Teaching Climate Crisis in the ELA Classroom: A Mixed Method Survey and Interview Study

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Abstract

Addressing climate change in schools in all disciplines is an issue of access and justice for children. This paper describes the results from a mixed method study of 500+ Florida English Language Arts (ELA) educators focused on capturing their perspectives about climate change (CC) and their orientations to educating about CC. Findings indicate broad support of teaching climate in the state and deep concern about the reality of human-caused CC. Teachers reported that it would be possible to integrate climate education into their state standards and benchmarks but expressed fears of disciplinary boundary crossing and lack of policy support. These findings point to many possibilities with regards to leveraging ELA teacher understandings about CC into curricular action.

Authors

• Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida

• Katharine Hull, University of South Florida

• Robert F. Dedrick, University of South Florida

• Justo Yanez, University of South Florida - Tampa