Teaching for the Future (that Students are Already Worried About)

Three findings from the recent USask Student Sustainability survey, why it matters for teaching, and concrete actions educators can take.

By Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning

The results are in from the 2025 Student Sustainability Survey and for USask educators there's a lot worth sitting with. Over 1,100 first and fourth-year students across all colleges shared how they think and feel about global environmental issues. The picture that emerges is one of complex concern and a desire to engage with sustainability issues.

Three findings worth your consideration:

1. Environmental issues are important to most students on a personal level.

Educators may be hesitant to bring sustainability issues into their courses because they have been made out to be controversial. Our survey shows that the vast majority of USask students care deeply about these topics. More than half of surveyed students (56%) rated environmental issues as extremely or very important to them personally, and less than 10% indicated that these concerns are only slightly or not at all important. Far from being a polarizing topic, environmental sustainability represents common ground and a set of concerns that students across disciplines and backgrounds already bring with them into the classroom.

Why this matters for teaching: Engaging with environmental issues is a way for educators to make their course content relevant and connected to what students care about. Research consistently shows that students are more engaged when learning feels personally meaningful and connected to the real world.  Students value learning that has tangible real-world relevance with content that feels connected to their lives and the world around them. Sustainability topics offer that kind of material. Educators don't need to become activists or take political positions to engage with environmental themes, and many students are motivated through engagement with these ideas.

2. When facing sustainability problems, students feel overwhelmed and guilty.

When asked how they feel about global environmental issues, only a small fraction of students expressed indifference or disbelief (not concerned – 7.6%, Indifferent – 6.5%, annoyed – 3%). The vast majority are emotionally engaged, but not often in empowering ways. The largest response selected? Guilt.  Nearly 1/3 of those surveyed indicated that they wish they could do more to address the problem, but they feel unable to act. Similarly, just over 1/4 of students indicated that they felt concerned but overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. 

Why this matters for teaching: Many students carry this emotional weight into their classes. A sense of personal responsibility coupled with uncertainty about how to respond results in latent worry that gets in the way of their ability to focus and learn. Encouraging students to voice their concerns and practice problem solving can help them work through disempowering emotions of anxiety and guilt. When students are not offered the opportunity to process these emotional complexities, they are likely to remain more paralyzed than empowered, even in courses with rich sustainability content. 

3. Students want to live more sustainably than they currently do.

Students were asked to rate both the current environmental sustainability of their lifestyle and the level they aspire to reach. Most students (66%) describe their current lifestyle as moderately environmentally sustainable. But when asked about their aspirations, 76% said they want to live very or extremely environmentally sustainable lifestyles. That's a significant gap between intention and practice, offering a window of opportunity for educators to have an impact.

Why this matters for teaching: The majority of our students aren't apathetic. They have indicated that they want to do more to build a better future. What they may lack are the tools, frameworks, and confidence to engage. Courses that offer concrete, actionable sustainability knowledge paired with opportunities to navigate complexity and problem solve have the potential to offer students what they need to move from passive concern to purposeful action. Through these learning experiences students are equipped not just to understand the challenges ahead, but to see themselves as capable, credible contributors to solving them.

Concrete Actions Educators Can Take

1. Acknowledge and validate emotions first. Educators and students have diverse and complex personal responses to environmental issues. Avoidance is the least helpful route, but it also isn’t the educator’s job to extract worry and replace it with hope. Simply naming guilt, grief, and overwhelm as normal and expected responses rather than signs of weakness, creates psychological safety for emotional processing and learning.

2. Pair environmental content with solution-centered work. For example, when teaching about climate change, point students to resources like Project Drawdown, Project EDDIE, or Not Too Late which highlight specific actions across sectors that reduce emissions. Assigning analysis of real solutions (policy, technology, community action) offers students the opportunity to translate concern into action.

3. Use case-based instruction. Research highlights case-based teaching as a strategy that can support student agency and confidence in dealing with uncertainties. Cases help anchor new learning to stories that are easier to recall than facts alone. Also, having students practice solving problems helps them solidify the belief that they are capable and calms the nervous system, preparing it to learn. 

4. Build in feedback and reflection. Effective sustainability education centers on experiential approaches that help students develop a sense of agency to act. Two core elements of experiential learning are feedback and reflection. Quality feedback helps a student focus their attention appropriately, and reflective practice helps students untangle emotional responses while training their brains to navigate complexity.   

5. Envision stories of a better future. In his TED Talk, Nic Marks points out that Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t famously state “I have a nightmare”, though when we talk about environmental issues it is easy to fall into the trap of doom and gloom. Fear is a great way to grab attention but also triggers a stress response that is not conducive to learning or progress. 

The data is clear

USask students are emotionally invested, motivated, and looking for guidance when it comes to building a more sustainable future. Their concern for the environment is not a barrier, it's an invitation. Educators across every discipline have an opportunity to give students space to process their concern, equip them, and help them move from overwhelm to agency.

 

Learn More

The 2025 Sustainability Survey was conducted by CHASR (Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research) on behalf of the USask Office of Sustainability as part of the institution's 2026 STARS submission. The full report is available through the Office of Sustainability at sustainability.usask.ca.

Title image credit: Created with Microsoft Copilot
This article was created with the assistance of AI tools, as described in the GMCTL AI Disclosure Statement.
This resource is shared by the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL), University of Saskatchewan, under a CC BY-NC-SA license.