ABSTRACT
As higher education policy, funding and practice become increasingly student-centred, research into higher education is also being challenged to rethink its dominant paradigm. The narrative on student engagement provides the backdrop to understanding much of what is currently happening across the sector globally and provides alternative frames from which to review studies of higher education for sustainable development. Recent writings capture how student engagement has become the focus of global academic
conversations and the basis for exploring the new edges around practice in universities and colleges of higher education (GUNI 2014). The catch-phrase ‘placing student at the heart of the higher education system’ underpins UK policy on higher education (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills [BIS] 2011); with similar phrasing found in Australian higher education frameworks (Marginson 2013). Few would dispute the need to improve student engagement levels in higher education given the often exclusive1 and mostly transmissive2
approaches adopted by higher education institutions (Alvares and Faruqi 2012). The student engagement narrative resonates deeply with proponents of sustainable devel-
opment who seek to engage students in real world issues, reframe the teacher-learner relationships, promote participatory and active learning and embed responsibility into professional education outcomes (Bartlett and Chase 2013; Ryan and Cotton 2013; Sterling et al. 2013; Scott et al. 2012; Tilbury 2011). These transformative learning ambitions, often associated with education for sustainable development, have not translated well into empirical research work. The contextual dynamics of institutions and narrow interpretations of the principle of ‘student engagement’ have led to a fixation on studies to establish student satisfaction levels rather than on research to improve participation levels or outcomes. InAustralia and New Zealand, for example, the administration of an Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) has helped institutions collect information that increases understanding of student satisfaction levels. Similar major evidence-based collection of data on student engagement (aka satisfaction levels) are in use in the United States3 and UK.4 These sector responses point to the difficulty of embedding deeper conceptions of student engagement and the challenges of
shifting paradigms that currently serve the higher education sector. Genuine student engagement is hard to practice across a system that currently regards students as recipients rather than co-creators of knowledge. This chapter identifies the tensions captured by, as well as reflected in, the research literature
around student engagement. It takes a focus on sustainable development research contrasting the ambitions of student empowerment, participation and change agency with the research themes and methodologies that focus on students as receivers of knowledge, respondents of attitudinal surveys or subjects in the testing of behaviour change theories. The writing is informed by a UNESCO commissioned research study that assessed progress
in reorienting higher education toward sustainable development (Tilbury 2014). The UNESCO report reviewed evidence from literature published between 2005 and 2014,5 as well as key indicators such as the emergence of student associations with a primary focus on sustainable development, case studies captured in international journals and data from national student surveys. Supplementing documentation analysis was an expert review of trends and data arising from regional consultations undertaken by UNESCO during 2013.
