Increasing Students' Hope About Our Ability to Solve Climate Change

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: The Role of Student Well-Being and Emotions in Learning

Abstract

The negative emotions climate change evokes, such as despair and hopelessness, inhibit young people’s abilities to engage with the issue. Two interventions were developed with the aim of increasing students’ hope about climate change, drawing on Snyder’s definition of hope as individuals’ ability to engage in pathways and agentic thinking. Intervention one provided participants with salient statistics about three societal-scale solutions, asking them to estimate the relevant quantities. Intervention two asked participants to read and reflect on narratives depicting pro-environmental behavior. Pre-to-post changes in hope for both interventions were assessed. The results not only inform strategies for communication about climate change, but also prove the effectiveness of two short, hope-inducing interventions that can be easily integrated in climate change instruction.

Author

• Leela Velautham, University of California - Berkeley