Tiptoeing and Sprinting into Critical Climate Justice: Mapping Shifts Across a Secondary Teacher Education Program

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Integrating Climate Justice Education Across Teacher Education Programs: A Remedy of Critical Transdisciplinarity and Collective Action (Table 6)

Abstract

Problem
Climate change demands a shift in how we learn about, and steward, our planet. Teacher preparation programs bear responsibility for preparing novitiate teachers for climate justice teaching. Fortunately, the urgency to teach about/for climate justice has primed teacher educators to reflect on their work. However, how to best do this is an unfolding puzzle with myriad obstacles and possibilities (Beach, 2023).

Theoretical Framework
We adopt 4th Generation CHAT (Engeström & Sannino, 2020) as a tool for analyzing the complicated, multi-scaled, and “wicked” nature of teacher education given its nearly non-existent response to the climate crisis. We couple this theoretical approach with notions of mapping abundance (Fujikane, 2021) as first steps in (re)imaging teacher education and world-building given our changing climate (Mitchell & Chaudhury, 2020).

Methods & Data
This paper offers an analysis of the integration of climate justice into one year-long teacher preparation program in the northwestern United States through the curriculum mapping of the program-wide effort. Our team of 20+ teacher educators engaged in three reflexive participatory mapping sessions to identify and build upon curricular connections to climate justice, relationality, and engagement with community climate experts. Throughout these sessions, instructional teams mapped course connections, integration, cohesion, and commitments using 12 dimensions of a climate justice education framework (Morrison, Fowler, & Bell, 2024). Using selective and open-ended iterative coding (Strauss, 1987) we analyzed session artifacts (including: Jamboards, team discussion notes, audio recordings of Zoom meetings, and a physical timeline outlining connections by timing and coherence) to identify how climate justice was already unfolding across the program, areas for growth, and develop teacher educator supports and engagement.

Findings
Significantly more opportunities to integrate climate justice across the program surfaced than we previously anticipated. And most instructors were eager to turn into this work. Furthermore, this effort quickly became about more than just the curricula. Anti-colonial and Anti-racist Pedagogies for climate justice (Nxumalo, 2021) became collective commitments that transcended coursework, field practicums, and identity caucusing through creative, and communal, reconfigurations of quarterly learning.

Our analysis also forged a cohesive path for moving learning out in communities, where the experiences and expertise of Black, Brown and Indigenous classroom teachers, youth, program graduates, and community-based organizations can be centered. Additionally, all 20 members of the instructional team were committed to teaching about climate justice after our collaborative sessions to some degree, but how much and how differed across instructional teams. For example, some people tiptoed publicly into the work because of a lack of capacity, personally nascent climate change knowledge, prior commitments to subdimensions of climate justice (e.g., racial justice) and overly high expectations of themselves. Privately, however, they were walking or sprinting in response to youth demand and made significant moves forward.

Contribution
This research offers the field of teacher education a systems-level approach to shifting entire teacher education programs to support novitate teachers in teaching about/for climate justice. Furthermore, this paper outlines opportunities to develop teacher education program structures and ways of being that more deeply orient learning toward climate justice.

Authors

• Anne Beitlers, University of Washington

• Kelsie Fowler, University of Washington

• Saraswati Noel, Western Washington University