Reimagining Science Classrooms as a Space for Climate Justice and Care

• In Event: Virtual Roundtable Session 3
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Roundtable Discussion on Barriers and Potentials in Using Social-Emotional Learning Towards Climate Justice: A View from South Asia

Proposal

In this presentation, we as teacher educators offer a pedagogical perspective to learning design that can help reimagine science classrooms as spaces for climate justice and care. We discuss how science classrooms that have long been perceived as spaces for empirical inquiry can be transformed into sites for climate justice education (CJE) that are emotionally relevant and socially structured. Content-focused science education is essential for understanding climate systems, but it is insufficient for nurturing the values, care, and ethical reasoning that climate justice demands. Science, by its nature, prioritizes teaching students to gather evidence, collect and analyze data, and construct models. However, climate justice is not merely about knowing the facts about rising CO2 levels, greenhouse gas emissions, or surface temperatures. It is more about understanding whose voices are heard (Long & Henderson, 2023). We discuss pedagogical approaches that could lead to instilling a more holistic approach to learning about climate while considering emotions and socio-cultural systems within and outside the classrooms.
One of the pedagogical approaches we explored is the purposeful comparison pedagogy, where students examine a single phenomenon in multiple contexts, driven by a purposeful question (Boix-Mansilla & Chua, 2017). For example, students were engaged in cross-national comparisons of energy mix and place-based energy resource allocation across three countries (India, Germany, and the United States). By engaging in cross-contextual comparisons, students were able to move beyond a technocratic understanding to one that foregrounds local values, historical responsibilities, and lived consequences. These global comparisons improve their critical understanding of their own context. This pedagogical approach opens a way towards integrating socio-emotional learning into climate education. When students engage with contrasting realities presented as cases from different geographical regions, they begin to associate with the affective dimensions that lead to decisions in the particular cases. While carrying out global comparisons, students are exposed to different practices, systems, and approaches used in other parts of the world that will help them see how their locality is positioned within the broader global dynamics. When they see the realities of other parts of the world, students become more informed and even motivated to take meaningful educational action in their own communities. Here, there is a shift towards a more grounded and place-based experience that encourages students to recognize injustices and imagine alternatives. If we are to prepare youth to navigate the uncertain futures of climate change, we must reimagine the science classroom as a space for imparting knowledge as well as inculcating the practice of justice and care.

Author

• Arya karumanthra, Indiana University