Teaching the Climate Crisis: Existential Considerations

• In Event: The Moral Implications of Critically Ambitious Social Studies Instruction

Abstract

It is urgent that educators in social studies (among other disciplines) consider the ethical imperative of teaching the climate crisis, because even the best-case scenario at this point is catastrophic (Wallace-Wells, 2019). The objective of this presentation is to articulate how our reactions to existential threat present a barrier to teaching this contentious topic effectively. Through the lens of terror management theory (Pyszczynski et al., 2015), it becomes clear that climate catastrophe is an understandably fraught topic (Garrett, 2019; Kissling & Bell, 2020) as it can serve as a reminder of death in two ways. Simultaneously such discussions can elicit not only “mortality salience” (i.e., the state of having death on your mind) from considering the necrocene (McBrien, 2016) produced by climate catastrophe, but also existential anxiety arising from worldview threat. Worldview threat (Schimel et al., 2007) can occur when Western assumptions are called into question by, for example, curricular encounters with perspectives in relation to the colonial underpinnings of the crisis (e.g., Davis & Todd, 2017; Wynter, 2003), as well as when there is disagreement between students with any worldviews that differ. This is a conceptually based presentation with a “heavy interpretive-theoretical emphasis” (AERA, 2009, p. 482).

Through an examination of relevant aspects of terror management theory and analyzing the teaching of the climate crisis as an existential affair, specific curricular and pedagogical strategies to help educators manage this situation in and out of the classroom are explored. Given that the climate crisis can elicit unhelpful defensive moves as a shield from affectively difficult knowledge, educators need to find ways to help students (and themselves) dwell in this discomfort long enough to think through the problems and take appropriate action. A goal of a TMT-informed approach is to encourage a sort of “pedagogy of discomfort” where both educators and students are called upon to analyze critically their “cherished beliefs and assumptions” and provide “a means of creating ‘space’” instead of rigidly adhering to habit (Boler, 2014, pp. 27-28). The strategies derived from this research include: providing conceptual tools, narrating cascading emotions, carefully using humor to diffuse anxiety, employing language and phrasing that does not overgeneralize divergent groups, and priming the idea of valuing and nurturing difference. It is vital for educators to consider a variety of conceptual and practical tools to shift the discourse regarding this urgent issue. This presentation provides one way (of many) to consider the barriers to meaningful engagements about climate catastrophe.

Author

• Cathryn van Kessel, University of Alberta