Breaking Down Barriers: Exploring the Potential of Participatory Visual Research to Promote University Students' Active Participation in Sustainable Development Initiatives

Abstract

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) serves as one of the most promising approaches amidst the current global sustainability crisis. Universities, as research and innovation hubs, have the critical responsibility to make graduates competent as sustainable citizens. Still, research shows that the rigid, top-down approaches in institutions often inhibit students' meaningful participation in leadership and decisionmaking opportunities within ESD programs. In this paper, I advocate for using creative participatory methodologies, such as participatory visual research (PVR), to promote students' meaningful participation in sustainability initiatives. Through the review of extant ESD scholarship, I establish that PVR can engage students' participation in sustainability initiatives while promoting their critical awareness of sustainability challenges as well as revealing their implicit and hidden sustainability perceptions and values. This paper provides valuable insights for researchers seeking to leverage PVR's full potential while considering its ethical, practical, and theoretical implications for ESD research.