Ethics of Care and Pedagogies of Hope for Climate Change Education in Teacher Education

• In Event: Teacher Education for Transdisciplinary Climate Change Education

Abstract

We live in a time of crisis, and crises require new ways of thinking to stop harm and repair damage. The climate crisis that threatens our existence is more than a problem created by dependence on fossil fuels. It is wrapped together with the extinction crisis – the extinction of species, but also the extinction of cultures and languages through colonialism and the exploitation of both people and nature for the benefit of profit-makers (McBrien, 2016). Education, often touted as a lever for addressing the climate crisis, is paradoxically situated within and contributes to the capitalist forces that are responsible for ecological destruction, climate change, poverty, and social injustices (e.g., Apple, 2004; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Klees, 2020). To the extent that teacher education embodies and disseminates capitalist objectives, discourses, and values, it becomes complicit in the exploitation of nature and culture and the resultant harms. At the same time, teacher educators, preservice teachers, and classroom teachers, along with their students, bear the brunt of the adverse effects and suffer from the havoc climate change has wreaked.

Times of crisis require new ways of thinking. In teacher education, transforming and transcending the destructive world economy and healing from its havoc will require more than preparing teachers to understand the mechanisms of global warming or to engage their students in advocating for green-energy solutions. Teacher education must not recycle the harmful discourses that contributed to the multiple and entwined ecological crises of the moment; instead, teacher educators must imagine and then realize a different future from the one the world is headed towards. That future world will grow from different ethical principles and pedagogies from those with which teacher educators may be most familiar today.

Fortunately, some strategies and approaches already exist that can be used as starting places for changing teacher education to address climate change and climate injustice. Moreover, teacher educators already use some of these strategies and approaches in their work on climate change and climate justice education. In this presentation, I will show how teacher education can build ethics of care and pedagogies of hope for climate change and climate justice education. Ethics of care emphasize relationality and nurturing emotional and intellectual relationships that sustain the well-being of teacher educators and preservice teachers. Pedagogies of hope engage teacher educators and preservice teachers in imagining a different and desired future to move beyond despair and focus on opportunities for change (Ojala, 2012). For each, I will provide a short background and describe what it might look like in teacher education. I will then offer several examples to show how teacher educators can incorporate these ethics of care and pedagogies of hope into their practices. I will end with a call to teacher educators to use ethics of care and pedagogies of hope to prepare teachers to teach in a changing world and respond positively and effectively to the climate crisis.

Author

• Kristin L. Gunckel, University of Arizona