Unforgetting ELA’s Role in Climate Education: Florida Teachers Navigating Restrictive Politics to Imagine Justice‑Centered Futures

• In Event: Pedagogies Under Pressure: Navigating Constraint, Fear, and Resistance in Education

Abstract

Climate change (CC) is often siloed within STEM disciplines, yet as a socioscientific crisis of justice, it demands engagement across fields, including English Language Arts (ELA). This qualitative study examines how ten diverse Florida ELA teachers—working amidst escalating climate impacts and restrictive state policies—conceptualize and enact climate education. Through thematic and ecolinguistic analysis of in-depth interviews, we explore teachers’ embodied, place-based experiences with CC, their strategic use of ELA’s multimodal and civic affordances, and their navigation of fear, censorship, and opportunity. Findings illustrate how these educators “unforget” ELA’s erased role in climate education and “imagine futures” for justice-centered literacy instruction, advancing pedagogies that integrate civic reasoning, media literacy, and place-based inquiry even in politically hostile contexts.

Authors

• Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida

• Katharine Hull, University of South Florida