The integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within higher education has been widely recognised as a key lever for promoting sustainability-oriented values, practices, and ways of thinking among future generations. Universities are increasingly expected to act not only as sites of knowledge transmission but also as learning environments in which sustainability is meaningfully embedded through institutional cultures, everyday practices, and educational experiences (UNESCO, 2005; Wals, 2009; United Nations, 2015; Barth et al., 2016; Wals & Benavot, 2017; Rieckmann, 2018). Within this context, initial teacher education occupies a particularly relevant position, as pre-service teachers encounter sustainability both as learners in higher education and as future professionals expected to contribute to sustainable societies (Albareda-Tiana et al., 2018; Álvarez-García et al., 2019; Vare et al., 2020).

While policy frameworks and international guidelines emphasise the importance of ESD across educational levels (UNESCO, 2005; Buckler & Creech, 2014), existing research suggests that its implementation in higher education often remains uneven and fragmented. Sustainability initiatives may be highly visible at the institutional level, yet experienced by students as superficial or disconnected from everyday academic practices (Barth et al., 2016; Wals & Benavot, 2017; Holst, 2023). This raises critical questions regarding the extent to which sustainability is not only present but also meaningful within university education, and how institutional discourses around sustainability are interpreted and negotiated by students in their daily experiences.

This paper is situated within a doctoral research project adopting a multiple-case study design across universities in Italy and Portugal, which examines how ESD and Civic and Citizenship Education (CCE) are embedded within pre-primary and primary initial teacher education. Focusing on two Italian universities, this paper explores pre-service teachers’ lived experiences of sustainability within their university education. It adopts a student-centred perspective and investigates how sustainability is perceived and experienced during university training, contributing to current debates on ESD in higher education by foregrounding students’ voices and critically examining the relationship between institutional intentions and everyday practices.

The study presented in this paper is guided by the following research questions:

RQ1. How do pre-service teachers experience and perceive sustainability within their university education?

RQ2. How do pre-service teachers perceive the coherence of institutional sustainability initiatives in relation to everyday university practices?

The overarching objective of the paper is to explore how sustainability is lived by pre-service teachers within higher education contexts, with particular attention to the tensions between visibility and meaningfulness, and between institutional sustainability discourses and students’ everyday academic experiences. More specifically, the study aims to identify how sustainability is communicated at the institutional level, how it is embedded in curricular and extracurricular contexts, and how students interpret inconsistencies between official narratives and daily practices.

Conceptually, the paper draws on literature on ESD in higher education, in particular, research emphasising whole-institution approach for sustainability in education (Barth et al., 2016; Öztürk, 2022; Holst et al., 2024). It also engages with perspectives that conceptualise curriculum and learning as lived and socially constructed processes, highlighting the importance of students’ interpretations of educational environments beyond formal curricular provisions (Casarejos et al., 2017). By combining these perspectives, the study approaches sustainability not merely as a set of declared institutional commitments or isolated initiatives, but as an experiential dimension of university life that is continuously negotiated through everyday practices.

By focusing on pre-service teachers’ lived experiences of sustainability within university education, this paper provides an empirically grounded contribution to discussions on how ESD is enacted in higher education, highlighting the importance of addressing the gap between institutional discourse and everyday practices and between the visibility and meaningfulness of sustainability initiatives for fostering sustainability-oriented learning environments in teacher education.

The present contribution reports preliminary findings from an ongoing doctoral project employing a multiple-case study design and a mixed-methods approach (Yin, 2018). By combining quantitative and qualitative data gathered through the administration of a student questionnaire and focus groups, as well as interviews with university lecturers and teacher education programme coordinators and document analysis of course syllabi and institutional documents related to Civic and Citizenship Education (CCE) and sustainability, the overall research examines, among other aspects, pre-service teachers’ lived experiences of sustainability within university education. Although the doctoral project includes universities in Italy and Portugal, this paper focuses on two Italian universities in order to provide an in-depth analysis of students’ perspectives within a specific national context, drawing on selected findings from the questionnaire and focus groups. The two case studies were conducted at two public Italian universities, one located in a major city in northern Italy and the other in a major city in central Italy. Participants included pre-service teachers in the final year of study, enrolled in primary and pre-primary education programmes. A total of 290 students responded to the questionnaire (88 from the first university and 202 from the second). The questionnaire collected data on pre-service teachers’ university training in CCE and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), as well as on their perceptions of how sustainability is integrated into university life. For this purpose, an adapted version of the whole-institution approach (WIA) scale for sustainability in education (Holst et al., 2024) was used. The original scale, designed for both educators and learners across different educational levels, was adapted to the national context and to the specific target group of university students. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics in order to provide an overview of students’ perceptions of institutional sustainability and its implementation within the university context. These data were triangulated with findings from four focus groups conducted with final-year students from the same programmes (two per university). At the first university, the focus groups included five and eight participants, while at the second university both groups included five participants. Qualitative data were analysed through thematic analysis, following an inductive approach. Themes captured recurring patterns related to the visibility and meaningfulness of sustainability initiatives, as well as perceived contradictions between institutional discourse and everyday practices. In addition, institutional communication on sustainability was analysed through a thematic analysis of relevant institutional documentation.

The findings from the questionnaire, focus groups and document analysis indicate a persistent gap between institutional sustainability discourse and pre-service teachers’ lived experiences within university education. Across the two Italian universities, sustainability is widely perceived as a declared institutional priority and a visible component of official communication; however, students’ accounts reveal that this visibility does not consistently translate into meaningful or coherent everyday practices. In the first university, questionnaire responses suggest that sustainability is not practised consistently across university areas and that those in charge do not actively promote it. These perceptions are mirrored in the focus group discussions, where students describe sustainability as predominantly symbolic and confined to a “macro” or representational level, yet weakly integrated into everyday practices and rarely experienced in meaningful ways. Similarly, in the second university, both quantitative and qualitative data point to a misalignment between institutional claims and students’ everyday experiences. While participants acknowledge infrastructural and organisational initiatives aimed at promoting sustainability, such measures are frequently perceived as superficial, inconsistently applied, or insufficient to foster meaningful engagement. Practical barriers and contradictions between declared values and daily practices further weaken students’ perceptions of institutional coherence. Overall, these findings suggest that while sustainability is communicated as a strategic priority, its operationalisation in daily university life remains insufficient from the students’ perspective. These preliminary findings will be further complemented, in subsequent stages of the doctoral research, by interviews with university lecturers and teacher education coordinators, as well as by an analysis of relevant course syllabi.

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