Visualising Glocal Sustainability Agency through Photovoice: Indonesian Students and the Translation of Global Sustainability Discourse

Abstract

This article attempts to understand how Indonesian undergraduate students used photovoice to localize and make sense of global sustainability discourse through local imagery, language, and reflective thinking. This study does not view the Sustainable Development Goals, Education for Sustainable Development, or global citizenship as objective frameworks to be delivered to students. This study instead views them as transnational education discourses that will be interpreted in culturally and institutionally specific ways. Using a Take Action Global (TAG)-related virtual sustainability learning activity in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) framework, this participatory study involved six undergraduate students and was located in a qualitative paradigm. Data were drawn from student photographs, reflective narratives, peer dialogues, semi-structured interviews, and research notes. The study found that through photovoice, students were able to identify environmental conditions that were generally ignored, articulate local sustainability challenges through images, and reflect on and narrate these challenges in English. The study also found that through program-based comparison, students were able to connect local environmental conditions with the broader sustainability discourse. The authors of the study exercise caution against the generalization of the findings. The study also introduces the term glocal sustainability agency, which the authors define as the ability of the students, as a result of cultural placement, to link local environmental experience with global sustainability discourse, provide representation to that linkage through images and language, and view themselves as accountable in their everyday practices. The authors of the study also claim that sustainability education can be enhanced through the use of photovoice, since it provides students with the tools to identify, articulate, narrate, and reflect on environmental issues that are relevant to them.