Conceptual Development in Higher Education Sustainability Initiatives: Insights from a Change Laboratory Research Intervention

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Good work.
There are a couple of ways to improve.
1. While the introduction effectively outlines the importance of sustainability in HEIs, it could benefit from a more detailed contextualization of the specific HEI in which the study occurred. Providing more information about the institution's prior sustainability efforts, particular challenges, and unique characteristics would help the reader better understand the context of the intervention and the transferability of the findings.
2. The article's central focus is conceptual development, but this term could be more clearly defined. Providing a more explicit explanation of conceptual development within the context of the study and how it was measured or observed would strengthen the analysis.

3. The Change Laboratory method emphasizes the identification and resolution of contradictions. While the article mentions several contradictions that emerged during the workshops, a more in-depth analysis of these contradictions, their interrelations, and how they were addressed would be beneficial.

4. The discussion section could be expanded to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the study's implications for theory and practice. This action could include a more detailed consideration of how the findings might inform the design of future sustainability interventions in HEIs and the study's limitations and directions for future research.

5. The article could benefit from including a visual representation of the conceptual development process, such as a diagram or model. This action would help readers better understand the complex dynamics of change and learn within the Change Laboratory intervention.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. We are very grateful that you recognise the value in the paper, and we much appreciate the helpful comments you have provided. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted in the re-submitted file.

 

Comment 1. While the introduction effectively outlines the importance of sustainability in HEIs, it could benefit from a more detailed contextualization of the specific HEI in which the study occurred. Providing more information about the institution's prior sustainability efforts, particular challenges, and unique characteristics would help the reader better understand the context of the intervention and the transferability of the findings.

Response 1: Thank you for this useful suggestion, which we agree can help the reader better understand the context. We have attempted to implement this suggestion in section 1. In the section, we have highlighted the specific HEI, its characteristics, and the prior sustainability efforts which were important at the outset of the project described in the paper.

The new text is as below (section 1):

At the time of the project, the institution was a medium-sized HEI, with around 12,000 students, whose work was distributed across fives campuses in the west of Ireland. Founded in 1973 as a Regional Technical College and with an ongoing commitment to re-gional development, since the time of the project the institution has merged with two oth-ers, as part of a national re-organisation of the sector [10], to form a larger university with more than 20,000 students. The institution, many of whose campuses are in rural loca-tions, has had a positive history of engagement with sustainability issues. This has in-cluded receiving a Green Campus Flag for waste and energy management as far back as 2011, at a time where such accreditation was rare in the sector nationally, and subsequent awards for biodiversity and transport. There have also been other notable initiatives, in-cluding the development of a Woodland Trail starting in 2014 and a Living Willow Out-door Classroom initiative starting in 2016 [11].

Yet the project we draw on in this paper was driven by a conviction that prior work had a fragmentary character—with worthwhile initiatives led by different enthusiasts and champions, but without a common vision that would draw issues of pedagogy and stu-dent experience together with campus operations. A range of specific and deeply rooted issues (which participants in the underlying project, using the terminology of our ap-proach as described in section 3.1, eventually analysed and located as ‘contradictions’), have included different visions and values of sustainability, the inconsistent integration of espoused approaches into the actual fabric practice, and mutually incompatible develop-ments occurring in different practices [12].

As we make clear in our literature review, this broad situation has been common in many of those higher education institutions which seriously attempt to engage with sus-tainability issues. The project took as its starting point a single campus which had a strong record on environmental issues in terms of campus operations and which, as we elaborate further in section 4.1, was a hub for providing a range of academic pro-grammes—including some (like outdoor education, social care, and construction) with a track record of engaging with sustainability concerns in their curriculum in various ways. The aim was to bring together a range of academic and professional stakeholders in workshops, in which practitioners would pursue the creation of “a sustainable campus”.

Comment 2. The article's central focus is conceptual development, but this term could be more clearly defined. Providing a more explicit explanation of conceptual development within the context of the study and how it was measured or observed would strengthen the analysis.

Response 2: Thank you for this useful comment. We agree that such a discussion is useful. We have attempted to foreground this issue towards the end of the Introduction (section 1), where we also provide a link to the more detailed discussion of this issue in section 3. We have also provided more discussion of this idea in relation to the new diagram in section 3.4, which you also helpfully suggested we include (see Comment 5).

The new text in section 1 is as follows:

We understand concepts and conceptual development in ways influenced by the ac-tivity theory tradition [14]. In such scholarship, concepts are understood as a type of arte-fact which mediates activities in ways that are practical (they help people suggest actions which should be undertaken to pursue the object of the activity) and future-oriented (they help people accommodate visions of problems and/or solutions). Importantly, it is under-stood that concepts are not developed only by specialists, but by a whole range of people in their everyday life, and that new conceptual development is spurred whenever issues in activity arise which cannot be mediated adequately by existing artefacts. In section 3.4 we put forward a model which illustrates how conceptual development occurs in sequences of actions, including identifying a conflict of motives arising from an existing activity; putting forward a simple idea; exploring how the idea addresses the conflict of motives; developing the idea to address problems in existing activity; and working up an artefact so that the new concept can be used in the future (potentially by others). Our model also acknowledges that conceptual development is not smooth but instead passes through stages, with stages tending to get abandoned as the inadequacies of the conceptual devel-opment work become apparent to those undertaking it. It is this model which frames our analysis of conceptual development in this paper.

The analysis we present in this paper addresses the following research question: What is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process, during a higher education sustainability initiative? By addressing this question, we aim, as we outline in our literature review (section 2), to contribute to the literature on sustainability in higher education, and particularly those strands concerned with sustainability terminology and strategic ap-proaches for embedding sustainability in the sector. Such literature, we argue, is regretta-bly weak in recognising conceptual development within initiatives, and in understanding the processes by which such initiatives unfold. We use our conceptual model to explore how conceptual development occurred within a Change Laboratory, a re-search-intervention methodology often used to understand the potentiality in a given set of practices [15].  

To address this question, in what follows we first present a preliminary analysis which demonstrates that several ‘strands’ of conceptual development could be discerned within the data generated by the project.

 

The new text in section 3.4 is reproduced in response to comment 5 below

 

Comment 3. The Change Laboratory method emphasizes the identification and resolution of contradictions. While the article mentions several contradictions that emerged during the workshops, a more in-depth analysis of these contradictions, their interrelations, and how they were addressed would be beneficial.

Response 3: This comment was difficult to address. We agree that contradictions are important in the Change Laboratory, and the second author has previously published several papers which address this issue in detail for Change Laboratory projects. But the current paper is already long and we concluded that analysing contradictions in-depth would distract from the core focus on conceptual development. What we have done is draw attention to these contradictions more explicitly in the introduction, and directed the reader to where they can read more about them. It may be that a future paper focussing on the contradictions within this work would be a valuable endeavour!

The new text in section 1 is as follows:

Yet the project we draw on in this paper was driven by a conviction that prior work had a fragmentary character—with worthwhile initiatives led by different enthusiasts and champions, but without a common vision that would draw issues of pedagogy and stu-dent experience together with campus operations. A range of specific and deeply rooted issues (which participants in the underlying project, using the terminology of our ap-proach as described in section 3.1, eventually analysed and located as ‘contradictions’), have included different visions and values of sustainability, the inconsistent integration of espoused approaches into the actual fabric practice, and mutually incompatible develop-ments occurring in different practices [12].

 

Comment 4. The discussion section could be expanded to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the study's implications for theory and practice. This action could include a more detailed consideration of how the findings might inform the design of future sustainability interventions in HEIs and the study's limitations and directions for future research.

Response 4: We thought this was a very useful suggestion. Indeed, we felt that drawing out these points together would be a good place for the paper to end. We have therefore added considerable extra text to section 7 which (a) draws together a summary response to the research question, (b) draws out how the findings might inform the design of future sustainability interventions in HEIs. The limitations and directions for future research were already addressed in this section, so hopefully the reviewer will feel that this narrative flow works well.

The new text in section 7 is as follows:

 

Based on our preceding, in-depth analysis, we put forward the following synthesis as a summary response to our research question:

• There is considerable potential for conceptual development to occur within higher education sustainability initiatives. In the project we studied, four key concepts were put forward (Table 2). These concepts had not been proposed prior to the project and nor were they explicitly borrowed from external sources.
• The concepts are developed to be practical and future oriented. The four concepts de-veloped in the project we studied were not created for conceptual or theoretical ends, and indeed participants became increasingly sceptical about endlessly debating the minutiae of sustainability (such as definitions) (section 5.1). Instead, they were de-veloped through attempts to realise and work on the object of their activity: develop-ing a sustainable campus.
• Conceptual development processes in higher education sustainability initiatives are propelled by the inadequacies of existing artefacts. These inadequacies spur partici-pants to break away from their existing frames of reference, generating new concepts as part of developing their own agency in relation to the situation they face. One in-stance of this, in the project we studied, arose from an abortive attempt to rely on the well-established Brundtland definition (section 5.1.1). This definition is authoritative and globally renowned. However, it proved inadequate to mediate the conflict of mo-tives already arising within the project even at a very early stage. Participants there-after started a process of conceptual development of their own.
• Conceptual development processes in sustainability initiatives are cyclical. Our analysis of the development of the CSS showed that it arose out of four successive stages of development. Each commenced from a conflict of motives and involved putting forward and considering an abstract projection, and the more successful later stages also involved attempts at embedding and objectifying a conceptual artefact (Figure 4). Yet the process was not circular, with the actions taken in later stages of development building on or reacting against earlier ones rather than repeating them. Indeed, some participants voiced irritation if the work of the group seemed in danger of becoming repetitive (section 5.2.1).
• Conceptual development processes are challenging and may be unsuccessful. From a narrow perspective, even the eventually favourable development of the CSS came only after three previous stages of development had been abandoned by participants, for reasons including inadvertently facilitating passivity, being too narrowly focussed on teaching, and communicating at the wrong level within the institution. Yet our anal-ysis highlights that even apparently ‘failed’ work may provide a useful basis for de-velopment when picked up again later, as is evident in the traces from earlier stages which can be found in the CSS (section 5.4.5). Even where conceptual work is aban-doned and not taken up again later, the attendant actions can also provide the basis for stimulating participant agency [12,13].
• Conceptual development occurs as part of wider efforts to transform activities, rather than being undertaken in isolation or as an end in itself. Many existing concepts, and other forms of artefacts, will continue to be used in sustainability initiatives. Moreo-ver, any new concepts which are developed will need somehow to work within con-stellations of artefacts used within local activity, or they will not be effective. In the project we analysed, participants undertook actions specifically aimed at embedding concepts into existing activity, including anticipating staff support and resistance and finding synergy with existing Green Campus work (section 5.3.5). Doing so was far from straightforward, but without such effort it seems doubtful that the eventual CSS would have been realised in a form that later provide so influential (section 5.4.5.
• The potential for conceptual development is not identical for each sustainability strategy or initiative. It is for this reason that we put forward, below, suggestions for future research and recommendations for those planning sustainability strategies or initiatives in higher education.

 

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We also recommend that those planning sustainability strategies or specific initiatives in higher education should consider:

• How to forge new transformative coalitions across a strategy, and within particular initiatives, rather than only relying on the pre-existing activism and sponsorship of key individuals.
• How to draw out and explicitly address value tensions and different voices within the institution, rather than imposing a single perspective and suppressing opportu-nities for dissent.
• How to provide structured opportunities for different professionals, and those with divergent disciplinary backgrounds, to build new knowledge together, with such op-portunities being crucial for overcoming siloed thinking as well as valuable ends in themselves.
• How to set a remit for particular initiatives so that it provides a clear rationale for people to come together to work, while not overly narrowing what kinds of discus-sion are permitted within the process.

 

 

 

Comment 5. The article could benefit from including a visual representation of the conceptual development process, such as a diagram or model. This action would help readers better understand the complex dynamics of change and learn within the Change Laboratory intervention.

Response 5: We thought that this was an extremely useful comment. We have indeed added such a visual representation, in section 3.4. We have also drawn attention to the links between this new figure and the existing figure in section 6.1.

We are unable to paste a figure into this review area (the technical system would not allow it), but the new text in section 3.4 can be found below:

Figure 1 provides a model of this conceptual development process. The figure, which is our own formulation, highlights how conceptual development passes through stages, with each stage of development represented as a different column in the figure’s notation. A stage of development proceeds from the foundation of a conflict of motives, which arise from underlying contradictions in activity, and which become expressed as the poles of the conflict, with this being shown at the bottom of the column. As we have explained above, the poles of this conflict cannot be mediated by established artefacts, whether those transmitted from past activity or any that subjects might already have been working on themselves.

It is understood in this model that stages of development may proceed through a se-quence of actions whose goals constitute attempts at abstract projection, consideration, embedding and objectification, as these have already been defined above. This is indicated in the figure by the cumulative building of actions in these rows, from the bottom of each column upwards. Yet these stages may also be abandoned, as their inadequacies become evident to the subjects working on them, with the action being truncated in such cases as subjects return to a conflict of motives. This is indicated in the figure by the grey dotted line indicating multiple potential paths of work, and the angled arrows indicating that these paths may diverge after any aspect of conceptual development.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Both the abstract and the title accurately reflect the objective of the study. The stated aim—to explore conceptual development within sustainability change initiatives and to present the development of the CSS concept—was compelling from the abstract stage.

The paper commendably addresses the challenge of establishing a contextually relevant understanding of the term sustainability within a higher education institution (HEI) setting. This is a valuable and much-needed contribution.

The research design is detailed and clearly articulated, providing a solid foundation for the Findings chapter, which stands out as the strongest section of the article. In particular, section 5.1, A purposeful definition of ‘sustainability’, is especially noteworthy. The discussion on the varied meanings of sustainability across disciplines is insightful and highly appreciated.

Overall, the article is of high quality and highly relevant to the scope and objectives of this journal.

Author Response

Overall, the article is of high quality and highly relevant to the scope and objectives of this journal.

Response: Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. We are very grateful that you recognise the value in the paper, and we much appreciate the helpful comments you have provided. We will have your encouraging comments in mind when writing more papers in the future.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The thematic area of your manuscript is to be appreciated, as well as the amount of work it required. 

The RQ is missing 

adding too many ".." does not improve the scientific quality of your manuscript; if the quoted text is absolutely necessary, try to highlight the key terms that will further be discussed at length.

Citations such as " [3,7,9,14,15,21,30]" are to be avoided.

The literature review is quite extensive; moreover, all the text from the 3. Theoretical Framework title should be revised since is also very extensive and could be reduced as to improve the research clarity. 

Research design is unclear. The entire methodology section is unappropriatedly structured and needs your attention. There are elements that are completely missing.

First, you need to explain which measures have you been using, and explain it with thresholds if necessary, in the light of previous literature; further, you should have section such as analysis strategy, method setting and sample, before presenting the results.

How did you avoid bias in regard to the length of the data collection process?

What data collection methods have you been using?

Has the Ethics been ensured throughout the entire period? how? what proof do you have.

You do not present what type of research intended to perform/ how data is analyzed/ in a qualitative/quantitative manner; what software have you been suing; how have you coded/worked on the resulting materials as to get to the results?

All the Results text needs to be synthesized. 

Results should answer or not to the RQ. 

The text here should contain a results presentation in the light of previous literature, as opposed to the literature review, where you debate on some Hypotheses. 

As for backing up the 41 manuscript pages, the 60 literature references are highly insufficient.

As much as your work is to be appreciated, the aspect of the current version of your manuscript still holds the aspect of a Project report as opposed to one of a Scientific article.

I am sorry I cannot be more positively on the situation.

 

Best regards, 

 

2.1. Measures, 

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. As we suspect you would have anticipated, we found some of your comments difficult to address. This is partly because we appear to be coming from different research paradigms and/or academic disciplines, meaning that there is a big gap between our expectations. It is also because some of your comments pulled the paper in a different direction from those of the other three reviewers. However, we approached your comments positively and constructively. We acknowledge that our research approach has not been much used in previous work on sustainability, and this puts a burden on us to be clear and explain it. We also found that responding to your comments made us think deeply about our work and its arguments. In the end, we added quite a lot of new text to the paper in response to your suggestions, and we hope you feel that this effort has been valuable, even if there will inevitably be some areas in which we were not able to accommodate your points exactly.

Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted in the re-submitted file.

 

Comment 1. The RQ is missing 

Response 1: This is a very valuable point, thank you. We have added the research question to the Introduction, alongside several new paragraphs which justify it in relation to our later critiques of the literature. We have also made some smaller changes to the end of the literature review chapter to make the same links explicit.

The new text in section 1 is as follows:

The analysis we present in this paper addresses the following research question: What is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process, during a higher education sustainability initiative? By addressing this question, we aim, as we outline in our literature review (section 2), to contribute to the literature on sustainability in higher education, and particularly those strands concerned with sustainability terminology and strategic ap-proaches for embedding sustainability in the sector. Such literature, we argue, is regretta-bly weak in recognising conceptual development within initiatives, and in understanding the processes by which such initiatives unfold. We use our conceptual model to explore how conceptual development occurred within a Change Laboratory, a re-search-intervention methodology often used to understand the potentiality in a given set of practices [15].  

To address this question, in what follows we first present a preliminary analysis which demonstrates that several ‘strands’ of conceptual development could be discerned within the data generated by the project.

 

Comment 2. adding too many ".." does not improve the scientific quality of your manuscript; if the quoted text is absolutely necessary, try to highlight the key terms that will further be discussed at length.

Citations such as " [3,7,9,14,15,21,30]" are to be avoided.

Response 2: Thank you for these points.

With regard to the uses of ellipses (…), we agree that these might better have been used only when necessary. We checked through the paper to retain only the instances where these are truly necessary. In the previous version there were 41 instances of the ellipsis symbol, whereas now we have reduced this to 9.

With regard to the compound citations, we are not accustomed to this numeric citation system and it did cause us some trouble. But we agree that citations such as the one you show in your comment are awkward and not easy to understand for the reader.

We looked through our manuscript and found 8 instances of such citations, spread across sections 2, 2.1, and 2.3.

In each case, we pared back the citations so that they refer to fewer papers. We ensured that the most relevant papers were selected to support our point. We also checked and confirmed that the other papers (which were removed from the compound citation) were cited instead in the subsequent sentences, which meant that we did not reduce the number of citations overall, which helped us to address your Comment 6 (see below).

The new citations look more like this:

Another strand of debate does, however, frame issues of sustainability terminology institutionally—but in terms of communication problems [33-35].

Papers focussed on process issues typically discuss the people who should be involved in sustainability-related change [24,32,33].

 

Comment 3. The literature review is quite extensive; moreover, all the text from the 3. Theoretical Framework title should be revised since is also very extensive and could be reduced as to improve the research clarity. 

Response 3: This was probably the most difficult comment to address from any of those which we received from any of our 4 reviewers. The core problem is that other reviewers actually suggested that we add further detail to this section, and even an extra diagram. You will see that section 3.4, for example, has been considerably extended by comparison with the version you saw before, rather than reduced. We did not deliberately take the paper in the opposite direction to the one you advocated. It was simply that other reviewers made the opposite request, which pulled us in different directions.

 

Comment 4. Research design is unclear. The entire methodology section is unappropriatedly structured and needs your attention. There are elements that are completely missing. First, you need to explain which measures have you been using, and explain it with thresholds if necessary, in the light of previous literature; further, you should have section such as analysis strategy, method setting and sample, before presenting the results. How did you avoid bias in regard to the length of the data collection process? What data collection methods have you been using? Has the Ethics been ensured throughout the entire period? how? what proof do you have. You do not present what type of research intended to perform/ how data is analyzed/ in a qualitative/quantitative manner; what software have you been suing; how have you coded/worked on the resulting materials as to get to the results?

Response 4: Thank you for this very useful comment. In response to your suggestion, we made extensive additions and changes to the later sections of the research design section. The previous version of section 4.4, in particular, was almost entirely discarded. In its place, we added three new sections, which address the issues of Methods for generating data (section 4.4), Data analysis (section 4.5), and Ethics (section 4.6). These sections comprise more than 1800 words and a new figure. We also added some (more modest) additional content to address your comments about sampling. We thank you for encouraging us to be explicit about these issues. We believe that we have now produced the most comprehensive account of these methodological issues in any empirical paper published about the Change Laboratory, and that this material will be of considerable value to readers of the journal. We reproduce the new text below, but the new figure cannot be reproduced below due to the technical limitations of the system (it can be found in section 4.4 of the paper).

The short new material added to section 4.2 is as follows:

The project followed published guidance for sampling in Change Laboratory re-search-interventions, which states that 20 participants who meet the above criteria is a typical figure for such projects [37],

 

The entirely new section 4.4 (apart from the figure) is as follows:

 

Data are generated within Change Laboratory projects in a variety of forms, with the aim being to support both the progress of the intervention and later research analysis [37,38,61]. In this case, the project generated the following kinds of data:

• Video recordings of all eight workshops. These were produced using two tri-pod-mounted video cameras, positioned at angles which aimed to capture who was speaking at any given moment, their expressions and gestures, and the reactions of others to their speaking turns. The workshops totalled 777 minutes in duration, re-sulting in around 1,554 minutes of footage from across both cameras, although foot-age from the first camera was mainly used for analysis since that from the second proved less useful.
• Transcripts of workshops. These were produced from the video footage by the first author, and were used alongside the video recordings during analysis.
• Flip-chart materials and other public notes. These were generated within the work-shops, and collected and photographed at the end of each session.
• Minutes from each workshops. These were produced by the first author. They were circulated to all project participants shortly after each meeting, as an aide memoire, and later used for research analysis.
• Transcripts of 15 semi-structured interviews (with those interviews being conducted with the participants indicated in Table 1). These interviews were conducted ap-proximately six months after the final workshop and audio recorded specifically to support transcription.

 

 

The entirely new section 4.5 is as follows:

Our priority for the current paper involves tracing the extent to which conceptual de-velopment is evident in the project dataset described in section 4.4. Data analysis in Change Laboratory workshops, it should be emphasised, is a cumulative product of an ongoing process [13] which, in this case, involved three different kinds of analysis:

1. Intra-workshop analysis: conducted jointly by all participants in the project when meeting together, who together analyse materials and generate new knowledge in a way that influences how the project unfolds subsequently;
2. Inter-workshop analysis: conducted by the researcher-interventionist (the first author) between workshops, to allow for knowledge produced in workshops to influence subsequent ones;
3. Post-intervention analysis: conducted by the research team (both authors), to construct narratives for the purposes of research publication.

In the rest of the paper, it is the post-intervention analysis (step 3) which will be most visi-ble in the paper, but it is important to remain aware that this analysis was built on top of the preceding work, whose traces and influence are evident in the underlying dataset. Ad-ditionally, as explained at the beginning of section 4, reconceptualisation is central to the purpose of Change Laboratory projects, and so all three aspects of the above data analysis were concerned with conceptual development in some way (see [12]). Yet the explicit framework we describe in section 3.4 was used only for the post-intervention analysis.

Our approach to the post-intervention analysis is informed by several sources in the relevant methodological literature. Firstly, we are influenced by researchers like Virkkunen and Newnham [37] and Morselli [61], who emphasise the value of analysing different kinds of Change Laboratory data, including video footage and artefacts from within workshops, together in complementary ways. For this reason, we did not privilege the transcripts alone; instead, we based our analysis on watching the video footage from camera 1 and relating this to the other sources of data. Doing so proved difficult to accom-plish using the software we were familiar with, and so we instituted more manual forms of analysis which made use of handwritten notes, highlighted pages, and spreadsheets. Secondly, we are influenced by scholars such as Haapasaari et al. [62], who emphasise the value of work in which the “data of an entire CL [Change Laboratory] process is analysed in great detail and with the help of elaborate categorical frameworks that seek to reveal the epistemic and interactional dynamics” [62] (p. 240). Such work encouraged us first to ad-dress the dataset from the entire research-intervention and afterwards to trace how partic-ular interactions emerged within the broader context of the project. Thirdly, we are influ-enced by researchers like Engeström and Sannino [63], whose work sensitised us to un-derstand how short interactions (such as speaking turns) can be related methodologically to the complex theoretical frameworks offered by activity theory.

To accomplish the post-intervention analysis in a manner consistent with the above precepts, we undertook our work using a Dialectic Thematic Analysis approach [64], which we conducted in the following stages:

1. Exploring the conceptual products of the research-intervention. To undertake this work, we considered the entire dataset from all data sources on an initial pass, alt-hough in practice the workshop minutes and semi-structured interview transcripts were particularly useful in establishing the most important concepts. Our work at this point took the form of deductive qualitative analysis (DQA) [65], sensitised by the concept of objectification which was discussed as part of our theoretical framework (section 3.4). To be regarded as a conceptual product, we did not regard it as sufficient for an idea (abstract projection) to be discussed in speech turns alone. Instead, par-ticipants must have attempted to draw together a material artefact to represent the projection in a way intended to be sufficiently comprehensive, stable and intelligible for their own later use and/or for use by others. As section 5 will make clear, this work identified four such conceptual products.
2. Tracing the evidence for conceptual development across the project. To undertake this work, we explored the data from the workshops, and in particular the video record-ings, transcripts, flipchart materials and minutes. Once again, our work at this stage used a DQA approach, but this time sensitised by the four conceptual products we had already identified. We mapped the evidence for each of these concepts being de-veloped longitudinally through the successive workshops. As section 5 will make clear, this process led us to conclude that conceptual development had been distrib-uted across all workshops, but in a way that was highly uneven between the different concepts. The development of one concept had been addressed in 7 of the 8 work-shops; two had been developed in four each; and one had been worked on in only three workshops. It was at this point that we decided to focus on the CSS for the sub-sequent analysis.
3. Bounding the conceptual development of the CSS within the dataset. Having decided to focus on the CSS, we wished to conducted an in-depth analysis of that subset of our data which addressed this concept. Doing so involved using the DQA approach to highlight the relevant subset of data. This was an active and careful process, since actions which might appear irrelevant to the CSS in isolation could be identified as important in the context of prior or subsequent actions, thereby necessitating a pro-cess of traversing backwards and forwards between the data from different work-shops.
4. Delineating the stages of development of the CSS. At this stage, we used the DQA ap-proach on our bounded dataset, sensitised by the full range of constructs in our theo-retical framework as summarised in Figure 1. As section 5 will make clear, we were able to identify four stages of development which were important in the development of the CSS, and to assign data to the different types of actions our model suggests may be present at each stage.
5. Naming and describing the actions comprising each stage of development of the CSS. Undertaking this work was a largely inductive process undertaken for those chunks of data which had already been closely delineated at the previous point in our analy-sis—an analytical approach sometimes called the modular method [64]. Undertaking this work allowed us to qualitatively categorise and describe the actions of conceptu-al development we later present in sections 5.1-5.4. For instance, it allowed us to un-derstand that there were three key actions undertaken by participants which involved consideration within the first stage of development: participants identifying aspects of their own teaching practices, highlighting that some important campus activities were not related to teaching, and noticing that existing sustainability activities were ‘piecemeal’. A long chain of 32 such actions in the conceptual development of the CSS is synthesised and categorized in Figure 4.

The above work was carried out by the authors in a collaborative process, in which the work at each point was discussed critically and next steps considered, in regular online meetings over a period of around six months. Our approach aimed to avoid interpretive bias by triangulating between different sources of data, by being explicit about which con-cepts were guiding our analysis, by maintaining detailed records of the analysis process within spreadsheets, and through discussions between the two members of the research team (cf. [66]).

Our findings below summarise an account of conceptual development throughout the project. To accomplish this, we analyse our data using the theoretical framework set out in section 3.4, and structure the account to consider how this conceptual development occurred as the project proceeded through successive workshops. Doing so builds on our previously published analysis of how transformative agency emerged across this same project [13], where we identified and analysed five “turning points” in that agency occur-ring in workshops 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 (p. 115).

The entirely new section 4.6 is as follows:

Our approach to research ethics in this project aimed to be both relational and reflex-ive, an approach used for other comparable projects [67]. We drew inspiration from the work of Nodder [68], who usefully highlights the importance of explaining the ethos and arrangements of the Change Laboratory methodology to participants, from the beginning, in a respectful, open and professionally appropriate way. We were also mindful of the analysis of Nuttall [69], who draws attention to complex issues, such as agency, relation-ality, and decision-making, which arise across the process of Change Laboratory projects. Our approach at all times was to attempt to be open about the purpose and process of the project, and to display a nuanced understanding of the unanticipated ethical dilemmas which might arise. While this approach involved regularly reiterating the ethical ap-proach we aimed to use, it did not involve claiming to be ‘neutral’ about the project’s pro-cesses or outcomes. As Virkkunen and Newnham [37] make clear, those undertaking a Change Laboratory project are interventionist researchers who combine a range of project management and administrative roles with those of being a participant in the project it-self. Such a stance is entirely conversant with the “activist” approach which has been as-sociated with activity theory research over many decades [70].

In terms of institutional approval, the study was approved by the University Re-search Ethics Committee (UREC) of Lancaster University (date of approval: 16 December 2015, approval code UREC-15-12-16-DK1). The approach we took to documenting the project was consistent with that suggested by Yardley [71].

 

Comment 5. All the Results text needs to be synthesized. Results should answer or not to the RQ. The text here should contain a results presentation in the light of previous literature, as opposed to the literature review, where you debate on some Hypotheses. 

Response 5: Thank you for this point. We agree that more attention should have been directed towards how our findings address our research question.

We accommodated this point in several ways. Firstly, we briefly signposted the Findings section so that the reader could understand that it did address the research question. We hope that the new methodological text (see above) would also have made this clearer. Secondly, we concluded the paper by providing a direct answer to our research question which shows how our findings address it, which takes around 600 new words.

The (brief) new context added in section 5 is as follows:

The analysis we present in this section addresses the research question set out at the start of the paper: What is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process, during a higher education sustainability initiative?

The (more extensive new content added in section 7 is as follows:

Based on our preceding, in-depth analysis, we put forward the following synthesis as a summary response to our research question:

• There is considerable potential for conceptual development to occur within higher education sustainability initiatives. In the project we studied, four key concepts were put forward (Table 2). These concepts had not been proposed prior to the project and nor were they explicitly borrowed from external sources.
• The concepts are developed to be practical and future oriented. The four concepts de-veloped in the project we studied were not created for conceptual or theoretical ends, and indeed participants became increasingly sceptical about endlessly debating the minutiae of sustainability (such as definitions) (section 5.1). Instead, they were de-veloped through attempts to realise and work on the object of their activity: develop-ing a sustainable campus.
• Conceptual development processes in higher education sustainability initiatives are propelled by the inadequacies of existing artefacts. These inadequacies spur partici-pants to break away from their existing frames of reference, generating new concepts as part of developing their own agency in relation to the situation they face. One in-stance of this, in the project we studied, arose from an abortive attempt to rely on the well-established Brundtland definition (section 5.1.1). This definition is authoritative and globally renowned. However, it proved inadequate to mediate the conflict of mo-tives already arising within the project even at a very early stage. Participants there-after started a process of conceptual development of their own.
• Conceptual development processes in sustainability initiatives are cyclical. Our analysis of the development of the CSS showed that it arose out of four successive stages of development. Each commenced from a conflict of motives and involved putting forward and considering an abstract projection, and the more successful later stages also involved attempts at embedding and objectifying a conceptual artefact (Figure 4). Yet the process was not circular, with the actions taken in later stages of development building on or reacting against earlier ones rather than repeating them. Indeed, some participants voiced irritation if the work of the group seemed in danger of becoming repetitive (section 5.2.1).
• Conceptual development processes are challenging and may be unsuccessful. From a narrow perspective, even the eventually favourable development of the CSS came only after three previous stages of development had been abandoned by participants, for reasons including inadvertently facilitating passivity, being too narrowly focussed on teaching, and communicating at the wrong level within the institution. Yet our anal-ysis highlights that even apparently ‘failed’ work may provide a useful basis for de-velopment when picked up again later, as is evident in the traces from earlier stages which can be found in the CSS (section 5.4.5). Even where conceptual work is aban-doned and not taken up again later, the attendant actions can also provide the basis for stimulating participant agency [12,13].
• Conceptual development occurs as part of wider efforts to transform activities, rather than being undertaken in isolation or as an end in itself. Many existing concepts, and other forms of artefacts, will continue to be used in sustainability initiatives. Moreo-ver, any new concepts which are developed will need somehow to work within con-stellations of artefacts used within local activity, or they will not be effective. In the project we analysed, participants undertook actions specifically aimed at embedding concepts into existing activity, including anticipating staff support and resistance and finding synergy with existing Green Campus work (section 5.3.5). Doing so was far from straightforward, but without such effort it seems doubtful that the eventual CSS would have been realised in a form that later provide so influential (section 5.4.5.
• The potential for conceptual development is not identical for each sustainability strategy or initiative. It is for this reason that we put forward, below, suggestions for future research and recommendations for those planning sustainability strategies or initiatives in higher education.

 

Comment 6. As for backing up the 41 manuscript pages, the 60 literature references are highly insufficient.

Response 6: Thank you for drawing this to our attention. In retrospect, we came to understand that it was methodological texts which were largely absent from the work. In addressing your methodological points above, we took the opportunity to add references to several important texts which describe and justify aspects of our methodology, leading to the paper now having 73 literature references rather than 60. We hope you consider this more adequate.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents original research that contributes to the literature on sustainability in higher education, particularly from the perspective of organisational change. It underscores the importance of conceptual development in sustainability initiatives within higher education institutions, especially those involving collaborative efforts among diverse stakeholder groups. The study focuses on a change initiative within a higher education institution (HEI), tracing the development of a Campus Sustainability Statement (CSS) as a key outcome of the group’s work.

The paper provides a clear and concise overview of its content, effectively situating the study within existing theoretical frameworks and related research. It demonstrates a solid understanding of the relevant literature and references an appropriate range of sources. The literature review contextualizes the study within the broader field of sustainability change initiatives in HEIs.

The introduction clearly outlines the study’s context and objectives. However, explicitly stating the research questions would strengthen the paper’s structure and guide the reader more effectively.

The research design and methodology are clearly described, and the arguments are well-supported by the data collected. The discussion is coherent, balanced, and persuasive, and the results are clearly presented. The findings are thoughtfully discussed in relation to existing literature, and references are appropriately cited. Nevertheless, the conclusion would benefit from being explicitly aligned with the (yet-to-be-stated) research questions.

This study makes a valuable contribution to the field, offering a model that could be replicated in other universities. With broader participation and application of qualitative or mixed methods, the approach could yield comparative insights across different institutional contexts.

The manuscript is clearly written, with a logical structure and accessible language. Minor grammatical revisions are needed to enhance clarity and polish the final text.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. We are very grateful that you recognise the value in the paper, and we much appreciate the helpful comments you have provided. We will have your encouraging comments in mind when writing more papers in the future. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted in the re-submitted file.

 

Comment 1: The introduction clearly outlines the study’s context and objectives. However, explicitly stating the research questions would strengthen the paper’s structure and guide the reader more effectively.

Response: This is a very valuable point, thank you. We have added the research question to the Introduction, alongside several new paragraphs which justify it in relation to our later critiques of the literature. We have also made some smaller changes to the end of the literature review chapter to make the same links explicit.

 

The new text in section 1 is as follows:

We understand concepts and conceptual development in ways influenced by the ac-tivity theory tradition [14]. In such scholarship, concepts are understood as a type of arte-fact which mediates activities in ways that are practical (they help people suggest actions which should be undertaken to pursue the object of the activity) and future-oriented (they help people accommodate visions of problems and/or solutions). Importantly, it is under-stood that concepts are not developed only by specialists, but by a whole range of people in their everyday life, and that new conceptual development is spurred whenever issues in activity arise which cannot be mediated adequately by existing artefacts. In section 3.4 we put forward a model which illustrates how conceptual development occurs in sequences of actions, including identifying a conflict of motives arising from an existing activity; putting forward a simple idea; exploring how the idea addresses the conflict of motives; developing the idea to address problems in existing activity; and working up an artefact so that the new concept can be used in the future (potentially by others). Our model also acknowledges that conceptual development is not smooth but instead passes through stages, with stages tending to get abandoned as the inadequacies of the conceptual devel-opment work become apparent to those undertaking it. It is this model which frames our analysis of conceptual development in this paper.

The analysis we present in this paper addresses the following research question: What is the potential for conceptual development to occur, as a process, during a higher education sustainability initiative? By addressing this question, we aim, as we outline in our literature review (section 2), to contribute to the literature on sustainability in higher education, and particularly those strands concerned with sustainability terminology and strategic ap-proaches for embedding sustainability in the sector. Such literature, we argue, is regretta-bly weak in recognising conceptual development within initiatives, and in understanding the processes by which such initiatives unfold. We use our conceptual model to explore how conceptual development occurred within a Change Laboratory, a re-search-intervention methodology often used to understand the potentiality in a given set of practices [15].  

To address this question, in what follows we first present a preliminary analysis which demonstrates that several ‘strands’ of conceptual development could be discerned within the data generated by the project.

 

The new text in section 2 is as follows:

 

Our overarching view, in summary, is that these areas of literature have important shortcomings when it comes to understanding the links between sustainability concepts and change initiatives, and to understating sustainability-related change as a process. In this paper, therefore, we commit to analysing the potential for conceptual development to occur within higher education sustainability initiatives, and to understanding such de-velopment processually. It is for this reason that we pursue the specific research question stated in section 1.

 

Comment 2: The research design and methodology are clearly described, and the arguments are well-supported by the data collected. The discussion is coherent, balanced, and persuasive, and the results are clearly presented. The findings are thoughtfully discussed in relation to existing literature, and references are appropriately cited. Nevertheless, the conclusion would benefit from being explicitly aligned with the (yet-to-be-stated) research questions.

Response: Thank you for drawing attention to this issue, which we found very helpful. Based on your suggestion we have now reiterated the research question in the conclusion and provided a synthesis answer to the question which draws explicitly on the findings we have presented.

 

The new text in section 7 is as follows:

 

Based on our preceding, in-depth analysis, we put forward the following synthesis as a summary response to our research question:

• There is considerable potential for conceptual development to occur within higher education sustainability initiatives. In the project we studied, four key concepts were put forward (Table 2). These concepts had not been proposed prior to the project and nor were they explicitly borrowed from external sources.
• The concepts are developed to be practical and future oriented. The four concepts de-veloped in the project we studied were not created for conceptual or theoretical ends, and indeed participants became increasingly sceptical about endlessly debating the minutiae of sustainability (such as definitions) (section 5.1). Instead, they were de-veloped through attempts to realise and work on the object of their activity: develop-ing a sustainable campus.
• Conceptual development processes in higher education sustainability initiatives are propelled by the inadequacies of existing artefacts. These inadequacies spur partici-pants to break away from their existing frames of reference, generating new concepts as part of developing their own agency in relation to the situation they face. One in-stance of this, in the project we studied, arose from an abortive attempt to rely on the well-established Brundtland definition (section 5.1.1). This definition is authoritative and globally renowned. However, it proved inadequate to mediate the conflict of mo-tives already arising within the project even at a very early stage. Participants there-after started a process of conceptual development of their own.
• Conceptual development processes in sustainability initiatives are cyclical. Our analysis of the development of the CSS showed that it arose out of four successive stages of development. Each commenced from a conflict of motives and involved putting forward and considering an abstract projection, and the more successful later stages also involved attempts at embedding and objectifying a conceptual artefact (Figure 4). Yet the process was not circular, with the actions taken in later stages of development building on or reacting against earlier ones rather than repeating them. Indeed, some participants voiced irritation if the work of the group seemed in danger of becoming repetitive (section 5.2.1).
• Conceptual development processes are challenging and may be unsuccessful. From a narrow perspective, even the eventually favourable development of the CSS came only after three previous stages of development had been abandoned by participants, for reasons including inadvertently facilitating passivity, being too narrowly focussed on teaching, and communicating at the wrong level within the institution. Yet our anal-ysis highlights that even apparently ‘failed’ work may provide a useful basis for de-velopment when picked up again later, as is evident in the traces from earlier stages which can be found in the CSS (section 5.4.5). Even where conceptual work is aban-doned and not taken up again later, the attendant actions can also provide the basis for stimulating participant agency [12,13].
• Conceptual development occurs as part of wider efforts to transform activities, rather than being undertaken in isolation or as an end in itself. Many existing concepts, and other forms of artefacts, will continue to be used in sustainability initiatives. Moreo-ver, any new concepts which are developed will need somehow to work within con-stellations of artefacts used within local activity, or they will not be effective. In the project we analysed, participants undertook actions specifically aimed at embedding concepts into existing activity, including anticipating staff support and resistance and finding synergy with existing Green Campus work (section 5.3.5). Doing so was far from straightforward, but without such effort it seems doubtful that the eventual CSS would have been realised in a form that later provide so influential (section 5.4.5.
• The potential for conceptual development is not identical for each sustainability strategy or initiative. It is for this reason that we put forward, below, suggestions for future research and recommendations for those planning sustainability strategies or initiatives in higher education.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Goog luck

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

I congratulate you for the amount of work in order to improve your manuscript.
The current version has the academic consistency and rigor as for being published with one single observation: academic writing implies keeping a neutral impersonal tone, expressions such as our model, our results etc. must be avoided
Please see to that before finally submitting the final version of your manuscript.

 

Best regards,