Tracing sustainability learning through situated scaffolding in higher education

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) calls for process-oriented pedagogical frameworks that should snapshot how sustainability learning develops over time rather than focusing solely on learning outcomes. This qualitative longitudinal case study investigated how sustainability understanding evolved through the Situated Scaffolded Learning Trajectory (SSLT) framework during an 8-month educational intervention involving 103 undergraduate students from engineering and health sciences in an upper-middle-income, non-Anglophone higher education context. Longitudinal qualitative data were collected through multiple complementary sources, including baseline surveys, classroom observations, student-generated drawings, project proposals, self-reflection reports, instructional materials, and formative feedback records. The preliminary findings showed that sustainability learning developed as a socially mediated longitudinal trajectory shaped by interdisciplinary collaboration, formative feedback, iterative reflection, and engagement with authentic sustainability challenges. Rather than conceptualising sustainability learning as a series of isolated educational activities, the Situated Scaffolded Learning Trajectory (SSLT) framework elucidates how understanding of sustainability can develop progressively through interconnected processes of participation, scaffolded support, and collaborative meaning-making. The study contributes to ESD research by demonstrating the explanatory value of the SSLT as a transferable process-oriented framework that can inform the design and evaluation of sustainability education across diverse higher education contexts.