Agency in the Climate Crisis: Reframing Science Education Through a Three-Lens Approach

• In Event: Learning to Use Science to Build Just and Sustainable Futures

Abstract

This conceptual paper proposes a multidimensional framework for climate agency in science education, integrating epistemic-driven, ethical-reflective, and systemic-pragmatic lenses drawn from science education, philosophy, and economics. It challenges dominant approaches that individualise agency or reduce it to knowledge accumulation or action routines, offering instead a model for engaging with uncertainty, moral complexity, and collective decision-making. The framework introduces spatiality as a key dimension, showing how sociocultural and institutional contexts shape students’ capacity to develop a complex agentic stance toward climate change. Developed through interdisciplinary theorisation and curriculum-oriented analysis, the framework supports the design of learning environments where agency is situated, reflective, and justice-oriented. It responds directly to the climate crisis and calls to reimagine science education for transformative futures..

Authors

• Giulia Tasquier, University of Bologna

• Francesca Pongiglione, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele

• Elena Claire Ricci, University of Verona