'Doing Your Little Bit' When 'Everything Is Just so Big Now': Locating Domains for Developing Agency amidst Disagentic Student Discourses about Our Climate Crisis

Young people currently report feelings of grief, disillusionment, and anxiety around climate change (Hickman, 2019). It is increasingly urgent for universities to provide an education which reflects their concerns and equips them as agentic citizens in an uncertain future. This paper reports on findings from a cross-disciplinary study focusing on students' discourses about ecological justice at a small, northern English university. We adopted a thematic analytical approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006), to explore constructions of agency observed to be salient in focus groups with students. Our findings make it clear that universities need to adapt their curricula and student experience to equip students to understand and exert their agency beyond the individual behavior level, looking to the organizational and structural level. We conclude by offering suggestions for future research, considering pedagogical implications for higher education practitioners, and outlining university-specific developments which our research has sparked.