much more aware. It’s made me realise how easy it is just
to change little simple actions, so yeah it has made me try much more. (Geography
student)

The role of students as participant researchers in this project seems to have played
a key role in enabling transformative learning about sustainability. Participants inter-
viewed up to two other students about their perceptions and experiences of sustain-
ability in the campus environment. This encouraged dialogue around values,
attitudes and beliefs about sustainability which prompted both student researcher
and interviewee to reflect on their own assumptions.
Did making the video impact on your own behaviour at all?
 Environmental Education Research 791

It did actually, especially at the end when I was making a list of bullet points for my
conclusion, I thought that it whatever I have said it is a bit hypocritical of me to pick
up on it and not do anything so I have actually started doing those things. (Computer
Science student)

And there is one more thing I have to do before leaving this not very sustainable room
and that is to switch the light off! (Law student: video transcript)

Notably, there was an increasing sense of self-efficacy expressed by some students

towards the end of the study, and this impacted upon their behaviour at university
and at home. An unexpected finding of the study was the way in which giving
students a task which was, in essence, a structured reflection on their everyday
environment had the potential to become a transformative learning experience (see
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Mezirow (1997, 2000) for details of how critical self-reflection is a key characteris-
tic of transformative education).

Discussion
This study set out to investigate students’ conceptions of sustainability on campus.
We identified a range of different, and increasingly complex, conceptions which can
be summarised as follows: awareness of immediate context – sustainable and unsus-
tainable features of the campus; awareness of the wider context of the university as
a learning institution; awareness of their own role within that university community;
and awareness of the potential for action within that sphere. It is clear that the more
complex conceptions are indicative of the types of skills required for sustainability
literacy, including self reflection, critical analysis and transformational action (see
Dawe, Jucker, and Martin 2005), as well as the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy
(Bloom 1956). This suggests that learning through the campus has the potential to
promote sustainability literacy in students from a range of different disciplines, and
lends weight to Orr’s (2004) claim that the conduct of the university as an organisa-
tion is critical to students’ wider learning experiences. The fact that students were
mainly unaware of the university’s sustainability credentials, and that they felt lar-
gely excluded from university decision-making, is indicative of the potential impact
of the hidden curriculum on students’ understandings of sustainability.
However, there are limits to the claims which we can make about students’
informal learning based upon this study. The reason for this is that it became
increasingly clear that student understandings were being significantly developed
through their participation in the research. It is reasonable to assume that the initial
indications from the videos are indicative of students’ everyday perceptions of sus-
tainability on campus (identification of sustainable and unsustainable practices, etc.)
and the later and more complex conceptions were about personal responsibility
motivated by the structured reflection encouraged by their roles as researchers on
the project. Although this makes interpretation problematic in the light of our initial
aim, the research does reveal an unanticipated finding about the considerable poten-
tial for using this approach explicitly within teaching and learning with a view to
developing sustainability literacy. This could be used as a pedagogic approach by
lecturers in a range of different disciplines to stimulate debate on sustainability.
Revisiting the key knowledge and skills outlined in the introduction (HEA 2006), it
appears that making explicit the hidden sustainability curriculum could enable:
 792 J. Winter and D. Cotton

• development of students’ understanding and appreciation of sustainability to

include economic and social dimensions;
• evaluative dialogue about barriers and drivers to sustainable development in
the university campus;
• creative, solutions focused thinking about current unsustainable practices; and
• self-reflection which could be transformative and translate into pro-
environmental behaviour change.

Indeed, this research suggests exciting possibilities for enhancing aspects of sus-
tainability literacy across student populations otherwise fragmented by disciplinary
experience. Encouraging students to critically analyse and evaluate the messages
being sent by an institution can potentially raise awareness of sustainability prac-
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tices and encourage dialogue about personal responsibility. It also provides oppor-
tunities for enhanced student engagement (although note should be taken of the
difficulties which these students expressed in understanding how to enact change
within the institution). The campus provides a convenient case study for exploring
the ways in which sustainability is manifested, communicated and valued in a
large organisation and can foster transformative learning through critique and
reflection.
There are, however, a number of barriers which might limit the potential for util-
isation of transformative learning approaches – primarily relating to staff and student
enthusiasm for such learning. Increasingly, educators suggest that specific teaching
approaches are crucial to ESD, with Lugg (2007, 108) noting ‘interdisciplinary,
experiential, holistic pedagogy’ as being key to developing sustainability literacy.
Moreover, Mezirow (2003, 62) notes that education concerned with transformation
requires ‘direct intervention by the educator to foster the development of the skills,
insights and especially dispositions essential for critical reflection’. Although this
research suggests that students from a range of disciplinary contexts could be
encouraged to deconstruct the hidden curriculum in this way, the matter of where
such an activity would sit in relation to a specific programme remains. Whilst advo-
cates of ESD have argued that it can be linked to any subject area (Hopkinson,
Hughes, and Layer 2008; Roberts and Roberts 2007), perceived disciplinary rele-
vance is a recognised barrier to embedding ESD in the curriculum (Dawe, Jucker,
and Martin 2005). An alternative approach would be to develop sustainability liter-
acy as part of the co-curriculum (optional modules outside the usual programme of
study), or through personal tutoring or Student Union activities. This would enable
students to experience teaching by academics from outside their discipline, for exam-
ple, estates staff or other students. However, there is a risk that uptake of these learn-
ing experiences would be patchy, unless there was a significant institutional drive for
all students to take part. This would require a change from current practice, since it
is rare for HEIs to integrate different curricula dimensions in a ‘systematic or com-
prehensive way’ (Hopkinson, Hughes, and Layer 2008, 437).
There are, moreover, characteristics of the student population which may impact
on willingness and capacity to develop sustainability literacy. Arguably, an increas-
ingly consumerist HE culture promotes a student body which is results driven and
prone to followership in order to optimise value for money (Becher and Trowler
2001). Research has consistently established that students (as staff), struggle to
understand sustainability and tend to perceive it unidimensionally in relation to the
environment (Bone and Agombar 2011; Kagawa 2007), rendering it ‘troublesome
 Environmental Education Research 793

knowledge’ (Hall 2011) and therefore unattractive to many students. The process of
deconstructing the hidden curriculum entails complex learning experiences which
utilise critical reflection and may not sit well with outcome-focused students search-
ing for certainty. Those students who do not perceive sustainability as relevant may
argue that sustainability literacy is not an appropriate part of their HE experience
(Baumgartner 2001). Indeed, the student critic may point out that having their
frames of reference (Mezirow 2003) transformed in favour of sustainability literacy,
may in fact disadvantage them in terms of individual and economic advancement
within an economic milieu that remains dominated by individualism and laissez
faire market economics.
Nonetheless, drivers towards greater integration of campus and curriculum
can be found: Political support for campus greening continues to expand, driven
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primarily by the need for carbon reduction plans, as well as a host of league
tables and awards. This means that most universities are now implementing sus-
tainability in their operations making them excellent examples of organisations
in transition: ‘Universities can be a model for the community about how a sus-
tainable organisation ought to operate’ (Ferrer-Balas et al. 2008, 296). One result
of these changes is that academics will have access to greater volumes of sus-
tainability-relevant material with which to make links between teaching, estates
and operations (Hopkinson, Hughes, and Layer 2008). There is also a strong
possibility that sustainability-related informal learning through extra-curricular
activities will become popular with students driven in part by the increasingly
prolific HE award schemes and the impending higher education achievement
award taken as a whole, these are strong rationales for academics and HEIs to
consider exploiting the campus as a vehicle for ESD and aspects of sustainabil-
ity literacy countering Orr’s (1993, 597) claim that ‘the typical campus is mostly
regarded as a place where learning occurs but, itself is believed to be the source
of no useful learning’.

Conclusion
The research findings presented here suggest that students had a range of different
levels of conceptions of sustainability on campus, but that in general:

• they were very aware of energy and climate change issues, but less cognisant
of social and economic sustainability issues;
• they were critical of the limited actions by their peers and the wider university
community; and
• they felt disempowered from decision-making about sustainability (and other
issues).

The findings illustrate the different ways in which the hidden curriculum of the cam-
pus impacts on students’ conceptions of sustainability, and also the ways in which
student engagement might be enhanced through structured reflection and critique of
current practices. Future research might include replicating this approach on a larger
scale to include a broader range of disciplines and institutional contexts or using
action research in which an explicitly transformative pedagogic approach is trialled.
We argue that this approach could be used in different institutional contexts to explic-
 794 J. Winter and D. Cotton

itly harness the benefits of linking the formal and hidden curriculum of the university.
Whilst this poses potential difficulties for educators and students alike, it also pro-
vides an unparalleled opportunity to develop skills of sustainability literacy in HE.

Notes on contributors
Jennie Winter is an educational developer in the Teaching and Learning Directorate at
Plymouth University. Her research interests around education for sustainability include
formal and informal learning, exploring the hidden curriculum in relation to sustainability
and sustainability pedagogy. For a list of Jennie’s publications, please visit http://www.
plymouth.ac.uk/staff/j1winter#

Debby Cotton is the head of the Educational Development with Pedagogic Research at
Plymouth University. She has published widely on various aspects of pedagogic research
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including sustainability education, e-learning and fieldwork in higher education. Recent

publications include an edited SEDA special publication on ESD in educational development
(number 31).

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