The climate crisis and learning and development: some global perspectives

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Education is a foundational social sector under threat from the effects of climate change. Increasingly, communities worldwide are identifying local manifestations of this global phenomenon, such as extended school absences due to flooding, school closures resulting from unsafe temperatures and air quality, or threats to drinking water caused by prolonged droughts. While academic communities have begun measuring the effects of these crises, policy and institutional responses to climate-related harms tend to be siloed and reactive rather than learning from the adaptive strategies and coping mechanisms that communities have and are turning to organically. Updating our knowledge and theoretical models to respond to emergent realities is critical to the process of imagining effective and resilient education systems in the 21st century.

This agenda is highly policy relevant. SDG 13 recognizes climate change as “a real and undeniable threat to our entire civilization” with effects that “are already visible and will be catastrophic unless we act now.” This panel seeks to provide evidence on a range of issues related to targets 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 by presenting empirical studies of the diffusion of climate education, the impacts of climate activism on youth, and the implications of environmental hazards and environmental adaptation for education and learning.
Specifically, this panel draws on four papers by an interdisciplinary group of senior graduate students and faculty whose work collectively illustrates the diversity of approaches currently deployed to investigate education, learning, and human development in the face of highly unequal climate vulnerabilities. The papers in this panel address learning and development across the life stage spectrum, including ECD, K-12 schooling, and young adults’ professional development. Interested in the mechanisms through which climate change directly and indirectly affects diverse learning landscapes, this panel presents vignettes from diverse settings around the world, each facing different types of climate effects. Additionally, we include cross-country comparisons and an exploration of successful cases of pro-environmental identity formation, as well as coping strategies both within and outside formal schooling systems, to broaden the scope of sociological and developmental inquiry at the intersection of learning and the climate crisis.

Without making claims to the generalizability of our findings, this panel invites practitioners, academics, and activists the consider an array of social, economic, and environmental variables that shape education, learning, and skills development in their own contexts. Methodologically, our panel encompasses a mix of quantitative methods and large datasets, as well as more qualitatively grounded, hyperlocal studies.

This panel will follow an abbreviated formal paper presentation—“flash presentations”— with 10 minutes per presenter, during which they will present key insights and share a QR code that allows the audience to connect to full papers or detailed tables. We will then transition to the Q&A portion of the session, which will be guided by initial cross-panel questions from the chair.

Sub Unit

• 21st Century Educational Alternatives: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, Militarism, and the Climate Crisis

Organizer

• Rehana Odendaal, GSE, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Jennifer H Adams, Johns Hopkins University, School of Education

Individual Presentations

• How floods harm learning: indirect pathways, coping, and inequality in north India - Nazar Khalid, University of Pennsylvania; Emily Hannum, University of Pennsylvania; JERE RICHARD BEHRMAN, University of Pennsylvania; Amrit Thapa, University of Pennsylvania

• Socioeconomic disparities in environmental exposure and adaptation among families of young children: Implications for early developmental outcomes - Tingting Yang Rui, University of Pennsylvania; Minghong Shen; Emily Hannum, University of Pennsylvania; JERE RICHARD BEHRMAN, University of Pennsylvania; Michael MA; Jia Miao, NYU Shanghai

• Skills development and career considerations for young adult climate activists in Cape Town and Philadelphia - Rehana Odendaal, GSE, University of Pennsylvania

• Heterogeneous relations between climatic and environmental shocks and schooling and learning in Sub-Saharan Africa - Yabo Vidogbena, University of Pennsylvania; Amrit Thapa, University of Pennsylvania; Wendy Chan; Emily Hannum, University of Pennsylvania