In the pursuit to better prepare the new generation of teachers to address sustainability education in their professional practice, Higher Education turns to outcome-oriented competence-based education (CBE) (Rieckmann, 2012). At the same time, education needs to be transformative and profoundly change our perspectives, beliefs, and behaviours through reflecting and questioning the interpretation of our surroundings (Bianchi 2020, p.25). Both CBE and Transformative education (TE) in the context of sustainability, are great challenges but at the same time, highly prioritized amongst Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in Europe. An emerging question is: How can HE best convey and learn sustainability competence in a way that will be transformative?

Living labs are spaces that can offer authentic learning. Apart from the interpretation of living labs as physical spaces - “sites where experiential learning takes place” (Favaloro, Ball and Lipschutz, 2019), living labs can also be viewed as non-physical spaces or frameworks that enable learning. These spaces demand real-life settings with multi-stakeholder participation, co-creation, active involvement of the users, and may follow a multi-method approach. Such contexts provide authentic learning experiences with real practical outcomes. Authentic learning is intrinsic to living labs, being a learning approach through which learners explore, discuss, and construct concepts and relationships meaningfully, in contexts and/or projects connected to real-world problems. It is student-centered and encourages students to take an active role in their learning, develop learner autonomy, and self-reflection in learning, and enable flexible learning pathways (Klemencic M., Pupinis M., Kyrdulyte G., 2020, p.29). Authentic learning is experiential learning that holds important attributes that facilitate the development of competences and create conditions for transformative learning.  

The present work reports the outcomes of an empirical study concerning the collaboration of a university course on sustainability issues for undergraduate pre-school teachers (1^st and 2^nd year of studies), with a primary school and an environmental organization in a Living Lab framework that provided the context for authentic learning. The objective was to explore, how such experiences help build future educators’ self-efficacy and readiness to undertake their professional role and more specifically deliver sustainability education. The step-by-step methodology followed provided the university students with opportunities for reflection, collaboration, competences’ development, and meaningful learning and assessment.

Briefly, university students were trained to deliver a set of gamified activities on the sea turtle protection, to 6-year-old pupils. The process aimed at meeting the organisation’s need for delivering the activities to young children and obtaining feedback about the activities’ effectiveness and appropriateness; the schools’ need for enriching pupils’ learning experiences with non-formal education activities; and the university’s need for exposing future educators in out-of-the-box activities for sustainability and experiences that would enhance their self-efficacy and competences to deliver sustainability education. To allow for all the children to go through all the activities’ stations, the activities were offered twice (the first time to thirty children divided into five groups and the second time to twenty-six children divided into five groups).

The data were collected through self-reporting by the students in structured reflection handouts, a group interview, and a questionnaire. The outcomes, are not to be generalized as they concern a small group of students, but will help improve the living lab project experience in the future.

Outcomes highlight a strong engagement of the university students in the project and the development of a high sense of purpose and responsibility. Students reported a more effective collaboration amongst the group members, compared to other conventional university projects due to the shared responsibility despite the distribution of the work and commented that their experience enabled the development of specific sustainability competences. 

The current study is an empirical study as it is based on observation and reporting of phenomena as directly experienced by the researcher. Primary data were collected by the students who participated in the living lab experience, through self-report in a structured reflection template before and after the experience, a group interview with the completion of the semester during the wrap up and closure of the course, and a questionnaire of close-ended questions. The research question intended to be answered was: How does the living lab methodology, as an authentic, experiential, student-centered approach, support pre-school teacher students boost their self-efficacy and confidence in delivering sustainability education and developing sustainability competences. The Living Lab methodology followed, consisted of the following steps: (a) The process began with the university and organization communication, where the needs of the organization were identified and explored how they could be aligned with the objectives of the course and the students’ needs. (b) The first contact of students with the organization followed, during which, the organisations’ needs were presented and the students’ potential contribution was analysed. The organization required volunteers to offer a series of gamified activities to school children aiming to raise young children’s awareness on the dangers that sea turtles encounter in our island and how we can protect them. Respectively, students can benefit from engaging in non-formal gamified teaching activities and gain unique professional experiences in real school settings with real children. During the meeting with the organization, students also received training about how to deliver the activities. (c) The third step encouraged students to work in groups, carefully study the activities, reflect and analyse their expectations from the activities: e.g. what they expected the young pupils to learn, how they might react etc. The reflection prior to the implementation had to be submitted as part of the project. (d) The school visit and delivery of the activities followed. Here each group of students was assigned with a group of children and was responsible for the delivery of the activities. (e) Each student had to reflect and report on their experience with the children, analyse their ideas about the appropriateness of the activities, and consider any changes they deemed necessary for the activities’ improvement. (f) Finally, the groups of students presented their feedback and analysed and explained their suggestions for changes in the activities to the collaborating organization.

Several researchers report a gap between academic learning and professional praxis (Favaloro, Ball, Lipschutz 2019), the lack of the latter limiting the opportunities for skills and competences development or connecting academic knowledge with professional practice. In the case of sustainability, universities must identify ways to effectively integrate sustainability education into mainstream teaching practices and their learning priorities (Mula, Tilbury, Ryan, Maden, Dlouha, Mader, Benayas, Dlouhi, Alba, 2017) to better prepare future professionals to address sustainability challenges in their professional contexts. This study explores the effectiveness of a Living Lab framework to develop sustainability competences and enhance the self-efficacy and professional readiness of undergraduate pre-school teacher-students in the early stages of their academic studies, in delivering sustainability education. It reflects a significant emphasis on experiential learning, allowing students to engage in real-world applications of their theoretical knowledge, thereby enhancing their professional skills and self-confidence. We have to acknowledge that being small-scale, the study has important limitations and outcomes cannot be generalized. Nevertheless, it has served as a pilot for future research concerning the implementation of living labs methodology in our institution and has allowed us to derive valuable insights about the benefits emerging from experiential authentic learning approaches. The context of an authentic learning experience, such as the living lab, is highly valuable in developing sustainability and general professional competences. Outcomes highlight that the living lab context created a strong active engagement of the university students in the project (Compagnucci, Spigarelli, Coelho, Duarte 2021), and developed a high sense of purpose and responsibility. Driven by this sense, students exercised genuine collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills and developed empathy and awareness concerning sea turtles and the dangers they face. A safe and supportive learning environment was also observed that allowed students to perform well despite their limited academic or teaching experience.

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