This paper takes a novel approach to sustainability research using photo-elicitation and auto-photography to explore student and staff perceptions of sustainability on campus, and analysing a sample of images of sustainability from university web-sites. The research investigates both intended and unintended messages, and their potential impact on the university community and web-site visitors. Whilst the psychology of environmental communication has been explored at the individual level, little has been done at the institutional and organizational level (Hansen and Machin, 2013). This research aims to bridge that gap by looking at communication (intended or otherwise) about sustainability enshrined in university campuses and marketing. Visual research presents an opportunity to gain rich insights into people’s understandings of sustainability, offering an innovative approach to exploring the hidden curriculum of sustainability. In a world rich with visual stimuli, where imagery is fundamental to our construction and comprehension of ourselves, of nature, and of others, the ways in which sustainability is perceived can be strongly influenced by visual cues and images. We hope to draw out recommendations for raising the profile of sustainability activities on campus.

This project builds on earlier work (e.g. Winter & Cotton, 2012) utilising visual methods to explore perceptions of sustainability on campus. We were interested in exploring the hidden curriculum, looking beyond the images of sustainability which universities draw on for marketing, to consider the messages a university sends about sustainability through its institutional environment, and the impact on staff and students. The literature on visual methodologies illustrates the strengths of such approaches in exploring latent understandings of participants which individuals may not be able to articulate verbally. We utilise auto-photography (using a photo competition to gain access to visual images of sustainability on campus) and photo-elicitation (through focus groups using photographs as a visual stimulus) to explore sustainability and climate change on a single HE campus. These methods allow the researcher to identify additional, often latent layers of meaning, offering a rich data set, and arguably creating a deeper understanding than traditional research methods. Grounded, visual pattern analysis (GVPA) (Shortt and Warren, 2019) is used to analyse the campus photos and compare them to a wider set of photos used to illustrate sustainability on university web-sites. The research consisted of 2 phases: 1. Auto-photography via a sustainability photo competition and photo-elicitation through focus groups. 2. Analysis of secondary publicly available photographs representing sustainability on university web-sites All data were analysed using Grounded Visual Pattern Analysis (GVPA). This combines the strengths of dialogic analysis (verbal and textual data about photographs) and archaeological analysis (analysing the photo itself as an artefact) (Meyer et al., 2013). GVPA offers a structured process for combining these types of data to analyse both the meanings implied by individual photograph(er)s and draw out sample-level conclusions about a group of photographs. GVPA is a relatively new technique and may undergo further development. However, the approach is clear and simple to use – and flexible enough to allow some personalisation.

This research illustrates a number of disconnects in the ways that sustainability is perceived and represented visually in HE. While staff and student images offered a complex understanding of tensions between humans and their environment, the widespread perception that sustainability implies environment (and particularly ‘wild nature’) rather than social or economic elements potentially limits full engagement with the issues and marginalises city centre campuses which may include little in the way of wild spaces or vegetation. In contrast, images on university web-sites express a more nuanced conception of sustainability. Given that universities are engaged in some very significant activities in support of sustainability, the limited perception of sustainability visuals for staff and students represents a lost opportunity for learning. Education about sustainable development in its broadest sense should be built into every university campus, making use of informal learning opportunities to ensure that the whole community is engaged.

Hansen, A. & Machin, D. (2013) ‘Researching visual environmental communication’. Environmental Communication: a journal of nature and culture, 7(2):151-168. Meyer, R. E., Höllerer, M. A., Jancsary, D., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2013) The visual dimension in organizing, organization, and organization research: Core ideas, current developments, and promising avenues. The Academy of Management Annals 7:489-555. Shortt, H. L., & Warren, S. K. (2019) ‘Grounded visual pattern analysis: photographs in organizational field studies’. Organizational Research Methods, 22(2):539-563. Winter, J. and Cotton, D.R.E. (2012) Making the Hidden Curriculum Visible: Sustainability Literacy in Higher Education. Environmental Education Research 18(6):783-796