(Re)framing Environmental and Sustainability Education in a Divided World: Responses in K–12 School Districts and Higher Education in the USA

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Education has always been central to struggles over how societies imagine and construct their futures. In moments of crisis, schools and universities are not only sites of knowledge transmission and production, but also arenas where competing visions of justice, responsibility, and survival are debated and enacted. Today, environmental crises—including but not limited to climate change—converge with political polarization, resource degradation, and systemic inequality, drawing educational institutions into contentious debates about responsibility, justice, and the future of communities. This panel explores how K–12 districts and colleges of education in the United States frame and enact environmental and sustainability education (ESE), and how these framings shape possibilities for civic engagement in divided contexts.
The urgency of this inquiry is underscored by the increasingly fractured landscape in the United States. Environmental issues are contested across partisan lines, and schools are often drawn into the broader cultural struggles that define national politics. At the same time, higher education is under attack in many states, with sustainability and diversity initiatives facing funding cuts or outright bans. Against this backdrop, educational actors—teachers, administrators, students, and policymakers—find themselves navigating competing demands: to address environmental crises as scientific and existential challenges, to remain accountable to political and community pressures, and/or to cultivate the kinds of civic and democratic practices that might sustain cooperation and resilience in a polarized society.
This panel brings together three studies that examine ESE across institutional sites—large public school districts, state and district education administrators, and colleges of education at leading U.S. research universities. Together, the papers highlight both the promises and limitations of education as a vehicle for addressing sustainability in deeply divided contexts. While each study stands on its own, the panel emphasizes their collective contribution: understanding how sustainability and climate change issues are framed and enacted within education provides insights into how societies can, or cannot, build shared commitments to sustainability and social cohesion.
To analyze these dynamics, the panel employs two complementary theoretical perspectives: social movement framing theory (Snow & Benford, 1988; Benford & Snow, 2000) and sustainability cultures theory (Stephenson, 2018; 2023). Framing theory, developed in social movement scholarship, conceptualizes frames as “schemata of interpretation” that help actors make sense of events, identify problems, propose solutions, and motivate action. It highlights three interrelated processes: diagnostic framing (identifying a problem and attributing responsibility), prognostic framing (articulating solutions or strategies), and motivational framing (providing rationales for action). Applying these dimensions to education allows us to trace how school districts and administrators position themselves within larger discourses: do they frame sustainability as a technical and managerial challenge, solvable through energy efficiency and cost savings? Or do they frame it as a justice-oriented struggle, demanding systemic change, curricular innovation, and student engagement? By examining framing, we can see how education may contribute to either deepening divisions and denial of environmental crises, or fostering shared commitments to more sustainable and equitable futures.
Sustainability cultures theory offers a complementary perspective by highlighting the interplay of assets, subjectivities, and practices that sustain or undermine commitments to sustainability within institutions. From this perspective, cultural change arises not only from narratives but also from the alignment, or misalignment, of infrastructure (assets), values and beliefs (subjectivities), and everyday practices. Applied to higher education, this lens captures how universities—and specifically colleges of education—mobilize material resources such as sustainability offices and climate action plans, articulate commitments in mission statements and public proclamations, and enact practices through academic programming and campus initiatives. In a polarized political climate, exogenous pressures such as shifting federal research priorities, anti-DEI legislation, or activist student movements also shape sustainability cultures. The third paper in this panel leverages this framework to evaluate how American research universities, particularly colleges of education, are contributing, or failing to contribute, to public climate literacy and societal transformation.
The panel speaks directly to the CIES 2026 theme, “Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World.” Environmental degradation, and climate change in particular, represent both global crises and sources of local division, and education is deeply implicated in how societies respond. By focusing on the United States—a country marked by stark partisan divides, uneven environmental vulnerability, and contested educational governance—the panel examines how education is at times complicit in inaction, partial in its commitments, or persistent in sustained efforts to prepare youth for a fast-changing world.
The three papers together demonstrate that ESE in the U.S. is neither uniform nor apolitical. This panel argues that understanding education’s role in environmental governance requires moving beyond descriptive accounts of programs and policies to examine the deeper dynamics of meaning, culture, and power. Whether through the frames adopted by districts, the strategies of administrators, or the sustainability cultures of universities, education is not neutral. It is an active participant in the cultural and political struggles that shape our collective response to environmental challenges and our capacity to live together in divided contexts.

Sub Unit

• Environmental and Sustainability Education SIG

Chair

• Carine Verschueren, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Individual Presentations

• Framing and Predictors of ESE Policies in the USA’s Largest School Districts - Aigul Rakisheva, UIUC; Carine Verschueren, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Paapa Nkrumah-Ababio,; Samantha Lindgren, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Armando Jose Torres, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Subnational Responses to Federal Denial: Reframing ESE Policy in the U.S. - Carine Verschueren, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Colleges of Education and Opportunities for Improved Public Climate Literacy - Samantha Lindgren, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Discussant

• Paapa Nkrumah-Ababio,