{"id":1023,"date":"2013-07-08T15:44:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T15:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/copyright.lboro.ac.uk\/teachingandlearning\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2013-07-08T15:44:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T15:44:44","slug":"happiness-bringing-higher-education-towards-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/2013\/07\/08\/happiness-bringing-higher-education-towards-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness: bringing higher education towards sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Environment<\/a>Earlier this year, M.Carolina Escobar-Tello<\/a> and Tracy Bhamra<\/a> (both Loughborough Design School<\/a>) published an article entitled \u201cHappiness as a harmonising path for bringing higher education towards sustainability\u201d in the international and multidisciplinary journal\u00a0Environment, Development and Sustainability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The abstract reads: \u201cThis paper is a reflection of an innovative project that complements existing higher education for sustainable development (HESD) approaches within universities by providing an alternative path to embed sustainable lifestyles within the student population. It presents the SLEUTH project; an initiative born out of the need to reduce energy consumption of students at university but that, due to its systemic design, transforms and goes beyond purely energy reduction and brings Happiness as an approach to build sustainable lifestyles. This is the distinct feature of this initiative, proposing it as adding value<\/em> to existing HESD approaches. The paper describes and discusses the collaborative building process, implementation and results in detail. The experiences gathered during the project are used and analysed through \u2018participant observation\u2019, \u2018documents\u2019, \u2018questionnaires\u2019 and \u2018theme-ing coding\u2019 techniques as a means to understand the richness and diversity of the data resulting from a combination of formal and informal learning settings. Through empirical evidence, this analysis presents \u2018real life\u2019 evidence to suggest, firstly the initiative\u2019s design success, its impact on energy consumption and contribution to happiness and sustainable lifestyles. Secondly, a successful example for the contribution to existing HESD frameworks that move away from indoctrination and instead leans towards pro-activeness, self-organisation and voluntary collective action.\u201d<\/p>\n

In defining happiness as \u201ca state of deep contentment (serenity and fulfilment) with one\u2019s life, which results from the combination of three variables: feeling in a positive mood (1), life satisfaction (2) and genetics (3)\u201d, this thought-provoking paper challenges assumptions regarding what makes people happy,\u00a0particularly in terms of consumption, while also advocating that we change our lifestyles into sustainable ones and that we do so as a community. With a particular focus on energy saving,\u00a0this research\u00a0utilises\u00a0the findings from a group of Loughborough students living on campus,\u00a0encourages them to reflect upon their everyday actions, and highlights the benefits of pro-activeness and social interaction. Ultimately, it is an invitation to shape and deliver more sustainable, happier, university experiences.<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0the\u00a0third\u00a0in\u00a0our series of blog posts regarding publications by Loughborough University staff on pedagogical issues. Further information regarding this particular publication is available online via LUPIN<\/a>; the full citation follows: M.Carolina Escobar-Tello & Tracy Bhamra (2013),\u00a0“Happiness as a harmonising path for bringing higher education towards sustainability”, in Environment, Development and Sustainability<\/em>, Volume 15 Issue 1,\u00a0pp.177-197. doi:\u00a010.1007\/s10668-012-9382-4<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, M.Carolina Escobar-Tello and Tracy Bhamra (both Loughborough Design School) published an article entitled \u201cHappiness as a harmonising path for bringing higher education towards sustainability\u201d in the international and multidisciplinary journal\u00a0Environment, Development and Sustainability. The abstract reads: \u201cThis paper is a reflection of an innovative project that complements existing higher education for sustainableRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pedagogic-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}