Global Education during the climate crisis: more opportunities and solutions from research, practice, and transnational collaboration

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This double panel session explores challenges and opportunities of global education ecosystem in driving or mitigating solutions to the climate crisis Evidence from international scientific, environmental, political, and social reporting systems indicates that human-driven climate change continues to cause radical shifts in the natural and human environment.Global temperature increases are linked to increasing droughts, the frequency and intensity of devastating hurricanes, monumental changes in agricultural production, and threats to food security, among others. The climate crisis disproportionately impacts countries with different geographies, economic resources, or forms of governance. As climate related challenges increasingly test global social, political, and economic structures in place around the world, global education institutions must be equipped to adapt to the emergent challenges ahead.
These panels recognize the multi-layered complexities of the climate crisis and brings together researchers, advocacy organizations, and practitioners from universities, unions, and the nonprofit sector, to share a diverse set of perspectives, approaches, frameworks, models, and considerations of climate change in the global education policy space.
Panel 1
In the first panel, we draw upon different conceptual models for engaging transnational coalitions of teachers and students.
As part of its global climate literacy campaign, Earth Day Organization’s (EDO) reviews a subset of climate literacy literature and conceptualizes multiple “mindsets” of climate and environmental literacy. The review and mindsets offer a descriptive understanding of climate literacy and launching point for future initiatives..
TurnitAround initiative centers and elevates the voices of young artists and leaders in the movement to raise awareness around the climate crisis. In analysis of the “Turn it Around!” initiative - a global youth-led initiative, spanning five continents and over fifty countries - youth leaders harnessed the power of socially engaged art and crowdsourced artwork and text responses from children and youth globally. The presentation calls for a more radical transformation of the education system and school curriculum, which entails “unlearning and undoing harmful patterns that have been woven into our mindsets and our ways of life.”
Similarly, Take Action Global (TAG), positions teachers and students as leaders of a global movement to secure the safety and protection of lives around the world through the implementation of climate literacy curriculum in schools, for all ages. Incorporating methodologies around innovative curriculum design, networking across borders digitally, and democratizing systems of working and collaborating.
The Learning Planet Circle is a global coalition lled by the Learning Planet Institute, Teach for All, Aga Khan Foundation, and Global School Leaders, and comprising numerous other organizations across the education and climate sectors. The presentation highlights explicit and concrete links between the education and climate sectors for real impact across different levels of action (system level, classroom/capacity level, leadership level), with tangible outputs that transform education towards climate action and leadership, and putting teachers firmly at the center of design for the educational response to the climate crisis.

Panel 2
Panel two offers a critical understanding of the role of education institutions within the climate crisis.
The Climate Smart Education Systems framework constructed by the Global Partnership for Education proposes the key tenets of education systems that are able to be adaptable and resilient to climate change challenges in both the short and long-term. As political will to challenge the structures that exacerbate climate change remains weak in many of the highest carbon-producing countries around the world
Unbounded Associates call to attention the significant barriers that exist in reorienting our many systems to addressing the climate crisis and offer a New Green Learning Agenda to . to re-imagine the intelligences, skills, and priorities of global education at large. This agenda provides a heuristic for connecting the problem framing used to understand the climate crisis with educational pathways to support its solutions as well as providing a “green skills framework” to foster new pathways for educational programming that address the complexity of the climate crisis.
Room To Read centers girls and women’s health and livelihoods to counter the fight against climate change. Despite systemic dismissal of its importance, girl’s education can be one of the most cost effective and impactful mechanisms for reducing carbon emissions and reaching the sustainable development goals.
Finally, Education International, the world’s largest teachers union, outlines the Teach for the Planet Campaign, which defines and calls for universal quality climate change education. Examining the “just transition” that will be required of all education systems, this presentation calls to attention the threatened working conditions of educators by climate change: their right to occupational health and safety; and their workloads impacted by learning about disaster responses in the school. For a just transition, this presentation argues that educator’s right to decent work and safety in the workplace must be protected in the context of the climate crisis.
Taken together, the two panels offer frameworks, case studies, and program initiatives for the comparative international educator community. The panelists provide multiple entry points for global educators to transform their work in support of the climate movement. Finally, we hope our discussion demonstrates how transnational cooperation on climate change education is more than an appealing option, but a vital necessity for understanding connected, complex and dynamic human-environmental systems. The global education community has an important role in creating and finding pathways towards a sustainable and just future.

Sub Unit

• Environmental and Sustainability Education SIG

Chair

• Matthew I Aruch, Earth Day Organization

Individual Presentations

• A framework for climate-smart education systems - Sarah Beardmore, Global Partnership for Education

• Life Skills, Gender Equality and Climate Justice: Equipping adolescent girls with skills and resiliency to lead equitable and sustainable solutions - Lucina Di Meco, Room to Read; Abigail (Abie) Spangler, Room to Read

• Supporting the global education community to accelerate a New Green Learning Agenda - Christina Ting Kwauk, Kwauk and Associates