Prefiguring Sustainability through Participatory Action Research Experiences for Undergraduates: Reflections and Recommendations for Student Development

Abstract

PAR-based UREs are undergraduate research experiences (UREs)—built into university-community partnerships—that apply principles of participatory action research (PAR) towards addressing community-defined challenges. In this paper, we advance PAR-based UREs as an action-oriented framework through which higher education institutions can simultaneously enact and advance the United Nations sustainable development agenda, while cultivating student development. We draw upon interdisciplinary scholarship on sustainable development and PAR, as well as empirical findings from a pilot program, to accomplish dual goals. First, through the lens of six Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) clusters, we explore the synergies between undergraduate PAR engagement and sustainable development, explaining how PAR-based UREs can prefigure and facilitate SDG achievement by promoting cross-sector collaboration and supporting diverse stakeholder engagement through community-driven research and action. Second, within each SDG cluster, we offer complementary reflections and recommendations around the design and implementation of PAR-based UREs towards advancing students’ skills and abilities as: (1) Community Collaborators (and Learners); (2) Community-Engaged Researchers; (3) (Interdisciplinary) Scholars; (4) Agents of Change; (5) (Sustainable) Co-Innovators; and (6) Institutional Representatives. Finally, we discuss the critical role of higher education institutions in minimizing structural barriers to PAR-based URE implementation, given their prefigurative and practical potential for both SDG achievement and student development.

Teaching for a Better World. Sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals in the Construction of a Change-Maker University

“…The Conference of Vice-chancellor of Spanish universities indicated that service-learning could be a tool for the development of sustainability in the university context [32,70]. Other authors have reflected on using Participatory Action Research to promote sustainability and SDGs [14]. Furthermore, in previous works, it has been defended that the final master/degree dissertations can be a very interesting tool for the development of this type of competences [55,71].…”

Pre-Service Teacher Preparedness for Fostering Education for Sustainable Development: An Empirical Analysis of Central Dimensions of Teaching Readiness

“…The transition to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a frequently addressed topic in the recent literature [1,[4][5][6]. Adopting innovative pedagogies in higher education has become one of the transition factors of ESD [7].…”

“…In addition, it has theoretical and practical implications as follows. Most previous papers have discussed the readiness for teaching from a more general perspective [4,7,12,13,21] or have narrowed down the approach to a small set of teaching components or education levels (e.g., motivation, instructional strategies, and sustainability in primary education) [2,6,22,23,42,46,48]. In this paper, our focus was on a comprehensive approach of pre-service teachers' job readiness from an ESD perspective.…”

Place-Based Education: Una Estrategia Para La Sostenibilización Curricular De La Educación Superior

“…En términos generales, los autores consideran positivos los resultados de aprendizaje de los estudiantes, alegando un amplio abanico de motivos. En algunos casos, señalan que aprovechar la comunidad como aliada proporcionaba al profesorado y estudiantado una pluralidad de puntos de vista, acceso a nuevos recursos e instalaciones y un gran acervo de habilidades y conocimientos (Powers, 2004;Linnemanstons y Jordan, 2017;Singer y Macdonald, 2017;Warr Pedersen et al, 2017;Trott et al, 2018;Williams, 2018).…”