From Eco‑Anxiety to Ecological Resonance: Cultivating Joy in a Photovoice Climate Curriculum

• In Event: Climate Emotion, Agency, and Justice in Formal and Informal Settings

Abstract

Objectives. Students enter climate‐change discussions with strong emotions (Hickman et al., 2021). However, classrooms often overlook emotions, focusing instead on cognitive frames (Authors, 2025a). Building on the idea that joy can “broaden and build” intellectual flexibility, social connection, and agency (Fredrickson, 2001), we argue that joy should be recognized as a vital, justice-oriented resource in climate education. This study traces how moments of joy emerged, mingled with eco-anxiety (Coffey et al., 2021), and fostered ecological resonance, positioning joy as an agentic, situated affect that supports learners to envision and work towards just and sustainable futures.

Theoretical Framework. We conceptualize joy as a feeling that can emerge when learners sense the elation of right relation, a brief yet powerful alignment of self, context, and purpose (Arnett, 2023). To understand the experience of joy, we engage Meadows’ (2014) framework, which describes both how joy is experienced (i.e., harmony/unity, vitality, transcendence, freedom, and altered perception) and the dimensions of joyful experience individuals have (i.e., excited↔serene, individuated↔affiliative, and anticipatory↔consummatory). Additionally, we understand joy is personal, relational, and collective, and can flourish when participants share mutual focus, mood, rhythmic/vocal entrainment, and symbolic artifacts (Collins, 2004). Together, this theorizes joy as an agentic, situated affect that broadens and builds cognitive and social resources (Fredrickson, 2001).

Methods. Using instrumental case study (Stake, 1995), we engaged with 8 fifth-graders at a Midwestern community school in a four-month climate change unit grounded in photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997). Students chose visiting local wetlands severed by a highway to explore their understandings and emotions about climate change. Their learning coalesced in a public art show.

To trace emotional trajectories, we segmented data into four event-sequences (Abott, 2013): initial interviews and photowalks; small/whole-group photo discussions and theming; curating a community art show; and final interviews/debrief conversations. Within each segment we conducted open and in vivo coding for joy and other emotional expressions. We then applied theoretical coding, using Arnett (2023) and Meadows (2014), and pattern coding (Saldana, 2015). Lastly, we analyzed cross-student interaction patterns, via a matrix, noting moments aligned with interaction-ritual theory, allowing us to see how collective rituals amplified or dampened individual joy trajectories (Collin, 2004) and impacted shifts in the broader collective emotional landscape.

Results. Students individually experienced joy and while interacting with each other, overtime these experiences shifted the emotional landscape along a trajectory of: (1) eco-anxiety and eco-relational joy with place, (2) constructive hope around local efforts for land preservation, (3) collective efficacy for protecting, preserving, and enjoying place, (4) ecological resonance aligning self, community, and place.
Landing at ecological resonance stems from students’ collective journey towards feeling wholly connected with the wetlands while still holding space for diverse cognitions and emotions about climate change.

Significance. The emergence of joy across the photovoice curriculum highlights that while eco-anxiety can be deactivating, photovoice is a powerful pedagogical strategy that invites joy which in turn broadens and builds student resources for ecological resonance and action.

Authors

• Imogen Herrick, University of Kansas

• Michael A. Lawson, Kansas State University

• Jaclyn Lauren Dudek, University of Kansas