Teaching Hope About Climate Change: Shaping Emotions in Socioscientific Classrooms

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Climate Change and Future Thinking

Abstract

Socio-scientific education seeks to arouse emotions in students by emphasizing the moral and personal aspects of previously conceptual topics. Learning about global warming, however, can arouse negative emotions such as fear, guilt and anxiety in students, which can lead to the adoption maladaptive coping strategies, and reducing the chance of producing active, hopeful citizens who are prepared to tackle this threat. Drawing on Snyder’s theory of Hope, a short, an intervention was developed to increase hope about our ability to stop or slow global warming. The effectiveness of this short intervention is analyzed, and the place of such an intervention in the socio-scientific classroom and possible discussions points that could result from it are proposed.

Author

• Leela Velautham, University of California - Berkeley