Speculative Climate Action: Supporting Teachers and Students to Imagine More Just and Sustainable Futures

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

Abstract

Objectives. This study introduces speculative climate action as a central aspect of transformative climate education. We examine how K-12 teachers negotiated different types of climate action in a professional learning institute, as well as the benefits and challenges they identified related to introducing speculative action to their students.

Theoretical Framework. Historical structures of oppression have resulted in the disproportionate burden of climate and environmental impacts on low-income communities and communities of color. Addressing these structures requires a radical reimagining of both geophysical and social geographies that goes beyond the utilitarian and technocratic approaches (Morales-Doyle et al., 2019) to mitigation and adaptation that are often the focus of science instruction. To this end, we seek to engage teachers and their students in developing speculative civic literacies (Mirra & Garcia, 2020) related to climate, meaning future-oriented and expansive forms of sensemaking and communication that look beyond our existing horizons to reorient shared democratic life towards equity, empathy, and justice.

Methods & Data Sources. This work is situated in a social-design based experiment (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2018) that brings together community-based environmental justice organizations and teachers. The present study focuses on a week-long institute for K-12 teachers across subject areas that was focused on precipitation extremes. The institute was guided by four environmental justice lenses (Authors, 2025c) and included a focus on speculative action. Data sources include video of teachers’ engagement, artifacts of their participation, and post-institute interviews. Data were initially analyzed using ethnographic methods. Then, key segments were coded using a framework for climate action: practical (mitigation/adaptation), political (working within/against systems) and speculative (building alternative systems/imagining new worlds).

Results. While discussing their personal participation in climate action, teachers rarely mentioned speculation; they primarily focused on practical actions, and, to a lesser extent, on political actions. In institute activities, however, teachers made ambitious proposals about both geophysical and social systems, such as designing a residential and educational ecosystem for unhoused people who reside near a creek. Regarding their instruction, elementary teachers and humanities teachers were more likely to have engaged students in speculative action than secondary science teachers. Over time, science teachers came to see the value of speculative action as a way to address structures of oppression with students while fostering “empathy” and “hope.” Some teachers recognized that they tended to perceive constraints rather than possibilities (“I wish we had gone a little bigger”) and that they could learn from students’ imaginations and future dreams (“It’s a great way for students to go wild”).

Scholarly Significance. This study provides a theoretical and analytic framework for transformative climate action that centers speculation as an essential aspect of justice. This study suggests the value of transdisciplinary, cross-grade level, and cross-generational communities to grapple with the climate crisis and consider alternative futures. Future iterations of our design will include an increased focus on youth voice, including artifacts that reflect students’ speculative actions from both inside and outside of school, in addition to examples of instructional activities across grade levels that can foster student imagination.

Authors

• Nguyen Huynh, West Contra Costa Unified School District

• Amanda Nicole Orozco Gonzaga, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Jacob Barton, University of California - Berkeley

• Emily V. Reigh, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Helen Fitzmaurice, University of California - Berkeley