Visual (Re)Storying of Climate Images in the Literacy Classroom: Developing a Model for Climate Literacy Development with Preservice Teachers

• In Event: The Potential of English Language Arts Education for Restor(y)ing Hopeful Socioecological Futures

Abstract

Objective

This qualitative investigation studies how pre-service teachers (PSTs) (n=5) demonstrate decision-making processes regarding climate/environment focused visual images as classroom learning tools (i.e., grade 6-12). The implicit and explicit stories that teachers communicate through interpretive acts shape the narratives that students take up in their own lives. Our findings highlight how PSTs imagine and reflect on future classroom practice, and how they position themselves and one another (McVee et al., 2019) in response to climate images. This study is guided by the question: In what ways do preservice teachers (re)story images of climate disasters to reveal their beliefs and preparation (or lack thereof) in teaching environmental disasters?

Theoretical Framework

Theories used include place-based pedagogies (Gruenewald, 2003; Stibbe, 2015), climate literacy (e.g., CLICK framework, Oziewicz, 2023), and environmental justice (Bullard, 2003; 2019; Shepard & Corbin-Mark, 2009). Muhammad (2020) calls teachers to engage criticality, and to historize narratives through the lenses of justice, power, access, and opportunity. An environmental justice approach asks us to investigate the human aspects of disproportionate climate effects, which fall more often on children and historically marginalized and underserved communities. By fostering connections to the world around us, place-consciousness positions us to reflect on and investigate the stories-we-live-by (Stibbe, 2015) which are the “larger narratives that guide individual and collective sense-making, especially about the relationship between humans and the environment” (Damico et al., 2020, p. 683).

Methods

This investigation enters one focus group conversation (n=5) to inquire closely into the discursive moves that reveal participants' stories-to-live-by and eco-identities. Interdisciplinary focus groups were designed to emphasize the “socioscientific” condition of climate change (Panos & Damico, 2021) and elicit individual and collective meaning making, storying, and position-taking (Holland et al., 1998). Data included open-ended surveys and transcript (i.e., 60 pages, 134 minutes) derived from the audio/video-recorded focus group. Curated image arrays on human-climate experience served as focalizing artifacts. Inductive analysis focused on participants’ storying as positioning in discourse of stories-we-live-by (Stibbe, 2021; Damico et al., 2023). The inductive analysis also identified themes of eco-identities (Lei, 2021). Deductive analysis focused on identifying eco-civic practices described by Damico et al. (2023) as deliberation, reflexivity, and counter-narration (p. 257) within the focus group text-based discursive context.

Findings
When confronted with images of the environment, the stories told are challenging and challenged. Our PSTs demonstrated varying degrees of historical understanding about the focalizing images. They recognized images associated with the Dust Bowl and Hurricane Katrina, yet lacking historicity and revealing positions of emotional and temporal distance from the larger events and the people, animals, and communities depicted. Our paper describes positions of dismissal, victimhood, and contention. Associated with these positions we interpret the PSTs’ stories-we-live-by.
Study Significance
How preservice teachers position themselves as authorities, or not, when selecting visual images for classroom use should inform teacher education practice. Our findings indicate that PSTs need opportunities to develop personal climate literacy knowledge as well as critical curricular decision-making in visual text selection, especially around images of climate disaster (Lammert, 2024).

Authors

• Julianna E. Lopez Kershen, University of Oklahoma

• Kristy Brugar, University of Oklahoma