In the rapidly growing literature on the university – sustainability nexus (Hallinger & Chatpinyakoop, 2019), a very diverse image of what a university should do or could do in relation to sustainability appears (Deleye, 2023). Based on a discourse analysis, Deleye states that the sustainable university, to be understood as “any notions of an existing or desirable future university that engages with sustainability”, is not unequivocally defined and addressed in the academic literature. Deleye identifies three dominant discourses on the sustainable university, implying that the idea of the sustainable university is presented and discussed in that literature in three overarching ways: (1) a sustainable university as higher education institution in which sustainability is embedded in an institutional way; (2) a sustainable university as a community that is engaged with sustainability issues; and (3) a sustainable university that is primarily sustainable through its green tech campus, the development of green technological innovations, and its relations with markets and industries.

In this explorative case study, we use this sustainable university discoursesframework as a starting point. We operationalize it as an analytical model to study how the sustainable university is conceptualized and given shape in a concrete change practice on sustainability in higher education. In addressing this research question, we do two things. On the one hand, we create knowledge on what happens in a concrete change practice by approaching it as a setting in which the sustainable university is conceptualized and takes shape. On the other hand, by using the framework for an empirical study of a practice, we create knowledge on the framework’s methodological potential and develop new insights into what a sustainable university (practice) can be.

The case we study is a change practice in a Belgian university in which a working group consisting mainly of lecturers meets regularly to embed sustainability in the electromechanical engineering bachelor program. More specifically, those involved in the change practice redesign the curriculum through developing a sustainability teaching and learning track (a coherent thematic thread throughout the three years) and redesigning a cross-curricular project course. This means that we have data of change ‘in the making’ – i.e., as it is made through participants’ actions in a specific context. The dataset spans a period of eight years and includes observations, meeting notes, presentations, internal documents (e.g. vision texts), funding applications, and interviews, but also data on the actual redesigned course: student presentations, discussions between lecturers and students, and student papers.

The study builds on the discourse analysis on the sustainable university by Deleye (2023). Besides showing how the sustainable university is commonly conceptualized in the academic literature, taken together, these three discourses form a framework that can also function as an analytical model for empirically studying how the sustainable university is conceptualized and takes shape in concrete practices (Deleye, 2023). This use is explored in this study. This analytical model is used within a pragmatist transactional approach (Dewey & Bentley, 1949) in which the concept of privileging (Wertsch, 1993) serves as analytical lens. The explicit aim is to use the sustainable university discourses framework in a non-deductive way. This implies not forcing an external framework upon the data, thereby reducing the analysis to pigeonholing cases within predetermined frames, but developing a methodological approach that allows to trace in a nuanced and precise way how the sustainable university is conceptualized and takes shape in a way that opens up for empirical surprises.

The use of the sustainable university discourses framework as analytical model implies that the discourses are not used for a new discourse analysis that attempts to verify these discourses’ existence in another empirical context. Instead they are used as an analytical model that functions as an external resource for empirical analyses of (change towards) a sustainable university practice in-the-making. This means that the analytical model is part of a wider methodological approach. This wider methodological approach first of all builds further on the original discourse analysis. These discourses can best be understood as three specific constellations of connected elements (words, phrases, concepts) around a limited set of nodal points (important elements which have an important structuring role within the discourse) (Deleye, 2023). Applying these nodal points and connections in the analytical procedure allows to go beyond merely using the analytical model as a flat list of elements to be used as an initial coding scheme. The above fits into a wider approach that enables us to analyze if and how those involved in the change practice relate to (aspects of) these three discourses. For this, we mainly draw on pragmatist transactional theory (Dewey & Bentley, 1949) and the concept of privileging (Wertsch, 1998). Central in pragmatist transactional theory (Dewey & Bentley, 1949) is the focus on the interplay (or transaction) between persons and their environment (Östman et al., 2019) in which both are continuously, simultaneously and reciprocally transformed. In the present study, a transactional approach allows us to understand the change in the making (i.e. the conceptualizing and taking shape of a sustainable university practice) as an interplay between the actions of educators developing education in the change practice and what they draw on from their environment. This brings us to the concept of privileging (Wertsch (1998). Privileging refers to the dynamic process of inclusion and exclusion, a process in which some things are taken into account as meaningful and relevant, while other things are ignored or disregarded. Using privileging as analytical lens implies that the focus lies on which aspects of the environing conditions (i.c. discourses on the sustainable university) the actors draw on. Thus, the sustainable university discourses framework offers an external point of reference that allows to analyze what is privileged and what is not.

The analysis of the data shows that those involved in the change practice to a large extent draw on aspects of discourse 1 (“the sustainable higher education institution”), to a lesser extent on aspects of discourse 2 (“the engaged community”), and only minimally on discourse 3 (“the green-tech campus”). At first sight, especially the similarity with discourse 1 is striking: The working group embeds sustainability in a strategic and structural way within the confines of a pre-existing educational structure (program and existing courses). In this process, education is approached in terms of gathering knowledge and competences and often related to the notion of employability. All of this fits within how discourse 1 is described by Deleye (2023). However, a closer analysis of the data by juxtaposing discourses 1 and 2 allows to nuance this and shows a different image. We identify specific novel interpretations of important aspects of the second discourse, for example “social change”, “engagement”, “community”, “behavior change”, and “people”. On the other hand, some elements of discourse 1 are used in another way than might be expected based on the sustainable university discourses framework. Employability, for example, is used in relation to societal change, giving it an alternative meaning. Our results shows that the use of the sustainable university discourses framework as analytical model allows to study what happens in a sustainable higher education change practice in a novel and nuanced way. Juxtaposing the discourses highlighted some interesting aspects of how, in the case, a particular idea of the sustainable university is conceptualized and given shape. In addition to this, contrasting the framework with empirical material also allowed us to advance our knowledge on aspects and characteristics of the sustainable university discourses framework and on how the sustainable university can take shape in practice.

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