Climate Change Education: What Matters in Research and Public Education

• In Event: What Matters in Climate Change Education

Abstract

This paper reviews the themed collection and Virtual Special Issue on climate change education. In line with the session outline, its purpose is to present a critical summary of the following papers, drawing out implications for the field and for further discussion. It proceeds from the position that: “An educational movement that leaves its participants in despair, hopeless, [and] immobilized by dread ... is neither morally defensible nor likely to lead to sustainability outcomes” (Kelsey & Armstrong, 2012, p. 190). While after reviewing the papers in relation to the aforementioned frames and themes, it concludes by exploring why we must: “… urge our educational research colleagues to join us in responding to what is arguably the defining challenge of our age. Yes, research on climate change education is growing but it has primarily occurred within the confines of environmental education and science education. Clearly much remains to be done if, together, we are going to learn how to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate” (Henderson et al. 2017, p.11).

Papers reviewed:
- Balancing the tensions and meeting the conceptual challenges of education for sustainable development and climate change.
- Responses to climate change: exploring organisational learning across internationally networked organisations for development.
- A review of the foundational processes that influence beliefs in climate change: opportunities for environmental education research.
- Development and validation of the ACSI: measuring students’ science attitudes, pro-environmental behaviour, climate change attitudes and knowledge
- Normalizing catastrophe: an educational response.
- individual behaviour change: the role of power, knowledge and strategy in tackling climate change.
- Harnessing homophily to improve climate change education.
- Identifying effective climate change education strategies: A systematic review of the research
- Understanding and communicating climate change in metaphors.
- Hope and climate change: the importance of hope for environmental engagement among young people.
- Textbooks of doubt: using systemic functional analysis to explore the framing of climate change in middle-school science textbooks.
- Conceptualizing climate change in the context of a climate system: implications for climate and environmental education.
- Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change – some lessons from recent literature.
- Significant life experiences, motivations and values of climate change educators
- The influence of personal beliefs, friends, and family in building climate change concern among adolescents
- Probing into the Sources of Ignorance: Science Teachers’ Practices of Constructing Arguments for or Rebuttals to Denialism of Climate Change
- High school experiences and climate change beliefs of first year college students in the United States
- Geographical Process or Global Injustice?: Contrasting Educational Perspectives on Climate Change
- Examining the relationship between middle school students’ sociocultural participation and their ideas about climate change
- Development and Validation of the Anthropogenic Climate Change Dissenter Inventory
- Climate Adaptation Education: Embracing Reality or Abandoning Environmental Values?

Authors

• K.C. Busch, North Carolina State University

• Joseph A. Henderson, Paul Smith's College