When in March 2020 schools were closed in order to contain the spread of Covid-19, this meant an abrupt and radical change of daily routines for millions of students, whose lives, until then, were structured by attending school on a daily and (in Germany mandatory) basis. Six months before, we had begun implementing a school-based intervention aimed at fostering time-shaping competence among students at three German secondary schools. This is part of a larger research project focusing on the interrelation between time and sustainability within Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) (Frank et al., 2020) through inquiring the potential of promoting time shaping competence within formal education settings. Our original research sought to evaluate findings from our course, the curriculum of which intended to supporting students to develop and subsequently reflect on individual ‘time change’ projects (Frank et al., in preparation).

Once school closures put an end to our original research, we conceived of this as a new research setting which might be described as a collective experiment in which millions of students were taking part – albeit involuntarily. We therefore adapted our research focus and began interviewing students, parents, teachers as well as other education experts in order to learn about how students experienced this situation. In particular, we wanted to gain a better understanding of the learning processes that may have been triggered in within a disruptive environment which the pandemic had created. In line with our prior focus on time and sustainability, we set out to inquire students’ time use habits and coping strategies during school closures, aiming at possible conclusions for future ESE research and practice.

Our study was guided by the following research questions:

• How do students experience time during school closures?
• Which kinds of challenges do they report?
• Which kinds of outcomes do the changes in time use have with respect to their consumptive behaviour?
• Which kinds of abilities and competencies are they mobilizing and/or developing to cope with these challenges?

Research rationale: Time and ESE

Time is an essential dimension of sustainability, as is, for instance, expressed by the Brundtland report’s emphasis on future generations. Despite a growing body of academic work on in time as an important dimension of sustainability within various academic disciplines (Rau & Edmondson, 2013; van der Leeuw, et al., 2012), this is not yet reflected in ESE research (Grauer et al. in preparation). Research on time and sustainability often draws on sociologist Rosa’s analysis of modern society as an acceleration society (Rosa, 2011a). The increase of speed at various levels (including technological and social acceleration) is considered one main cause of the negative experience of time scarcity among many individuals. Time scarcity, in turn, results in people’s attempts at ‘saving time’ which is considered one factor underlying unsustainable consumption habits (Rosa, 2011b) and an increase of carbon emissions (Rau, 2015).

Acceleration and related time scarcity have also been found to negatively impact modern Western education systems, where time is often mainly considered an economic resource which, as it is always lacking, needs to be carefully managed (Buddeberg & Hornberg, 2017). In response, some argue, ESE is in a particular position to contribute towards raising awareness on time as an important dimension of sustainability (Görtler, 2016; Reheis, 2007) in order to better equip learners with competencies needed to address current sustainability challenges.

Our research methodology followed a Grounded Theory (GT) approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) as this allowed us to openly explore the unprecedented, still unfolding situation and develop a theoretical understanding of the latter. As foreseen by GT, data were collected and analysed in iterative circles. We conducted remote interviews with 36 students, 8 teachers and 7 other resource persons (including parents and social workers) via the videoconference software Zoom, which we recorded and transcribed. Participants were interviewed individually (25) or within focus groups (6 group of students between 2 to 8 participants with 31 in total). GT aims to include a wide range of manifestations of the phenomenon under investigation in order to achieve a differentiated understanding, meaning the sampling should include contrasting perspectives. Therefore, we recruited our participants successively, allowing us to adapt participant selection on interim findings of our analysis with a particular focus on diversifying our sample. In addition to interview data, we collected and analysed other data including scientific studies, media reports and other relevant materials obtained from online research (e.g. student diaries published on school websites). The research was primarily conducted by two researchers familiar with qualitative research, and GT in particular. Data analysis included individual analytical work undertaken by each researcher, weekly interpretation meetings within the research team as well as occasional attendance of external resource persons both from academia and practice allowing for transdisciplinary multi-perspectivity through “peer-debriefing” (Flick, 2007, p. 500) and “member check” (ibid., p. 501). Perhaps the biggest limitation of our research is a bias in the selection of our interviewees. We mostly interviewed students from economically favourable backgrounds and we did not manage to include students from economically difficult backgrounds into our sample. Our efforts at recruiting the latter failed; hence we had to rely on third-person interviews with social workers and teachers from schools attended by students from lower socio-economic backgrounds in order to include their perspectives.

The sudden closure of German schools in March 2020 caused major disruptions in students’ lives, requiring them to find individual solutions under conditions they mostly felt unprepared for. Almost all respondents reported initial feelings of stress and anxiety, which, given the exceptional circumstances, may be interpreted as a lack of “capacity to deal with uncertainty” (de Haan, 2006, p. 22) which according to de Haan is a key competency for sustainability. Over time, many students seemed to have coped with the situation, e.g. by learning how to organize educational activities in accordance with individual needs such as rhythm and pace. What’s more, many reported changes in consumption habits such as having acquired cooking skills, or (re-)discovering activities such as creative hobbies or going for walks in their immediate environments. But these coping strategies mostly seemed to happen out of pragmatism and without contributing to higher order learning processes (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). From a time use perspective, students’ experiences during this past year, however, provide great potential with regard to transformative ESE (Räthzel & Uzzell, 2009) as it aims at encouraging learners to reflect on their everyday experience in order to contribute towards a sustainability transformation. Future ESE research and practice might therefore use our findings in order to more systematically explore approaches suited to enable learners to draw on their individual handling of the disruptions in daily routines caused by the pandemic. This would not only include sparking individual reflexion, but also motivate learners to gain insights into relations between individual experience and structural factors shaping these, i.e. comparing a self-developed learning schedule with their school’s timetable and where they find advantages and differences. What’s more, the time use perspective may also contribute to the discussion around whole school approaches within ESE (Mathar, 2015).

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