{"id":2939,"date":"2022-08-04T11:23:48","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T10:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/?p=2939"},"modified":"2025-07-11T11:50:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T10:50:14","slug":"the-sustainawhat-gatherings-embedding-education-for-sustainable-development-in-pgr-education-and-researcher-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/2022\/08\/04\/the-sustainawhat-gatherings-embedding-education-for-sustainable-development-in-pgr-education-and-researcher-development\/","title":{"rendered":"The SustainaWHAT? Gatherings \u2013 embedding Education for Sustainable Development in PGR education and researcher development"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosalind Beaumont, Senior Lecturer<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

School X<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n

What did you do?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The SustainaWHAT? Gatherings were a co-created cross-faculty series of events held during COP26 (November 2021) that aimed to increase awareness of the UNSDGs and their relationship to PGR student research.<\/p>\n

\n

Who is involved?<\/strong><\/span>
\nThe gatherings were co-created by the newly formed PGR Research and Education for Sustainable Development Team (PGR RESD) – a multidisciplinary group of PGRs from across Newcastle University. PGR RESD aims to create spaces for students to explore sustainable development through different lenses with a view to enhancing researcher, professional, and personal development:<\/span><\/p>\n

Wahbi Albasyouni – PGR, Architecture, Planning & Landscape
\nJecel Censoro – PGR, Politics
\nAnna Christy – PGR, Engineering
\nDuong Nguyen – PGR, Marketing
\nAndy Oroke – PGR, Engineering
\nAnand Roy – PGR, Business & Sustainability
\nRosalind Beaumont \u2013 Senior Lecturer, Faculty Research Training Programme, School X
\nAnd
\nChris Fan \u2013 UG, Film Practices<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

How did you do it?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The scoping stage for this work took place of following a January 2021 call out from our Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor Julie Sanders, on how we could respond to COP26 (in addition to existing sustainability, UNSDG and climate action work ongoing at Newcastle). Ros had an idea to offer Newcastle PGR students opportunities to come together to explore and discuss their research through the lens of sustainable development, whilst simultaneously providing professional and personal development, and to provide networking and community development for early stage PGRs. Ros consulted with a range of colleagues to further develop the idea before getting some funding in September for a series of Enrichment Week events which overlapped with COP26 taking place in the November.<\/p>\n

Overall Programme Design and Learning Design Principles<\/strong>
\nOn the left-hand side of Figure 1 is an overview of the four days and themes which took students on a journey from an introduction to, or deepening of their understanding of, the SDGS, to opportunities to explore the value and significance of the SDGs through the lenses of their own research, personal motivations and career development, and finally to reflect on their experiences and learning, and to decide what they wanted to do next.<\/p>\n

\"A

Figure 1: Summary of SustainaWHAT? Gatherings programme mapped onto underpinning learning design principles.<\/p><\/div>\n

The aim was to provide a balance of input, discussion, problem-solving and opportunities to network and collaborate with students across disciplines. We drew on UNESCO\u2019s Sustainability Competencies (HE Advance and QAA, 2021) and other models of interdisciplinary pedagogy (Edelbroek, Mijinders and Post, 2018) during learning design to plan and offer engaging activities to develop core competencies of critical thinking, collaboration and reflection which would in turn be transferable to PGR research, professional and\/ or personal contexts.
\nTo create this student-centred learning environment, we drew on Diane Laurillard and her University College London colleagues work on Learning Activities (Laurillard, 2012). This was particularly useful as it suggested ways of achieving similar outcomes with both conventional and digital teaching tools \u2013 perfect for our hybrid setting.<\/p>\n

\n

Why did you do it?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Research into Sustainable Development and related fields can often be viewed as more evident or relevant in science or engineering disciplines, rather than in the humanities or social sciences (Nakweya, 2017; Marcone, 2022).
\nAnecdotally, we found that PGR students actively researching SD-related topics (or those who don\u2019t currently perceive the SD connection with their research) can have limited awareness of the necessity of interdisciplinary understandings, and the value for collaborative working across disciplines, to effectively address the complex societal and environmental challenges.<\/p>\n

This perception was reflected in our discussions with colleagues (academics, researchers + PGR students) on topics like sustainability or sustainable development, which often evoked responses like \u201cSustaina-WHAT?\u201d. These responses became the main motivation of our team – we wanted people from across disciplines to come together and unitedly discuss a topic that relates to all, in one form or another.<\/p>\n

We chose the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) as the focus of SustainaWHAT as the SDGs offer a tangible way of working on a range of societal and environmental issues using an internationally shared discourse. Importantly, the SDGS explicitly recognise the interplay across these issues, and within\/ between disciplines. If you take any research focus or project, it\u2019s unlikely that you wouldn\u2019t be able to see how the SDGs are represented therein or at least have related implications).<\/p>\n

\n

Does it work?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1.Attendance and Representation:
\nAround 40 students and 18 staff attended the event, including members of the University\u2019s Senior Management Team, and 6 external contributors, including Chi Onwurah MP. Multiple disciplines were represented. From a Faculty perspective, it was a HaSS (60%); SAgE (30%), FMS (10%) split (staff\/ students). Also, alongside academic colleagues from all three faculties, Careers and the Sustainability Team colleagues participated in the Gatherings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"This

Figure 2: Summary of images from SustainaWHAT Gatherings<\/p><\/div>\n

2.PGR Student Feedback:
\na. PGR attendee feedback was overwhelming positive (see Figure 3 below, indicative Mentimeter poll results from the final morning) and suggested that we had achieved a number of our project objectives:<\/p>\n

\"This

Figure 3: Attendee responses on Day 4: Describe your overall experience of SustainaWHAT?<\/p><\/div>\n

b. Daily polls were conducted via Mentimeter to be accessible to those attending in-person and online. We sought to capture attendee self-ratings (0-10) of their expectations at the start and the extent to which they felt these had been met at the end. Our findings suggest that students perceived clear benefits from their engagement in the events in terms of:<\/p>\n