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Introduction: the need for climate education

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Welcome to this free course, Supporting climate action through digital education.

Climate change is repeatedly identified as ‘the defining crisis of our time’ (UNHCR, 2022) and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. No part of the world is immune from the impacts of climate change and it’s likely that you’ve experienced them yourself, perhaps in the form of heatwaves, flooding or food shortages. Vulnerable people living in some of the most fragile and conflict-affected countries are often disproportionately affected. Pessimism and fear are common responses to the climate crisis and while these emotions should be acknowledged they should also be challenged, as ‘we are far from powerless in the face of this global threat’ (United Nations, 2019).

Education has a vital role to play in mitigating the impact of climate change and in supporting individuals, communities and nations adapting to its effects. Students are concerned about climate change and want their education to equip them with the skills that reflect this.

Some climate-related education takes place within primary and secondary schools but it’s often minimal. When UNESCO (2021) reviewed the national curriculum frameworks of 100 countries, only 53% mentioned climate change. Most didn’t address the topic in any depth. The countries making the greatest effort tend to be those most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, rather than those making the largest contribution to the problem.

Figure _unit1.1.1 Figure 1 Some climate-related education takes place in primary schools

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This is a photograph of some children with watering cans.

Figure 1 Some climate-related education takes place in primary schools

In a survey of almost 7000 students by Students Organizing for Sustainability (SOS) International, a student-led education charity, 92% agreed that all universities and colleges should incorporate and promote sustainable development and 85% said they want to learn more about it (SOS International, 2021).

Teachers’ climate education skills are also a concern. In the UK, 70% of teachers don’t feel they’ve received enough training in this area (Teach the Future, 2021). We hope that this course will help you begin to develop the skills that you need.

After studying this course, you should be able to:

critically reflect on the skills required to address the climate emergency
identify ways of supporting your own and your learners’ wellbeing
identify key ethical and moral considerations connected with the climate emergency
design learning activities which support learners in understanding the causes and impacts of the climate emergency
critically reflect on your own practice and identify ways to develop it further.

This course

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

This course is aimed at educators in any context who are thinking about how they can support learners to gain the skills they need to address the climate emergency. It provides a taste of some of the topics covered in a 15-credit 12-week postgraduate level course Online Teaching: Addressing the Climate Emergency. Both courses take a position of ‘constructive hope’ (Marlon et al., 2019) in exploring how teaching can contribute to addressing the climate emergency by:

increasing understanding of the scientific principles involved in the climate emergency, the implications of the changing climate for individuals, societies and communities globally and personally, and the most appropriate responses to the climate emergency at multiple levels
supporting skills development relevant to climate emergency-related action.

Figure _unit1.2.1 Figure 2 This course takes a position of ‘constructive hope’

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This is a photograph of three illuminated road signs which together spell the message ‘You can’t stop hope’.

Figure 2 This course takes a position of ‘constructive hope’

You can study this course online at a pace that suits you. It does not offer fixed solutions. Rather, it aims to stimulate reflection, dialogue and changes in teaching practice. We’ll offer suggestions and ideas which we hope you’ll think through. You can use it as a framework to support group work with colleagues. You can also download the material to study offline (though you’ll need to return to the online version to interact with audiovisual material and activities, access the badge quizzes, and to track your completion of the course). The downloadable formats will contain the transcripts for audiovisual material. If you’re studying online and would prefer to read the transcripts, keep in mind that you’ll need to click on the media player first – the ‘Transcript’ button is then among the controls on the bottom bar.

At the end of the course, there is an opportunity to reflect on what you have learned and create a climate education action plan, in which you’ll design an intervention that responds to the climate emergency through an aspect of teaching or learning.

Collaboration

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Collaboration is key to addressing the climate emergency. Coming together to share ideas and practices can be a powerful way of achieving imaginative, effective shared solutions. This course does not have social learning spaces embedded within it. Rather, we encourage you to connect with other people who have studied the course and/or are interested in climate education in one or more of the following ways:

Joining the Open University Sustainability Network on LinkedIn, which provides a space to connect with like-minded people in a supportive, professional network and to share sustainability news, tools and tips. Membership is open to everyone with an interest in sustainability, including Open University learners, staff, and alumni.
Connecting with others who’ve studied this course by using the hashtag #OU_Introducing_Climate_Education on X(Twitter), Mastodon, BlueSky and Facebook.
Following climate educators at The Open University’s Institute of Educational Technology on X(Twitter) or LinkedIn:
- Dr Maria Aristeidou, X(Twitter) @aristeidoum LinkedIn
- Dr Simon Ball, X(Twitter) @simonjball LinkedIn
- Dr Kathy Chandler, X(Twitter) @KathyMChandler LinkedIn
- Dr Koula Charitonos, X(Twitter) @ch_koula LinkedIn
- Dr Carmel Kent, X(Twitter) @carmel_kent LinkedIn
- Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman, X(Twitter) @laperryman LinkedIn
- Dr Irina Rets, X(Twitter) @IrinaRets LinkedIn

Your reflective notes

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

As you work through this course, what you write in the reflective notes for each activity forms an important part of the learning process. You will want to revisit your notes regularly and use them as the basis for critically reflecting on your learning and designing your own climate education action plan at the end of the course. You may want to look at your notes again after you’ve completed the course, to use them as evidence of what you’ve achieved and your development.

If you use the text boxes provided within activities, you don’t need to go back through the course to re-read your notes. Instead you can check the sidebar (on any page of the course) for the ‘My Answers’ box. This will contain a link to view all your written answers together in one place.

If you go on to study the OU course Online Teaching: Addressing the Climate Emergency, you’ll be able to use your reflective notes from this course to help you with the activities and assessment. As well as that, you might find it useful to compare your views now with those you develop later during your studies.

Introduction

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Session 1 gives you an indication of the issues that educators need to think about when preparing to teach about the climate emergency. You’ll begin by exploring which skills learners need. You’ll then consider the important issue of climate anxiety and how learners can be supported. You’ll also question what role individual actions play in addressing the climate emergency.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

critically reflect on the skills required to address the climate emergency
identify ways of supporting your own and your learners’ wellbeing
critically evaluate the role of individual actions in addressing the climate emergency.

1 What skills do learners need?

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

What skills do people need to address the climate emergency? Deloitte’s report ‘A blueprint for green workforce transformation’ (Deloitte, 2022) tries to answer this question by identifying ‘green skills’ in relation to three areas of work in the UK:

nature and biodiversity
climate change and decarbonisation
waste and pollution reduction.

Figure _unit2.2.1 Figure 1 Nature and biodiversity is identified as a key area of work for ‘green skills’

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This is a photograph of caterpillars on a leaf.

Figure 1 Nature and biodiversity is identified as a key area of work for ‘green skills’

Deloitte (2022) suggests that education has a key part to play in enabling green skills through:

careers advice about green skills
apprenticeships with a green skills focus
provision of lifelong learning
educational frameworks and the integration of sustainability in the national curriculum.

In an analysis of the gaps in the UK’s green skills, the Green Alliance (2022) claims to take a broad view of green skills. Their definition includes skills that contribute indirectly to meeting climate goals, as well as those that directly contribute. Despite this, their report focuses on the sectors facing the most pressing skills shortages, including transport, housing and land management. For example, skills in nature restoration, solar panel installation, installation of low-energy lighting in new-build housing, and manufacturing of home insulation are going to be needed with increasing frequency as the years pass. The Heat Pump Association estimates that 12,400 installers will be needed by 2025 and 50,200 by 2030 (Heat Pump Association, 2020, cited in Green Alliance, 2022). Their report suggests that education providers need to begin offering more climate- and environment-oriented courses.

A focus on the technical skills needed for green jobs isn’t unusual. Kwauk (2021) analysed 133 countries’ climate action plans and concluded that many countries do tend to limit their focus to technical skills and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. While acknowledging the importance of work-based skills, this course takes a much broader view of the skills needed to address the climate emergency.

1.1 A broader focus

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

A scoping review of the skills UK graduates need to address the climate emergency found that while technical skills are needed for some specific roles, other skills, such as communication, presentation, influencing, analysis, critical thinking, and team working are essential and should be included in every degree programme (Cook, 2020). Similarly, Kwauk and Casey (2022) argue that climate change is not only a technical challenge but a sociological one, because it requires humans to find ways of adapting to live in a changing world. They propose an expanded green skills framework that encapsulates three overlapping types of skills:

skills needed for green jobs that support transition to a low-carbon economy
skills for a green transformation that help societies to adapt and transform social and economic injustice
green life skills that crosscut both of the above.

There are advantages to this wider view of green skills. It moves thinking away from a focus on economic growth and capitalism and acknowledges the contribution those involved in care work and education can bring to addressing the climate emergency. Even experiencing formal education at all can contribute to the global climate effort, with a move to educating all girls globally potentially reducing CO₂ emissions by more than 50 gigatons by 2050 (Rapid Transition Alliance, 2020). This is because educated women tend to have fewer and healthier children as well as living longer with less likelihood of poverty. The Rapid Transition Alliance (2020) suggest women in Mali who have experienced at least secondary education have three children on average, compared with seven otherwise, and that globally educating all girls would mean a global population of 2 billion fewer than otherwise predicted by 2045.

Figure _unit2.2.2 Figure 2 In Tinginaput, India, Bundei Hidreka shares her engineering skills with Rohim Miniaka, teaching him how to make a solar lamp

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This is a photograph of a man and a woman standing together. The woman is smiling and holding a lamp. The man is holding a solar panel

Figure 2 In Tinginaput, India, Bundei Hidreka shares her engineering skills with Rohim Miniaka, teaching him how to make a solar lamp

All too often, climate education policies lack a focus on skills. Instead, sustainability and climate education are often taught in a fragmented way across the curriculum. There is a focus on learning about the environment as knowledge to be tested, rather than addressing the climate emergency as the most pressing issue facing humanity. Dunlop and Rushton (2022) describe how such policies can be ‘placebo’ policies, deflecting attention and leaving educators and learners poorly equipped to address the climate emergency. Teachers, teacher educators and young people would like to see a curriculum where there’s space to learn for the environment, and provide people with skills so they can act for the environment (Dunlop and Rushton, 2022).

Having the relevant skills and knowledge does not mean that a learner will always act. Being able to act depends on:

personal factors, such as values, motivation and confidence
material factors, such as technologies or environment
social factors, such as cultural norms and expectations.

This means that it can also be helpful for educators to think in terms of capabilities (Nussey et al., 2022; Owens et al., 2023) or in other words, whether people have the capability to achieve the lives or outcomes they value, not just the right to do so.

Activity _unit2.2.1 Activity 1 What skills do learners need?

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Watch the video below in which Sally Hayns, Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), Leigh-Anne Perryman, Senior Lecturer at the Open University and Simon Behrman, Associate Professor at Warwick University share their thoughts about the skills learners need. As you watch the video, make notes on the following questions.

What skills do learners need to address the climate emergency?
What are CIEEM doing to encourage learners to develop the relevant skills?
Thinking about the learners in your own context, what personal, material and social factors might be enablers or barriers in relation to taking action for the climate?

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1

Video _unit2.2.1 Video 1 What skills do learners need?

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Transcript: Video 1 What skills do learners need?

SALLY HAYNS

Our climate is changing, and having people with the right skills to manage our adaptation to climate change is going to be crucial to society’s future. So, we’re going to need to give people the right skills to deliver a sustainable economy and a sustainable society going forwards. That’s going to require investment in areas of skill development that will embrace new technologies and new ways of working. People are going to need to understand the environmental impact of the current ways in which we do things, and how we then need to address them. So, understanding the science and technology between the way in which our economy works and the finance that fuels our economy is going to be essential so that we can make the right decisions going forwards. People are going to need skills in critical thinking, analysis and interpretation of data, ways of using new technologies, understanding how we decarbonise our manufacturing and our technology and how they can be part of that.

LEIGH-ANNE PERRYMAN

The skills that people need are related to both adaptation to the effects of climate change and the climate crisis, but also skills in relation to mitigation against it.

SIMON BEHRMAN

I think the most important skill that is needed for addressing the climate emergency is the ability to think laterally, to think and to explore the question on multiple levels. Very often we talk about climate change as being a super wicked problem, and what that means is that the impacts of climate change have a multiplicity of impacts in terms of migration, in terms of living standards, in terms of work, in terms of food supply, I could go on and on and on. And therefore, to try and better understand the impacts of the climate emergency it’s important that we’re able to think about how all these things are linked together.

SALLY HAYNS

One of the areas of developing green jobs that’s going to be really important in the future, are green jobs for nature. We can mitigate against climate change by using what’s known as nature-based solutions, nature’s answer to reducing the release of carbon, and reducing the impact of climate change. So for example, creating more meandering rivers and floodplains rather than hard-engineered solutions.

But that’s going to need more people coming into our profession and our industry to deliver green jobs for nature, whether that be directly as ecologists or as conservation workers or in supporting roles like HR, finance, administration. This is a growing area of skills need. We’ve recently launched a website, a new website, called www.greenjobsfornature.org, which tells you all about the roles available delivering green jobs for nature, who the employers are and how to get those jobs, the career entry paths, as well as a bit of a reality check.

End transcript: Video 1 What skills do learners need?

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Video _unit2.2.1 Video 1 What skills do learners need?

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If you’re interested to find out more about CIEEM’s work in this area, have a look at the Green Jobs for Nature website, which explains what a green job for nature is and how to get one.

2 Climate anxiety

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Please note that as you work through this section, there may be content or activities that you find difficult because of your own experiences of mental distress, or those of others close to you. Suggestions of steps you can take to support your own mental health and wellbeing while you study are included.

If you need more immediate help and are based in the UK, you can contact:

Samaritans – Tel: 116 123
Mind – Tel: 0300 123 3393
SANEline – Tel: 0300 304 7000 (4pm-10pm)
your local GP for medical advice by making an emergency appointment
NHS (England & Wales) Tel: 111, NHS 24 (Scotland) Tel: 08454 242424, NI Direct (Northern Ireland) Tel: 0808 808 8000
or go to Accident and Emergency (A&E).

Any educator addressing the climate crisis will need to have strategies for supporting their learners’ emotional responses to climate change, and for taking care of their own wellbeing. In this section of the course, you’ll consider the impact of climate anxiety and how learners can be supported in coping with it, and you’ll explore some strategies for taking care of your own wellbeing.

There is a growing awareness of the anxiety and distress that people experience around the climate and ecological crises, even when they have yet to experience their effects personally. Various terms are used to describe these feelings, including climate anxiety, climate distress, eco-anxiety, eco-despair, eco-depression, solastalgia and climate grief. None of these terms adequately capture the range of emotions that people feel, which might include fear, grief, guilt, shame, stress and anger, as well as anxiety.

Researchers have identified multiple, overlapping forms of anxiety and depression in relation to climate change. At their most severe, they can lead to a complete inability to enjoy life, and to thoughts of suicide. Common feelings include a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness.

Some groups are more prone to anxiety and distress than others, including people whose livelihoods and identities are closely connected with the land and those who experience natural disaster in early childhood (Hrabok, Delorme and Agyapong, 2020). While young people and women report higher levels of climate anxiety than other groups, Pihkala (2020) suggests this may be because it is repressed and under-reported. This can be accompanied by an unhelpful tendency to dismiss others’ anxiety as overreaction. Those considering parenthood or thinking about their grandchildren also report greater anxiety.

There’s increasing concern about the extent of climate anxiety in young people and its impact on their day-to-day lives. A survey of 10,000 16- to 25-year-olds across 10 countries found that respondents in all countries were worried about climate change, and 59% were extremely worried (Hickman et al., 2021). A perceived failure of governments exacerbates the distress. The extent of anxiety and its impact on young people’s ability to function is worst in the Global South, where climate change has the greatest impact.

Psychologist Caroline Hickman (2020) describes the additional burden experienced by children, saying that what frightens them most is the failure of adults to take climate change seriously, while simultaneously dismissing, pathologising or even criminalising their attempts to make their voices heard.

Activity _unit2.3.1 Activity 2 Coping with emotions

Timing: Allow about 25 minutes

Part 1

Watch the following video, which focuses on the anxiety that children and young people experience in relation to the climate emergency.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 2

Video _unit2.3.1 Video 2 How to talk with children about climate change

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Transcript: Video 2 How to talk with children about climate change

IMMIE

If climate change were like an animal or a plant, I think it would be some sort of parasite because it’s the only thing that’s actually growing and getting bigger while everything else starts dying off.

MILLY

The environment is definitely very special because if we get rid of it there’s nowhere else we can go. Like, it’s like a very one in a million sort of planet.

CAROLINE HICKMAN

A 10-year-old some years ago got cross with me and said, ‘You don’t get it’. He said, ‘You grew up thinking that polar bears would be there for ever’. He said, ‘I’ve grown up knowing that they will go extinct.’

ESTHER

I don’t remember when I first became aware about climate change. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know what it was because it’s always been there.

CAROLINE HICKMAN

Children are growing up with this knowledge and this awareness whereas anyone over the ago of, let’s say, thirty, is having to wake up to this and realise it. When we asked young people about how climate change made me feel, three quarters or more think the future is frightening, so we know that it’s having an emotional impact on children and young people all around the world.

IMMIE

I think that climate change is really scary and the fact that lots of people aren’t doing much about it just sort of freaks me out.

CAROLINE HICKMAN

Eight out of ten told us that people had failed to take care of the planet. So this is young people and children looking to adults, looking to older people, looking to people in power and saying, ‘Why haven’t you done something about this?’

ESTHER

It makes me feel angry to see such a clear issue and to see everyone knowing about this issue and still not doing anything that they really should be. It’s just frustrating and I think it’s also tiring to feel so sort of scared and angry.

CAROLINE HICKMAN

One of the worst things we can do to children and young people is to say, ‘Well, it’s your responsibility now’. I’ve heard this said to children. ‘Your generation will fix this. Your generation is so inspiring and creative and innovative. We’re going to leave this to you to fix.’

ESTHER

There is an idea by older people that it is sort of on young people to fix it but I think that’s really unfair and I think it’s a collective responsibility, not just on young people and not just on me.

CAROLINE HICKMAN

One of the most worrying statistics was that 48% told us they were dismissed or ignored when they tried to talk about climate change. That we could do something about this afternoon. That we could do something about today.

IMMIE

In places like school, I feel that they don’t really listen and don’t respect the fact that I’ve thought about it and tried to educate myself about it. I kind of feel really angry and frustrated because I am actually saying something meaningful and it you’re not prepared to listen to your children, it’s going to have a big effect because we actually do have something to say and we are actually trying to make a change.

CAROLINE HICKMAN

My advice to adults, parents, teachers is do not put it off. Don’t push it away. Don’t save it up and just have that big conversation. Talk about it regularly. That’s crucial. And it’s okay for you to say to your children, ‘I don’t have all the answers. We’re not sure exactly how to deal with all of this but let’s find out together.’

End transcript: Video 2 How to talk with children about climate change

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Video _unit2.3.1 Video 2 How to talk with children about climate change

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Part 2

Reflect on your own experience since starting this course. In the box below, note the different emotions that thinking about the climate emergency has prompted for you. If you feel comfortable doing so, you could share your list of emotions with a trusted friend, family member or colleague.

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Part 3

If you’re an educator, in the broadest sense of the term, reflect on the extent to which you feel equipped to support your learners in coping with emotions related to the climate emergency and any strategies you’ve used to date (where relevant).

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2.1 Your own wellbeing

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Learning about the facts of climate change and reflecting on the solutions can be stressful and provoke anxiety for educators, as well as learners. Before considering how educators might begin to support learners experiencing climate anxiety, it’s important to consider your own wellbeing. Pihkala (2020) advises that educators need to engage in reflection and self-care to develop their own emotional resilience and to be able to share with learners that they, too, experience difficult emotions.

As you put aside time to complete this course, try to include some time to focus on your own wellbeing. You might already have well-established ways of doing this but if not, here are some ideas.

2.1.1 Outside and active

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Being outside and taking time to notice nature is one step you can take. There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that spending time in nature has a positive impact on mental wellbeing (Bratman et al., 2019), although most of this evidence is from the Global North. Also, when measuring this impact, it’s difficult to control for other variables. The Nature Connection Handbook (Richardson and Butler, 2022) has further information about the relationship between connecting with nature and wellbeing, pro-environmental behaviour and other outcomes.

Figure _unit2.3.1 Figure 3 Taking time to notice nature can support your wellbeing

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This is a photograph of a bee on a flower.

Figure 3 Taking time to notice nature can support your wellbeing

Exercising outside may have added benefits. A review of the literature shows how exercise can have a positive impact on mental wellbeing and how the benefits persist after the exercise stops (Pereira, Martins and Barros, 2021).

2.1.2 Mindfulness

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Mindfulness is a state of mind where you’re giving your full attention to the present moment. It involves slowing down, noticing how you’re feeling but not judging those feelings. It creates some space in which to process your feelings. There is a wide range of resources such as books, apps and YouTube videos available to help develop mindfulness practice – you might like to investigate some of these and see what works for you. You don’t have to be sitting or lying down to be mindful; some people practise mindful walking, mindful exercise (for example running or yoga), or try to complete everyday tasks, such as washing, in a mindful way.

2.1.3 Practising gratitude

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Making a regular habit of noting the things you’re grateful for is another practice to help you stay grounded in the present and attend to your own wellbeing. The things you’re grateful for needn’t be large things; they might just be a smile or the scent of a flower. Listing three or four of these each day and reflecting on why they’re important to you can help you to experience positive emotions.

2.1.4 Sharing with others

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Taking action with others is a necessary part of tackling the climate emergency. When feeling overwhelmed and anxious, it’s easier to withdraw and detach from others, rather than admitting to struggling. This can lead to a downward spiral. Keep in mind that connection with other people is important; perhaps most of all when you don’t feel like it. Receiving and giving support for others – whether that’s your family and friends, colleagues, or others learning about climate action online – can help you feel more positive. Resources and networks that help you connect with others, such as the Existential Toolkit or the Gen Dread newsletter might also be useful.

Existential Toolkit: A Growing Hub of Resources for Climate Justice Educators.

Gen Dread: A newsletter about staying sane in the climate and wider ecological crisis.

2.2 Addressing climate anxiety

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

It’s important not to medicalise climate anxiety (Sharp and Hickman, 2019). After all, feelings of anxiety are a healthy response to what’s going on in the world. We’re living through an experience unlike anything before, in which people are no longer in control, and we’re rethinking our role in relation to the planet. While climate anxiety can be a barrier to learning and a challenge for educators, it can also be seen as a healthy, adaptive response: a sign that people are taking the situation seriously and appreciating the need for change. A helpful step to take is to reframe the term ‘eco-anxiety’ and think of it as eco-empathy, eco-compassion or eco-caring (Hickman, 2020).

According to Sharp and Hickman (2019), the challenges posed by climate change give our society an opportunity to develop emotional resilience, learning to act out of the emotions that we’ve often repressed in the past and using them to change the world. They suggest that there are three steps to take to address climate anxiety.

Name: the phenomenon needs to be acknowledged and named, enabling people to understand and empathise with each other.
Talk: people need to talk about climate anxiety within their own communities, explore the emotions they feel and realise they’re not alone.
Act: actions need to be both internal and external, with individuals taking action to support their own mental wellbeing but also coming together to take collective action and make their voices heard.

Educators are well placed to support learners in all three steps. It’s important that they happen sequentially and that the actions are not used as a way of pushing aside the feelings. Space needs to be made to name and talk about the feelings first. All too often, climate change education happens without acknowledging learners’ feelings at all. Doing so can make a difference, as Jazz describes here:

The thing about climate change is; it’s scary, but when I was told that it was ok to feel scared I felt better, not un-scared, but being told that it was ok to feel scared stopped me from being scared about being scared if you know what I mean?

(Jazz, aged 13, cited in Hickman et al., 2021)

The Climate Emotions Wheel is a tool that can be used with learners of all ages to help them name and understand their feelings. Throughout this course, you’ll consider different ways in which educators can support learners to talk and to act, sharing their learning in a way that can bring about positive change.

2.3 Climate cafés

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Educators are also well placed to signpost learners to other sources of support. Climate cafés, such as those provided online by the Climate Psychology Alliance, bring together learners from a diverse range of institutions and communities. They aim to provide a safe, facilitated space to talk about difficult feelings without any judgment, advice or expectations about taking action (Tait et al., 2022).

2.3.1 Glasgow Meeting House

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In Glasgow, Doreen Osborne and Mary Troup are part of a group who founded a climate café after welcoming visitors and providing a refreshments area at COP26. These quotes come from an interview with Kathy Chandler for Open University course materials.

Figure _unit2.3.2 Figure 4 Doreen Osborne, climate café founder

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This is a photograph of Doreen’s head and shoulders as she smiles at the camera.

Figure 4 Doreen Osborne, climate café founder

Doreen comments on the benefits of a climate café:

One is it reduces the sense of isolation when you’re sitting there at home worrying about climate change. What am I going to do? How am I going to affect this because it’s really important. So, it gives you somewhere to share those concerns. It also gives you somewhere to share information and find out things that other people are doing.
The climate café meetings are blended, with some people arriving at the meeting house to chat informally and sharing food first and others joining online for the later part of the meeting, when there are often small group discussions.

(Chandler, 2022)

Figure _unit2.3.3 Figure 5 Mary Troup, climate café founder

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This is a photograph of Mary’s face. She is looking to the side and smiling.

Figure 5 Mary Troup, climate café founder

Mary explains the value in bringing people together:

Individually, I think we can all have a sense of powerlessness but coming together there’s a real sense of empowerment and building of self-belief, self-confidence. We’re bringing leadership skills. There’s a real sense of value in what each person brings, working together with a sense of integrity, truth and courage to make a difference and having a vision for future generations. We really have a responsibility to try in whatever way we can, to make a positive difference and the climate cafés give us a place where we can do that, where we don’t feel alone, where we can encourage each other.

(Chandler, 2022)

Mary has also worked with a local primary school to support the children in setting up their own climate café.

2.4 Tom’s story

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In the following activity you’ll have an opportunity to consider how students’ mental wellbeing can impact on their experiences of climate-related education, and think about how educators might provide support.

Activity _unit2.3.2 Activity 3 Tom’s story

Timing: Allow about 25 minutes

Part 1

Play the following audio clip in which Tom, a UK-based learner on a short online course about climate change, describes his experience and explains why he was unable to complete the course. A transcript of the audio is available. As you listen to Tom’s story, make notes on the following questions.

What emotions does Tom describe experiencing?
What impacts did the course have for Tom, both positive and negative?
What could educators have done differently that might have enabled Tom to complete the course? Consider both the design of the course and the facilitation.

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Audio _unit2.3.1 Audio 1 Tom’s experience

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Transcript: Audio 1 Tom’s experience

TOM

When I chose the course, I was just sat at the computer thinking about things I’m interested in. I’m quite interested in issues with the climate crisis and green technologies. I thought, ‘I’ll have a look and see what it’s like, just give it a go.’ After the first two and half weeks, I was largely depressed at the state of the world and just kind of gave up hope on everything. Looking back now, I would happily do it again because I’ve got more of a positive point of view at the moment.

I didn’t really know what to expect. I entered it with the state of mind that it was going to be how do we fix the world’s problems as opposed to thinking where they came from in the first place. I started to look at problems around the world and just a bit of history because I didn’t really know too much about the areas that we were looking into and then I suppose I just got into a bit of a research rabbit hole.

I’d go, ‘That’s quite an interesting issue. What caused the issue?’ And before I’d know it, I’d looked at something completely different. I think that’s probably how I made myself a bit miserable. It would be nice if there were just like little warnings, so people don’t go off too much of a tangent. One thing I’ve discovered from the course is that I do quite like economics as a subject, which I’ve never thought of before.

I dug my own depressive hole, unfortunately and then I did get to the point where I was thinking, ‘What’s the point?’ You know, if there’s such big players in the world that don’t want to get involved or don’t care. I think that if you can start grassroots for change, let’s say, locally, I suppose activism – I don’t mean standing on the streets with posters and stuff – it’s more like just doing small bits in your local area and teaching the next generation to help, if the one we are currently in doesn’t take much interest. It’s how do you get people to make a change and not get too down about it all when you explain it to them and look at the larger picture.

I work alone quite a lot because I’m an engineer outside, so I have times to rationalise and think, so eventually I can calm myself down and just look at the picture from a different point of view but I like to think there has to be some solution to the bigger picture. You need everyone… You need all the people, everyone with the extreme approaches and views to have the conversation, to try and understand it.

You don’t notice your own habits until you start studying a subject. I didn’t understand with the company I work for, how much single-use waste there is that you just see people throw literally into a hedge. There’s an incredible amount of cable ties that we get through. I’ve made more of a conscious effort to separate the waste. There are some people that just mix it and I have been guilty of that in the past.

I do have an issue at the moment with the government, but I also have the guilt that I did actually vote for it, so is it my fault? It’s just self-beneficial government as opposed to a government that really cares. I know every country has their own agenda. At the end of the day, everything is only finite. There’s not unlimited money and unlimited resources, so in the end, people are in it for themselves but how do we balance it all? There has to be at some point a balance. How do we put back instead of keep taking out?

I do meditation online, a bit of self-help because therapy is expensive. I found to open up and talk about stuff, to see other people’s points of view and have a conversation, as opposed to keeping things inside, it just helps.

I think it would definitely help to look at your own actions and your impact on the world, even what we do day-to-day. You don’t feel you do much as a single person but your actions and how you speak to other people can change someone’s day entirely. For example, the park that I live near, there’s a litter bin and it has litter pickers attached. If you walk round the park, you can just pick one up. When you do feel like everything’s a bit hopeless or you don’t have much impact on the world, sometimes the smallest actions can affect somebody else. Knowing that you do matter somewhere and that you do have an effect, it does help.

I think the hardest thing was the remote learning. When you do it by yourself, you don’t always have people to talk to and if it’s a subject that you’re interested in, your friends and the people that you live with might not necessarily be interested. I don’t always talk to people on the course if there’s an online option but if there was, it would be interesting to see if it could be more interactive. It encourages you if it’s there, just a little text box, messages where you can just type to other students. They might bring up ideas that you haven’t thought of. You might have someone give you that support that you didn’t know you needed.

I think I probably took on a bit too much, thinking it wasn’t going to be as intense for a short course. I’m hoping this isn’t the last one I do. I do feel like I’ve let myself down by not seeing it through to the end.

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Part 2

Try to find any climate cafés that are already happening in your own area or that are relevant to the learners in your own context. Use the hashtag #climatecafés to search on social media.

3 Individual actions

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

What difference can individual actions make to addressing the climate emergency? One argument often used by individuals to avoid making the effort of individual actions is that they are a ‘drop in the ocean’ and achieve little compared to larger-scale industrial change or government-mandated national and international measures. They are right when everyone’s actions are considered separately. But individual actions add together to make a real difference – much like a single vote achieves little, but all those single votes added together can change the world. Educators can support their learners in effective individual actions.

Figure _unit2.4.1 Figure 6 Individual actions add together to make a difference. Cyclists taking out a group of school children to encourage cycling in Bogotá

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This is a photograph of around 20 children and adults cycling along a road.

Figure 6 Individual actions add together to make a difference. Cyclists taking out a group of school children to encourage cycling in ...

Wynes and Nicholas (2017) describe four individual actions that can have the biggest impact on greenhouse gas emissions:

having one fewer child – an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent (tCO₂e) emission reductions per year
living car-free – 2.4 tCO₂e saved per year
avoiding airplane travel – 1.6 tCO₂e saved per round-trip transatlantic flight
eating a plant-based diet – 0.8 tCO₂e saved per year.

Wynes and Nicholas (2017) also noted that in Canadian high school textbooks at that time, these actions were barely mentioned, together comprising just 4% of discussions about individual actions on climate change. They reported similar findings for school texts in the European Union (EU), US and Australia.

Beyond the direct impact of an action itself, there is another, perhaps less obvious, benefit to making individual changes. This is the effect on other people’s behaviour from observing your individual actions. In a survey of people with average or greater-than-average carbon footprints from flying, Westlake (2019) found that half of respondents who knew someone who had given up flying for climate-related reasons flew less themselves because of this example, with a further quarter saying it had changed their attitude to flying. If the exemplar person was famous, these proportions increased to three quarters reducing their flying-related carbon footprint, with just 7% saying there was no impact on them at all.

In addition to demonstrating ‘best practice’, the words of those advocating for bigger-scale actions, such as those taken by national governments, seem to carry more weight if the individuals calling for action demonstrate appropriate individual actions in their personal lives. Attari, Krantz and Weber (2019) found that government policies on reducing CO₂ emissions were more likely to be supported by the public if the individual advocating for them had a low personal carbon footprint. They go on to say that advocators with a large carbon footprint can also win popular support for such initiatives if they reform their behaviour to reduce their carbon footprint.

It is important to note, however, that while individual actions do have value and do help, they are not enough on their own. Broader actions are a vital part of the picture. You will explore some of these, such as teaching about climate justice, and political action in the other parts of this course. Gandolfi (2022) encapsulates the issue perfectly when she explains the dawning realisation that she had been focused, even in her own teaching, on individual actions, and had not considered the ‘unequal footing of our private actions and public spheres’.

3.1 Transport as an example of individual action

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Globally, with the use of cars and planes continually increasing, a huge change is needed. Educators can help effect that change.

The impact of air travel is a particular concern in relation to higher education in the Global North, where universities’ efforts to minimise their environmental impact often don’t consider the damage associated with the pressure on academics to internationalise their careers and travel extensively for field research and conferences (Crumley-Effinger and Torres-Olave, 2021). An analysis of sustainability policies at 44 US universities found that over a third failed to mention air travel at all (Schmidt, 2022). During an online seminar, Neil Selwyn, based at Monash University in Australia, drew attention to his decision to stop accepting invitations to travel across the world, partly due to the climate crisis (Selwyn, 2022). Another speaker may make different decisions because there are activities they want to conduct with a live audience that could not be delivered online.

Figure _unit2.4.2 Figure 7 The impact of air travel is a particular concern

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This is a photograph of the aisle of a passenger plane.

Figure 7 The impact of air travel is a particular concern

Educators don’t only make journeys for work reasons. In the Global North, many journeys with environmental impact will be holidays or visits to family and friends, and making these journeys without a car or plane would seem impractical to many. Decisions around personal journeys can involve what George Monbiot terms ‘love miles’ (Monbiot, 2006). Is it right to travel to visit distant loved ones, even if only for special occasions?

Indeed, the authors of this course have made contrasting decisions around flying. Some of us have signed an online pledge not to fly this year and shared our decision on social media. Others have not flown for many years for environmental reasons. One of us, on the other hand, lives far from their elderly mother and has decided not to contemplate stopping flying while it still provides the only practical means of visiting her.

There are considerations each educator can make regarding transport, energy use and resources. For example, they might question whether a field trip needs to take place, or whether an online simulation, virtual visit or invited expert online seminar might equally achieve the learning outcomes. This decision can be fraught with complexities, not least because positive changes in learners’ beliefs about climate change may be brought about through educational travel, even while the travel itself is adding to the problem under study (Landon et al., 2019).

There is always a balanced decision to be made, and communicating the decision-making process to learners can aid them in making their own balanced decisions. One decision that every adult learner makes is where to study, and Selwyn (2022) draws attention to the vast amount of international air travel associated with the desire to attend a prestigious and privileged university. To alleviate climate change, higher education needs to be localised.

As highlighted earlier, individual action is not enough. Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel involves not only thinking about individual carbon footprints, but also thinking about what have been termed ‘carbon handprints’ (Pashby and de Oliveira Andreotti, 2016). This means individual educators having an active involvement in challenging and changing harmful wider cultures and systems.

Activity _unit2.4.1 Activity 4 Describing your own individual actions

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

1. Make some brief notes about one individual action that you have taken in connection with climate change or the environment.

2. Try to recall what inspired you to make this change in your life. Did you become aware of someone else doing it? Did a famous person speak about it?

3. How might you develop your ‘carbon handprint’ through having an active involvement in influencing others and changing cultures and systems around travel? You might think about cultures and systems within your institution, your local community or the global community.

4. How could you encourage the learners in your context in taking their own individual actions and developing their own ‘carbon handprint’?

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4 Summary

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In Session 1 you’ve learned that learners need a broad range of skills to address the climate emergency, including skills that help societies to adapt and transform social and economic injustice. You’ve thought about how to address climate anxiety through the steps of naming, talking and acting. You’ve also critically considered the role that individual action can play in addressing the climate emergency and identified that while individual action has a role, it’s not enough on its own.

You should now be able to:

critically reflect on the skills required to address the climate emergency
identify ways of supporting your own and your learners’ wellbeing
critically evaluate the role of individual actions in addressing the climate emergency.

In the next session you will explore the concepts of climate justice, transformative learning, and critical pedagogy. You’ll consider ways of supporting your students in addressing the climate crisis through democratic participation, political engagement, and activism.

You can now move on to Session 2.

Introduction

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Session 2 introduces the concepts of climate justice, transformative learning, and critical pedagogy. You’ll explore some of the ways in which you can support your students in addressing the climate crisis through democratic participation, political engagement, and activism. You’ll also learn about one young activist, Vanessa Nakate.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

identify key ethical and moral considerations connected with the climate emergency
engage with ideas around transformative learning and critical pedagogy
critically reflect on the educator’s role in supporting young activists.

1 Climate justice

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Figure _unit3.2.1 Figure 1 Climate Justice Ambassadors, Nigeria (see Box 1 for more information)

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This is a photograph of a large group of young people wearing ‘Plant for the Planet’ t-shirts. They are holding a variety of plants.

Figure 1 Climate Justice Ambassadors, Nigeria (see Box 1 for more information)

This part of the course focuses on climate justice – a vital aspect of addressing the climate emergency, but one which is often overlooked in climate education.

Cripps (2022) explains:

Climate change does terrible damage: to today’s children and their descendants; to millions of already vulnerable people, the world over. Climate justice requires preventing that harm, making up for it as far as possible. That takes mitigation, adaptation and compensation.

Cripps (2022, p. 67)

The topic of climate justice can be covered in many different ways, in multiple sectors and across multiple subjects. Transformative action and learning is a particularly suitable approach for addressing climate justice. It can foster deep engagement with, and reflection on, our taken-for-granted perspectives of the world as a means of supporting fundamental shifts in how we interpret and understand the implications and injustices of climate change.

Box _unit3.2.1 Box 1 Plant for the Planet

This is a statement from the Climate Justice Ambassadors shown in Figure 1:

As Plant-for-the-Planet Climate Justice Ambassadors we are part of a worldwide network. More than 67,000 children are already active as Climate Justice Ambassadors (as of February 2018) and spread our vision of climate justice and global citizenship to our schools, families and friends. Our common symbol is the planting of trees.
In the Academies, we children find out together about the climate crisis, distribution justice and global citizenship. More experienced children spread their knowledge to other children. Thus, we empower ourselves to become Climate Justice Ambassadors.
We show that everybody can take responsibility and can actively shape our future - by organizing planting parties, giving lectures and motivating others to join in.

(Plant for the Planet, 2018)

1.1 Understanding climate justice

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Currently, the negative impacts of climate change are not distributed fairly. Countries, people and groups across the globe that lack the financial resources to protect themselves, are more vulnerable and are likely to be suffering first and worst because of climate change. This is where the idea of ‘climate justice’ begins: the adverse impacts of a changing climate will not be felt equally or fairly between rich and poor, women and men, and older and younger generations.

According to the 2016 Climate and Health Assessment, vulnerable groups – also described as populations of concern – include:

…those with low income, some communities of color, immigrant groups (including those with limited English proficiency), Indigenous peoples, children and pregnant women, older adults, vulnerable occupational groups, persons with disabilities, and persons with pre-existing or chronic medical conditions.

(Global Change, 2016)

Whatever your sector, a good place to start when teaching climate justice is the Climate Impact Map, an evidence-based tool featuring visualisations estimating the impact of climate change around the world and giving a clear indication of the injustice inherent in the climate crisis. Younger students will need to be guided through the messages conveyed by the tool, while older students should be able to explore possible scenarios themselves.

1.2 Climate injustice is a social issue

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Climate change is not only a geographical but also a political and economic divide, happening across countries – as expressed imperfectly by the Global North/Global South labels – and also highlighting inequalities within countries. It is inherently a social issue.

As a climate justice post on the UN Sustainable Development Goals blog describes it:

‘Climate change is happening now and to all of us. No country or community is immune,’ according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. ‘And, as is always the case, the poor and vulnerable are the first to suffer and the worst hit.’

(United Nations, 2019)

Simmons (2020) summarises key factors to consider in thinking about climate justice:

‘Key groups are differently affected by climate change.’
‘Climate impacts can exacerbate inequitable social conditions.’
‘Momentum is building for climate justice solutions.’

Simmons offers some useful examples of how specific groups can be more susceptible to risks posed by climate impacts like storms and floods, wildfire, severe heat and poor air quality. Harrington (2019) explores the susceptibility of those with disabilities and those living in poverty, showing how these groups can be more affected than others – and may also have fewer resources to handle those impacts.

The videos available from the Education for Climate Justice YouTube channel offer a good basis for supporting students in understanding how some groups of people are more affected by climate change than others. The related report from Scottish Universities Insight Institute gives some background information about the Education for Climate Justice project and its aims.

Oxfam’s website ‘The human impact of climate change’ is also a good source of resources for primary and secondary school teaching (but adaptable for other sectors). The resources use stories, film and role play to explore the human impact of the climate crisis.

1.3 Inequality, responsibility and representation

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Climate justice-related teaching will necessarily focus on inequality and responsibility, supporting students in reflecting on key questions and thinking about how they, and others, could contribute to addressing injustice.

Injustice and inequality are often cumulative, with people experiencing the most disadvantage being particularly vulnerable to yet further disadvantage. Research clearly shows the disproportionate burden communities of colour and low-income communities bear, for example, from air pollution. Tessum et al. (2019), found that black and Hispanic communities in the US are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce through actions like driving and using electricity. By contrast, white Americans experience better air quality than the national average, even though their activities are the source of most pollutants. At the same time, the affected communities often have access to fewer environmental benefits such as parks, gardens and green spaces, while also facing other hardships such as inadequate access to healthcare or healthy food, as well as lack of power to participate in decision-making processes.

Inequality also grows in the aftermath of major natural disasters. One of the most widely publicised examples is Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. Figure 2 illustrates the disaster in the city. Some long-term observations are now available and offer insights into the interrelation between the disaster and other social issues such as race and poverty. Gavin Rivlin (2016) illustrates this inequality in the article ‘White New Orleans Has Recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Black New Orleans Has Not’.

Figure _unit3.2.2 Figure 2 New Orleans in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina

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This is an aerial photograph of a flooded neighborhood. Many homes are submerged to their roofs. In the distance a breeched levee can be seen.

Figure 2 New Orleans in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina

A more recent example is related to the wildfires in Australia in 2019. Following post-fire inquiries, in a 2020 newspaper article, Calla Wahlquist observes how the subsequent royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not only disproportionately affected, but also that there had been an ‘extraordinary absence of Aboriginal people’ from the inquiries (Eckford-Williamson in Royal Commission, 2020, p. 800).

Striving for climate justice means that such vulnerable groups do not shoulder the burden of the climate crisis, and instead those who have the most resources to address the climate crisis actually use them to help vulnerable individuals and communities adapt to climate change. Whatever the age of your students, and whatever discipline area you’re teaching, asking students to consider climate-related events close to home, and the people most affected by them, can be a good way of supporting subsequent reflection on the impact of the climate crisis on people elsewhere in the world, and actions that can help address this.

Advocates for climate justice are striving to have inequities addressed through long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies. In a recent report, Tristan McCowan (2022) poses several questions related to this matter:

Do wealthy regions within a country ‘have responsibility for atoning for historical actions (e.g. the Industrial Revolution in Britain) or only their current emissions?’
‘Should the largest emitters of greenhouse gases make financial payments to compensate other regions affected by the impacts?’
‘Should low-income countries be inhibited from developing fossil fuel-based industry when other regions of the world have historically generated their wealth from them?’

Any of the questions listed above could be the focus of discussion in a teaching session. You could encourage students to discuss the questions with their friends and families too. Dialogue between generations is acknowledged as a particularly powerful way of addressing the climate emergency, as you’ll explore later.

1.3.1 Climate justice – a movement of many movements

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Climate justice can be seen as a movement of many movements, that looks to achieve a vision of a scientifically sound and socially just response to global warming and climate change.

Striving for climate justice means that groups identified as being vulnerable by rising temperatures are consulted and supported in decisions around the environment that affect them. In other words, climate justice also means the fair and meaningful involvement of all people – regardless of race, colour, national origin or income – with respect to the design, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, policies and programmes.

In your context, your home, neighbourhood, office or organisation are broadly seen as part of our environment. In your own practice and in the pedagogical spaces you create, addressing questions related to climate and environmental injustice is an important aspect of climate education. It’s critical both for ensuring everyone who participates in those spaces is aware of the various injustices, and for supporting them to develop their abilities to reflect, deliberate and position themselves on these complex issues. It is also critical because you show how much you value the knowledge of individuals and communities that are affected by climate change.

1.3.2 Opening up space for politics in teaching and learning

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

As we continue to face growing and acute environmental disasters and injustices on both global and local scales, our position as educators is to challenge forms of educational research and practice and to break away from the comfortable luxury of staying neutral. Among the critical questions we need to raise, both in and outside of formal learning spaces such as schools, colleges and universities, are those related to the role of politics in climate emergency-related education.

Inspired by Booker et al. (2021) when developing this course, we grappled with the following questions:

How can educators engage more directly with the political dimensions of teaching and learning?
What might that engagement offer for addressing the climate emergency?

Considering such questions is crucial for everyone involved in teaching and learning and necessitates a commitment to change at all levels of our professional and everyday lives as we are ‘developing new ways of learning and being in relation to each other, our institutions, and our planet’ (Jurow and Zhang, 2021, p. 10).

Here, by using the term ‘politics’ we refer to issues of power, hierarchies and inequity, and to the roots of those issues. Striving for climate justice is a fight against all forms of oppression including structural racism, sexism, fascism, imperialism and the legacies of colonialism. Change will only be possible when explicit attention is paid to such issues as a means of identifying challenges that need to be addressed. This is where the political dimension of learning comes into play, and you’ll shortly explore strategies for supporting your students in climate crisis-related political engagement.

Next though, you’ll explore how the concept of transformative learning, and the principles of critical pedagogy, can be the basis for effective education and action addressing the climate emergency.

Activity _unit3.2.1 Activity 1 Reflecting on climate justice

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Reflect on the ideas presented so far in Session 2, and make a few notes about:

Ways in which you could raise awareness of climate justice-related issues in your own environment (or what you’re doing already).
How you could work with students to involve people most affected by climate change in discussions about the impact of the climate crisis and actions that can be taken to address it.

You’ll return to these notes when you’re making your action plan at the end of the course.

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1.4 Transformative learning and critical pedagogy

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Tackling the climate crisis requires every one of us to collaborate in drawing on and sharing our skills, talents and experiences, and to take a critical view of political systems and social structures as the basis for effective action. As educators we may find collaboration fairly straightforward, and are likely to have experience of critique. However, this is not necessarily the case for our students. In this part of the course you’ll consider how the principles of critical pedagogy, devised by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, can provide a stimulus for devising teaching and learning activities that have the potential for achieving a tangible impact in terms of climate crisis-related mitigation and adaptation.

1.4.1 About critical pedagogy

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Historically, formal education has tended to feature a hierarchical model of educators ‘transmitting’ knowledge to their students. Freire terms this a ‘banking’ model, whereby educators ‘deposit’ knowledge in students’ brains, rather than working to create knowledge and shared solutions together in a non-hierarchical relationship. Boal (1995) comments that this banking model is grounded in a view of teaching and learning as preparing students to accept the ‘world as it is’ rather than to imagine and enact the world as it could be (Boal, 1995).

In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire explains that critical pedagogy moves away from hierarchical, transmissive approaches to education such as the banking model in favour of a ‘transformative’ approach that prioritises dialogue between learners and educators on an equal level, and the critique of social and political structures, as a means of gaining freedom from oppression (among other outcomes). Critical pedagogy, suggests Freire, views education as a process of ‘posing…the problems of human beings in their relations with the world’ (Freire, 1970, p. 79). This combined emphasis on collaboration and critique indicates an obvious compatibility with education intended to address the climate crisis.

Freire is not alone in his conceptualisation of education learning having a significant role to play in struggles for freedom and self-determination. In her book Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks discusses education as ‘the practice of freedom’ (hooks, 1994, p. 12) explaining how critical pedagogy provides a foundation for teachers’ empowerment of students to think critically about their lives and to transgress boundaries, and for teachers’ self-empowerment as agents of transgression. As you’ll find shortly, education addressing a problem so complex and pressing as the climate crisis may require transgression and brave approaches.

Critical pedagogy’s appropriateness as a theoretical basis for climate education is also linked with its emphasis on supporting students’ agency and action. Vossoughi and Gutiérrez (2016, p. 141) agree that critical pedagogy is a ‘humanising pedagogical approach that engages social reality as transformable and treats students as historical actors, subjects rather than objects of pedagogy and history’. In essence, critical pedagogy empowers students to act and to change their own circumstances.

1.4.2 Transformative learning and the climate crisis

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

One of the key functions of transformative learning is to foster deep engagement with, and reflection on, our taken-for-granted ways of viewing the world, resulting in fundamental shifts in how we see, act on and make meaning of the world around us. This can bring changes for both learners and their communities – ‘not just their ideas or knowledge, but also the practical, personal, and political aspects of how learning practices are organized’ (Jornet et al., 2021, p. 11).

This poses an ongoing challenge because it concerns fundamental questions about the purpose of education. To paraphrase Tasquier, Knain and Jornet (2022. p. 3), it concerns the quest for making education ‘a source and resource for deep change and transformation, as well as making it more relevant to current real-world challenges’. This includes attention to individuals and communities, their needs, values and beliefs but also attention to systems and structures, local circumstances and ‘matters of participation’ (Espinoza et al., 2020), in addition to encouraging cross-sector and transdisciplinary collaboration. At various points during this course, you’ll explore how each of these considerations can be addressed through teaching and learning across subjects and disciplines as a route to addressing the climate crisis.

Figure _unit3.2.3 Figure 3 Learners need a deep understanding of natural systems and humans’ roles within them in order to critique the circumstances in which they live

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This is a photograph of a tractor harvesting a large potato field.

Figure 3 Learners need a deep understanding of natural systems and humans’ roles within them in order to critique the circumstances in ...

1.4.3 The challenge of using critical pedagogies

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Educators, yourself included, may feel overwhelmed when it comes to connecting knowledge and action around climate change teaching and learning. We’ve certainly felt this ourselves. This feeling might be due to the complexity of the issue, but also the fact that for a long time, the physical phenomenon of climate change was largely ‘invisible’ in everyday life, and easily perceived as ‘everybody’s’ problem, where individual contributions seem insignificant (Schreiner, Henriksen and Hansen, 2005). There have been shifts in such views, and climate change is now featured prominently in mainstream media. This course itself might be a reflection of this change that has taken place.

Educators, yourself included, may feel unsure about where and how to make a start. There can be an apparent disconnect between the theoretical breadth of critical pedagogies and practice-based research. This creates challenges for educators wanting to implement critical pedagogy frameworks (Booker, Vossoughi and Hooper, 2014). If you’ve experienced any of these feelings yourself, it could be useful to record and revisit them.

One of our most valued collaborators, and an influential educator, Maha Bali (2015) has written of critical pedagogy as ‘both painful and a joy’, explaining:

It’s painful because to practice it, the consciousness-raising process is difficult and painful as you uncover oppression you had previously been burying or unaware of… that is done unto you, and (even worse) that you may be doing to others unconsciously; and because once you begin looking at the world this way, you cannot go back. … It’s painful also because you start to empathize so much more strongly with the suffering of others, because you can see it more clearly.
And yet it is a joy. First, the joy in being able to see this deeper layer of subjective reality, painful and ugly as it often is; it’s like a blindfold has been removed from in front of your eyes. But also because in seeing it, you feel more empowered to change it – knowledge is not enough, it’s not critical pedagogy if it does not lead to reflective action – praxis. And then the absolute and utter joy of having that kind of goal in your teaching… it makes the process of teaching that much more rewarding, meaningful, as a way to be in the world.

(Bali, 2015)

You may find yourselves experiencing similar feelings to what Maha Bali is describing above. Engaging with critical pedagogy is not easy. This notion of ‘reflecting and acting’ is critical to developing your way of thinking upon and acting on things – your ‘praxis’ – as an educator.

Activity _unit3.2.2 Activity 2 Reflecting on critical pedagogy for climate justice

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Reflect on these ideas and how they apply to education for climate justice in your own context. Make a note of an example from your own practice that involves thinking about the justice-related aspects of the climate emergency. Think about the following questions.

How could you support learners to imagine and enact the world as it could be, rather than accepting it as it is?
What challenges might you experience in your own context?
What possibilities might critical pedagogy offer you in terms of supporting students’ engagement with the climate crisis?

You’ll return to these notes when you’re making your action plan at the end of the course.

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2 Democratic participation and political action

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In this section of the course you’ll explore some of the ways in which educators can support their students in addressing the climate crisis through democratic participation, political engagement and activism intended to raise awareness of the impact of the climate crisis, influence government action, raise awareness of the relationship between politics and environmental collapse, and inspire others to act.

Political engagement and democratic participation can take many forms, including:

Formal political participation. For example: voting, joining a political party and taking part in activities such as campaigning and policy development.
Informal political participation. For example: signing petitions, writing letters to an MP and other forms of lobbying intended to influence government decision-making.
Passive direct action. For example: amplifying activists’ social media posts by ‘liking’ or commenting on them.
Disruptive direct action. For example: taking part in protests and conducting social media-based activism.

Figure _unit3.3.1 Figure 4 Voting is one way to address the climate crisis, but needs to be accompanied by other action

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This is a photograph of a pile of colourfully decorated cards, each with the message ‘Be a voter’ in the middle.

Figure 4 Voting is one way to address the climate crisis, but needs to be accompanied by other action

2.1 The relationship between politics and the climate crisis

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

An obvious place to start in any teaching about democratic participation and political engagement is to support students in exploring the actions of their governments. Governments can have both a positive and a negative impact on climate change, through the development (or lack of development) of policies and measures around:

mitigation – actions intended to slow or halt the process of global warming and its related effects, or which could cause or exacerbate it
adaptation – actions to defend against the negative impact of global warming
climate engineering – direct intervention in the climate aimed at reducing average global temperature.

Other government policies and measures can have a less direct effect on the climate crisis, for example those relating to education, housing, transport and income tax.

The scope of political action in respect to climate change varies around the world. The European Environment Agency’s 2021 report ‘National greenhouse gas policies and measures in Europe’ identifies over 2200 policies and measures from European Union (EU) member states addressing mitigation across the following commonly used categories:

energy consumption, e.g. efficiency improvements of buildings
transport, e.g. improved transport infrastructure
energy supply, e.g. switching to less carbon-intensive fuels
agriculture, e.g. reduction of fertiliser/manure use on cropland
land use, change and forestry, e.g. prevention of deforestation
waste, e.g. improved landfill management
industrial processes, e.g. improved control of emissions from industrial processes.

The Climate Action Tracker allows the impact of climate change mitigation policies and actions on emissions to be tracked for 38 of the countries responsible for the biggest emissions globally. Exploring this tool with your students, whatever their age, could be a catalyst for discussing the extent to which democratic participation and political action could help influence governments to act differently in respect to climate change.

2.2 Global citizenship education

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Global citizenship, whereby individuals ‘embrace their social responsibility to act for the benefit of all societies, not just their own’ (United Nations, n.d.), covers multiple knowledge areas, skills, attitudes and behaviours that are relevant for addressing the climate crisis. Global citizenship education is relevant for climate crisis-related teaching in all sectors; we can all become better global citizens.

In their guidance document UNESCO (2015, p. 16) states that global citizenship education aims to enable learners to do the following:

Develop an understanding of global governance structures, rights and responsibilities, and global issues and connections between global, national, and local systems and processes.
Recognize and appreciate different and multiple identities, e.g., in culture, language, religion, gender and our common humanity, and develop skills for living in an increasingly diverse world.
Develop and apply critical skills for civic literacy, e.g., critical inquiry, information technology, media literacy, critical thinking, decision-making, problem-solving, negotiation, peacebuilding, and personal and social responsibility.
Recognize and examine beliefs and values and how they influence political and social decision-making, perceptions about social justice and civic engagement.
Develop attitudes of care and empathy for others and the environment, and respect for diversity.
Develop values of fairness and social justice, and skills to critically analyze inequalities based on gender, socio-economic status, culture, religion, age and other issues.
Participate in and contribute to contemporary global issues at the local, national, and global levels as informed, engaged, responsible, and responsive global citizens.

UNESCO (2015) has developed a comprehensive, openly licensed guidance document about implementing global citizenship education – Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives. The guidance gives specific examples for primary and secondary education but is wholly relevant to other sectors.

In the following activity you’ll reflect on the ways in which you might engage students in climate crisis-related global citizenship.

Activity _unit3.3.1 Activity 3 Reflecting on global citizenship and climate education

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Review the list of global citizenship aims above. Copy them into a new document, or write them out if you prefer.
For each aim, note possible climate crisis-related teaching and learning activities you might introduce in your own subject and sector in order to support this aim. (You might find it useful to revisit any ideas in the notes you’ve made in response to earlier activities in this course.)
Add to this document throughout your study of the course, each time you have a new idea about an activity you might use in climate crisis-related teaching in your setting. You’ll find this document particularly useful at the end of the course when you’re asked to develop a climate education action plan.

2.3 Civic engagement and climate-related politics

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Civic engagement is a critical component of climate-related politics, broadly defined as the process by which people exercise their democratic rights and participate in activities that address the concerns, interests and common good of a community, be it geographical, social or cultural (Brady, Cheskin and McGregor, 2020). Civic engagement includes a spectrum of activities that runs from formal to non-formal participation. Formal participation includes behaviours such as voting, contacting municipal officials, donating to or working on a political campaign, and attending public input sessions. Non-formal participation includes broader activities encompassing interest in public affairs as well as general social interactions in the community (Powers and Webster, 2021).

Civic engagement is vital for people of all ages, as a form of climate crisis-related action and, more generally, as a means of creating a more equitable society for all. However, educators can play a particularly important role in supporting young people in developing the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours relevant to civic engagement.

Figure _unit3.3.2 Figure 5 Climate activist Greta Thunberg, seen here addressing the European Parliament in 2020, has inspired many young activists

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Figure 5 Climate activist Greta Thunberg, seen here addressing the European Parliament in 2020, has inspired many young activists

Research suggests that youth civic engagement encompasses a complex interplay of civic capacity development and motivation as a response to sociopolitical factors (Powers and Webster, 2021). A number of recent youth-oriented policy frameworks developed by UN agencies have identified youth civic engagement as an important goal. Within these policy frameworks, the strategies emphasised to promote youth civic engagement include a range of traditional approaches, such as youth work and volunteerism, alongside somewhat newer policy innovations, such as dedicated youth parliaments and youth councils designed to allow young people to influence decision-making at all levels of governance, from the local to the supranational. These strategies aim to build youth leadership capacity, highlight issues of importance to young people and provide them with experience of engaging with democratic processes. A prominent stated concern of many policies is to ensure that the structures and processes are representative of different groups of youth, including vulnerable and marginalised groups (Chaskin, McGregor and Brady, 2018).

It’s important to acknowledge that young people’s participation in civic society can take place in various settings, both online and offline. Although news coverage often skews the representation of youth actors in civic activities by focusing on mass coverage of large-scale public events such as rallies and demonstrations, these only show a fraction of the places where civic participation occurs. Young people have also been accused of apathy and disinterest in politics, when in fact they are often engaging with politics, but in a non-traditional way:

There is a strongly held view that, rather than being apolitical or disengaged, young people are understandably frustrated and cynical as a consequence of four decades of neoliberal policies which have portrayed youth as a threat to democracy and public order.

(Brady, Chaskin and McGregor, 2020)

Powers and Webster (2021) argue that young people make civic contributions in places where they are in closer proximity to the issue, such as schools, individual classrooms, after-school programmes, neighbourhoods and community-based organisations. The UNICEF report ‘Digital civic engagement by young people’ (Cho et al., 2020) gives a helpful overview of some of the ways in which digital spaces and tools are being used for civic engagement, and could inform teaching around this topic.

2.3.1 How can educators support young people’s civic engagement?

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) framework (Ginwright and Cammarota, 2002) offers a basis for identifying the ways in which educators can support young people’s civic engagement. Within the SJYD framework, youth and adults work together with a common vision of social justice. The adults’ main aim is to support young people in developing critical consciousness to ‘challenge, respond to, and negotiate the use and misuse of power in their own lives’ (Carey et al., 2021) – an aim that fits well with addressing the climate crisis.

Ginwright and Cammarota (2002) propose three stages of development that might foster this critical consciousness:

Self-awareness which is required to achieve a positive sense of self, social, and cultural identity. This stage encourages young people to use their communities to explore how power, privilege, and oppression threaten their identities and capacity for self-determination.
Social awareness fosters young people’s capacity to think critically about the issues confronting people within their own communities.
Global awareness urges young people to learn and develop their emotional response to the ways that majority systems have historically marginalized minorities throughout the world, and to those minorities’ choices of resistance to oppression.

Research has shown that the strength of civic attitudes and the extent to which young people act to address issues of injustice may be associated with their interactions, social networks and experiences with difference and diversity (Powers and Webster, 2021). Many of these experiences start with young people acknowledging forms of discrimination and inequality in their own classroom and other school settings, for example, by noting situations when teachers treat students differently or over-inflate the achievement of students from majority backgrounds.

2.3.2 The value of intergroup contact

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Powers and Webster (2021) suggest that teaching young people about discrimination, patterns of inequity, group similarities and differences, and issues around power, privilege and disadvantage, to support civic engagement, can be achieved by positive intergroup contact, especially between people from different social groups and/or different racial and ethic backgrounds. They argue that more frequent and positive contact can lead to a reduction in prejudice and influence other outcomes, such as increasing cultural awareness and the ability to notice broader acts of injustice.

They also propose that intergroup contact can support the development of social capital – the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively. Social capital will encompass the trust, norms, resources and reciprocity underpinning – and generated from – those social interactions, relationships and networks. Those with higher social trust and reciprocity generally assume people are good and are more likely to give, volunteer, participate in local affairs and be engaged in the future of a community (Bridger and Alter, 2006).

Powers and Webster explain that the perspectives and knowledge gained from learning about inequalities, encouraging positive intergroup contact and developing social capital ‘can influence civic attitudes toward social issues and social change, and in turn, these attitudes can influence civic behaviours and the willingness to act to improve one’s community’. It follows that such behaviours and dispositions have great relevance to addressing the climate crisis.

Next, you’ll look at one form of intergroup contact particularly suitable for addressing the climate crisis – intergenerational dialogue.

2.4 Intergenerational dialogue

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

One form of intergroup contact particularly appropriate for addressing climate justice-related topics in teaching and learning settings (and beyond) is intergenerational dialogue. Dialogue between generations can be an effective way of exploring intergenerational injustice while also enhancing adult-youth partnerships. Intergenerational dialogue can challenge the dominance of adults as the only group with a voice and a stake in addressing climate change, and can develop patterns of interaction with young people, supporting their speaking, listening, thinking and relationship development, contributing to knowledge-building and nurturing links between communities. For the adults involved, intergenerational dialogue can support empathetic understanding and an awareness of multiple perspectives on key issues regarding climate change. In addition, all parties involved gain the opportunity to collaborate in sharing ideas and planning for action.

Intergenerational dialogue is also an important part of climate-related action beyond the formal classroom, with opportunities available for young people to get involved in climate change-related spaces and discussions typically open only to adults, by:

joining relevant organisations as members or as core staff
becoming members of governing bodies or advisory groups
getting involved in youth-led grassroots organisations and advocacy alliances
participating in climate cafés
engaging with decision-makers by getting involved in youth-led political bodies. In the UK these include the UK Youth Parliament and local Youth Councils. Similar bodies exist in other countries.

Some young people may take the initiative to participate in these spaces and discussions. Educators can also perform an important role in supporting such activity, both by sharing information about the types of opportunity available and by supporting the development of relevant skills, for example those related to language, influence and argumentation.

2.4.1 Creating dialogic spaces for climate education and action

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

While teachers often have limited influence over what is prescribed to be taught, they do tend to have influence over how subjects are taught. In line with the approaches to fostering civic engagement previously discussed – encouraging positive intergroup contact between people from different ages and social groups, and developing social capital – it follows that education intended to support civic engagement and climate activism should necessarily involve nurturing learning environments where all views can be expressed and challenged, promoting more dialogic, participatory approaches to education, and engaging with difference, complexity and power relations (de Andreotti, 2014).

If you’re considering using intergenerational dialogue or other forms of intergroup contact within your own practice, or already do so and are interested in further developing it, the characteristics of ‘optimal’ classroom dialogue proposed by Alexander (2008) are worth considering. Alexander suggests dialogue is optimal when it is:

collective, with participants reaching shared understanding of a task
reciprocal, with ideas shared among participants
supportive, with participants encouraging each other to contribute and valuing all contributions
cumulative, guiding participants towards extending and establishing links within their understanding
purposeful, that is directed towards specific goals.

Vrikki et al. (2018) identify the following strategies as among those leading to effective dialogue in educational settings, regardless of whether that dialogue takes place between large groups, small groups or on a one-to-one basis:

invitations that provoke thoughtful responses (e.g. authentic questions, asking for clarifications and explanations)
extended contributions that may include justifications and explanations
critical engagement with ideas, challenging and building on them
links and connections
attempts to reach consensus by resolving discrepancies.

If you’re devising a lesson plan, course or other educational intervention intended to address the climate emergency through dialogue – intergenerational or otherwise – it could be worth thinking about ways in which each aspect of dialogue covered in the lists above could be supported and developed.

2.4.2 Example: Philosophy for Children

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In addition to supporting empathy, understanding and relationship building, dialogic teaching can also support learners’ development of soft power – the ability to achieve objectives through persuasion rather than coercion. In their discussion of the role of schools and teachers in nurturing and responding to climate crisis activism, Dunlop et al. (2021) give the example of Philosophy for Children – an approach to education in philosophy which can be used across the curriculum, with any subject, and which encourages questioning and inquiry as a community in response to issues that young people want to discuss. This is just one model of practising soft power in schools, and which can allow young people to explore different perspectives on, and positionalities in relation to, local and global issues related to climate change.

Figure _unit3.3.3 Figure 6 What questions do learners want to discuss?

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This is a photograph of a teacher sat on a chair, leaning down and engaging with a circle of children.

Figure 6 What questions do learners want to discuss?

An example of how Philosophy for Children can be used in relation to climate education is provided on the website of Greasbrough Primary School, in Rotherham, UK.

Today during our P4C session we watched a short documentary on the effects of climate change. The children discussed the documentary in groups to come up with inquiry questions for a class discussion. After a vote, the children decided on the question:
How would you feel if your home was destroyed?

(Greasbrough Primary School, 2016)

Some of the children’s initial responses to this question are shared on the school’s website, with further comments added later after talking at home with family and friends.

2.4.3 Challenges around intergroup contact and intergenerational dialogue in educational settings

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Introducing (or increasing) opportunities for intergroup contact, including intergenerational dialogue, within a formal educational setting can pose challenges for educators and institution leaders, especially as it may necessitate changing the existing classroom or organisational culture. These challenges may be related to:

the persistence of strong hierarchies and power dynamics, especially relevant when bringing together adults and young people, or even people across different levels of seniority
institutional constraints, e.g. time and appropriate physical and online spaces
cultural constraints, e.g. the role of women and girls in the public sphere, in some contexts
mental health-related issues, e.g. social anxiety and lack of confidence
accessibility issues, e.g. disability-related barriers to participation.

Safety and safeguarding of the youth participants should be at the core of planning and creating such dialogic spaces.

Activity _unit3.3.2 Activity 4 The case for dialogic learning

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Read this blog post (Bleiman, 2021) and make notes on the following questions in the box below.

What are the key differences between traditional instruction and dialogic teaching?
The blog post talks about ‘authentic questions’. When teaching about climate change, what kind of authentic questions would you ask your students?
Following on from the example of Philosophy for Children, what approaches might you use to enable learners to develop questions of their own?

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3 Young activists

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Whatever your sector and the age of your students, exploring youth activism is an important aspect of teaching addressing the climate emergency, with the power to inform, inspire and offer examples of specific strategies.

Figure _unit3.4.1 Figure 7 Activists from the Climate Reparations Bloc and Defund Climate Chaos prepare for a march

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This is a photograph of a young Black woman speaking into a megaphone at a march.

Figure 7 Activists from the Climate Reparations Bloc and Defund Climate Chaos prepare for a march

Youth activism can be conducted by individuals acting independently or as part of broader youth activism programmes. Unlike traditional citizenship lessons in schools and out-of school youth programmes, which are focused on educating young people and supporting them within their lives, youth activism programmes encourage young people to challenge the structural oppressions harming them and their communities (Carey et al., 2021).

3.1 Youth activism programmes

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Youth activism programmes are helping young people take the next step from facing the status quo to challenging it, as this youth activist explains:

We had a conversation about oppression, and that can be like really depressing … because you’d think a lot about the things that hurt. Then we’d find a way to change the conversation into … what we can do for positive change for reproductive justice. So, we’re like moving towards building a campaign.

(Fierce Voices; cited in Carey et al., 2021)

Studying the impact of several such programmes, Carey et al. (2021) reported that participants gained increased critical consciousness, and developed academic skills and interpersonal skills such as navigating peer pressure, networking, negotiation, debating and public speaking. Another young activist comments:

I guess like negotiating or like negotiation skills, we don’t really learn about that a lot at school. But here, we’re able to talk to each other and have discussions on a specific topic and get to hear everyone else’s answers and kind of create something out of it.

(Girls in Government, cited in Carey et al., 2021)

There are many youth activism programmes around the world, including:

The Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change
Youth Climate Coalitions such as the UK Youth Climate Coalition
Earth Uprising
The Last Generation
Earth Guardians
Plant for the Planet

Teaching addressing the climate emergency can support students’ activism by raising awareness of key programmes, exploring the differences between them, discussing strategies for participating in activism programmes and supporting related skills development.

There are numerous resources available intended to support climate activism. Assembly’s toolkit for young activists combines valuable background information with links to additional resources. The Young Climate Activists Toolkit, developed by The UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa and the UNDP Regional Hub for Arab States, could be a helpful resource to support activism-related teaching The toolkit was designed to equip young people with the knowledge, tools, and resources to enable their participation in regional and global youth climate action, and to support advocacy for change. While originally intended to support young people in the Middle East and North Africa, the toolkit contains a lot of information and guidance that is more generally relevant. It comprises four volumes which are available in English and Arabic:

Climate Glossary for Young People
Tools for Climate Action
What is Climate Governance?
The Paris Agreement for Young People

If you’d like to explore key themes in young people’s climate activism in more depth, Neas et al.’s (2022) article ‘Young people’s climate activism: A review of the literature’ gives a comprehensive exploration of this topic. Herfort et al.’s (2023) report ‘Mapping the Global Youth Climate Movement: Towards a Green Economic Mandate’ offers an analysis of the strategies adopted by existing youth climate movements.

3.2 Individual activists’ stories

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Around the world, passionate and committed individuals of all ages are making a difference through climate-related activism. Whatever the educational sector, sharing the experiences and stories of such activists can be a powerful way of achieving empathetic understanding of the impact of climate change and an awareness of the ways in which individuals can address it. Activists’ stories can help educators gain an understanding of how their own students could be supported in conducting climate-related activism and advocacy.

Stories relating to young activists are particularly relevant when supporting young people in addressing the climate crisis. Most young activists do not get to vote or buy electric cars today, but they will be the ones bearing the consequences of the climate crisis tomorrow.

Young activists’ motivations vary widely, as do the messages they convey. Some focus on the science of climate change, some on the actions of fossil fuel companies, some on the human impact of the climate crisis and others on the impact on animals. Some focus on issues very local to them, others focus on more globally relevant matters. Harriet Thew, an environmental social scientist at the University of Leeds, UK, suggests that ‘more and more, they are talking about the problems for people and really recognizing that human–environment connection’ (Thew, cited in Marris, 2019).

For those young people who choose an activist (sometimes disruptive) approach to fighting the climate crisis, how do their educational systems react? And how could they react?

In October 2018, the IPCC released a special report calling for ‘rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society’ to keep the Earth’s average surface temperature within 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels (IPCC, 2018). This report, among others, has triggered an unprecedented level of young activism around the world, including the Fridays for Future movement.

Following Greta Thunberg, who started the Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate) movement by protesting outside the Swedish parliament in 2018, millions of students across the globe chose to skip school on Fridays to protest. The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison reacted to students’ protests in his country by stating:

I encourage them, by all means, to express your view, it’s a great democracy, and I have no issue with that […] but the learning gets done in schools.

(cited in Mahony, 2022)

This raises many questions. Is it okay to skip school to attend climate protests? Can conventional political means be used to achieve the same goal? Would you support your learners in skipping school to attend a climate protest? How can educational systems support or hinder the work of young activists? Pause and reflect on these questions for a few moments before continuing to the next section, which offers a case study about one young activist, Vanessa Nakate.

3.3 Case study: Vanessa Nakate

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Vanessa Nakate was the first Fridays for Future climate activist in Uganda, rising to the occasion as she felt African people need to have their voices heard:

But while the African continent is on the front lines of the climate crisis, it is not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. There is so much that needs to be done to hold the Global North responsible for the climate crisis.

(Nakate, 2022)

Vanessa founded the Rise Up climate movement and was one of the leaders of a campaign to save the Congo rainforest. She also founded the Youth for Future Africa Facebook group.

In an interview in April 2022, Vanessa explained her motivation:

I was speaking with my friends and they told me they didn’t feel a part of the movement because, at the time, the media was reporting on the climate strikes as organized and led by and for teenagers. Most of my friends were either finishing university or they had already graduated. I suggested we continue to organize strikes, but call ourselves Youth for Future instead. It worked – people joined from various different locations and started sharing information on social media. Soon after, we changed the name to Rise Up movement. This became a way for us to platform and amplify voices from the African continent because of the challenges African activists face to have their voices heard and listened to in climate spaces.

(Nakate, 2022)

During this interview, Vanessa reflected on what young activists could be doing to represent their own communities:

The first is ensuring that the voices of those on the front lines are platformed. We need to tell our own stories. We need to document our own experiences and what is happening in our communities. That is one of the ways we can ensure that what is happening on the ground is listened to – it doesn’t just become statistics. Climate change is more than statistics. It’s more than data points. It’s about the people.

(Nakate, 2022)

Figure _unit3.4.2 Figure 8 Vanessa Nakate speaks at the World Economic Forum 2022

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This is a photograph of Vanessa Nakate onstage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, sat alongside a panel of other speakers.

Figure 8 Vanessa Nakate speaks at the World Economic Forum 2022

Vanessa provided an example of the sorts of initiatives she and her friends were taking part in:

One example is the One Tree UG Project, led by Evelyn Acham Omonuk which involves planting fruit trees and giving out food trees to different households. There is also the Girl On The Move Project, led by Isaac Ssentumbwe, a skills development programme for women and girls, especially those who have difficulty finishing school. We know that one of the ways to tackle the climate crisis is educating girls and empowering women. Another is, of course, climate education. And that is also something we are working on within Rise Up. We’ve reached out to a number of schools in Uganda to install solar panels and eco-friendly cook stoves. So far, we’ve finished installations in 17 schools.

(Nakate, 2022)

Vanessa has used public stages such as COP25 and COP26 to call on governments to take immediate action and raise international awareness of the African struggle. At time of writing this course COP28 was imminently being held in Dubai, and Vanessa Nakate had been publically sceptical about the likely outcomes of the conference. If you have time and want to find out more, this video of a conversation between Vanessa Nakate and Wopke Hoekstra (European Commissioner for Climate Action) gives more details about Vanessa’s concerns.

In the following activity, you’ll watch two extracts from a panel held at the Global Just Recovery Gathering in April 2021, where people around the world came together to collectively reimagine the future. The three-day online event featured interactive workshops, cultural sessions and hands-on training. The panel features young activists Brianna Fruean (Samoa), Vanessa Nakate (Uganda), Rey Valmores-Salinas (Philippines) and Greta Thunberg (Sweden).

Activity _unit3.4.1 Activity 5 Vanessa Nakate’s activism

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Part 1

Watch the video, in which Vanessa Nakate discusses her activism in two extracts from the panel recording. Note down the points that she makes about:

what motivates young people to act
the challenges a young activist can face
how she manages those challenges.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1

Video _unit3.4.1 Video 1 Vanessa Nakate speaks at the Global Just Recovery Gathering 2021

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Transcript: Video 1 Vanessa Nakate speaks at the Global Just Recovery Gathering 2021

VANESSA NAKATE

Well, thank you. There’s been quite a number of challenges from when I started activism. In my country it’s not very easy to organise very, very big strikes and get to do strikes with students and different people because it’s hard to get permits, especially when you don’t have any big organisation to help you with that. So that was one of the challenges that I faced in my activism. And the other thing I really remember, of course, activism comes with so much negativity from different people, online, in person. Yeah, those are also challenges that I may not be facing by myself alone, but also other activists face those very challenges. And maybe to talk about the challenges that some of the activists that I work with have really faced – we’ve had some of them getting arrested, and that is really challenging for them and also for us because it kind of makes our activism a very hard thing to do, because you’re always in worry about what could happen next.

And the other challenge has been really talking to people because many times when we would do community reach out to speak to people here in Uganda, you get questions like: what am I going to gain from this? How much are you going to pay me? If you’re telling me to stop doing this, are you going to feed my family? So there are those challenges of people saying they’re not able to do activism because of various reasons, which is understandable because of the circumstances that some of them are in. And also many people would say, why aren’t you fighting to end poverty, to eradicate poverty? So those were some of the challenges that I faced as an activist.

But what I can say is that if I’m fighting for climate justice then it means that I’m fighting to eradicate poverty as well, as I have seen and we’ve seen how climate change keeps people in poverty trapped, and when they lose everything, they lose their homes, their crops, they’re left with nothing. When I fight for climate justice, I know I’m fighting for gender equality for all, to achieve zero hunger. So, it’s all about people understanding the intersection of all these things. And I guess that is like, the current challenge I have, but not just me but probably other activists as well, to help people understand the intersection of all these things.

VANESSA NAKATE

I will just start by saying that when you find yourself in a burning house, you do everything you can to run out of that house. So, it’s kind of disturbing for the young people to see that the planet is warming, and all the leaders are doing is to fuel, to continue fuelling the crisis and even make it burn more. So, I think for me it just really brings a disturbing in my heart to see that homes are being washed away, to see that crops are being destroyed, to see that people are struggling to have access to clean water and biodiversity getting destroyed because of the actions of our governments, the actions of the leaders.

So, I am personally worried about the kind of future that, you know, we are going into. However much people are fighting for the future, I think it’s important for people to also understand that the present of very many people is catastrophic, it’s dangerous, it’s scary. So, if I have a present that is scary right now, what do you expect me to think about the future?

So, I think that’s what really pushes young people to demand for justice because they’re already seeing a present that is very unpleasant, and you cannot convince them that the future is pleasant or beautiful. And yet it’s what they are walking into. We don’t walk from destruction to maybe peace just like that, when nothing is done about it. So, if we are seeing destruction, then we are going to do everything we can to get something that is much better, to get a future that is healthy, a future that is sustainable, a future that is equitable for all of us.

End transcript: Video 1 Vanessa Nakate speaks at the Global Just Recovery Gathering 2021

Download

Video _unit3.4.1 Video 1 Vanessa Nakate speaks at the Global Just Recovery Gathering 2021

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Part 2

Consider the following questions and make notes about your responses.

How could such a video be used in climate crisis-related teaching, with different age groups in different locations?
How might the stories of young climate activists’ experiences be used effectively in climate education?

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Part 3

Conduct a brief online search for resources about climate activists in your own country and/or stories which might particularly inspire discussion among learners in your own context. Note how easy it was to find relevant resources, and any which look particularly useful for supporting teaching in your setting.

3.4 Supporting young activists

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

You’ve considered several examples of youth activism so far, each varying in their approach. Whatever the age of your own students, exploring the role of activism in addressing the climate crisis may present some challenges, and needs to be handled carefully. This may involve:

Navigating any intergenerational tensions and issues of blame, and avoiding generalisation.
Negotiating any tension between students’ views about the role of educators in supporting activism, institutional policies covering this topic, your own views about their role (and about activism in general) and the views of colleagues and parents (where relevant). This may be particularly important for teaching covering disruptive activism, including activism that involves breaking the law.
Supporting students’ mental health and wellbeing, for example issues arising from young people’s emotional responses to the impact of the climate crisis on their future. You studied some approaches earlier in this course.

3.4.1 Addressing intergenerational issues

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

A little earlier in the course you studied the value of intergenerational dialogue in supporting exploration of the ways in which the climate crisis is impacting people from different age groups, the responsibilities of people from different generations, and how intergenerational collaboration can be effective in achieving imaginative and effective solutions and action. As already noted, this can pose challenges.

Often, young activists are drawing on their ‘moral authority’ to represent future generations and their social media savviness. For example, Vanessa Nakate has been occupied with selling solar batteries to combat the effects of climate change on the rain-fed agriculture that supports most Ugandans. Nakate uses social media to connect to other activists from around the world and to amplify her message. As she puts it: ‘the older generation messed things up […] we are doing the clean-up’ (Marris, 2019).

But should the older generation be blamed for the climate emergency? Although there are age-based differences in people’s attitudes towards climate change, it may be levels of educational attainment, rather than age, that drives these differences (HelpAge International, 2021). Many older people are passionate about contributing to climate activism and they are well placed to mobilise others. Polarising old and young isn’t an effective strategy in the long term. Addressing the climate emergency needs an intergenerational and multigenerational approach.

And how do adults see young people? About a quarter of adults surveyed in 2018 in the US said that the most important reason to act on climate change is ‘to provide a better life for our children and grandchildren’ (Marris, 2019, p. 472). They do not see young activists as powerless, but rather as having a greater moral integrity than other stakeholders involved in this topic (Marris, 2019). Intergenerational dialogue can explore these questions and issues.

3.4.2 Disobedience for social transformation

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

There is a huge variety of activist groups working to address the climate crisis. Some have opted for a more disruptive approach to make a stand, including being prepared to break the law. For example, the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion (known as XR) initiated a wave of acts of civil disobedience in the UK, that later spread internationally. In the US, some members of the youth-led Sunrise Movement were arrested while acting to pressure members of Congress to support green legislation.

Figure _unit3.4.3 Figure 9 Some activists take a disruptive approach

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This is a photograph of a Department for Education sign, on the front of the DfE building. It has been sprayed by Extinction Rebellion with the message ‘Teach climate truth’ in red paint.

Figure 9 Some activists take a disruptive approach

Wright’s (2010) theory of social transformation suggests that radical societal shifts usually require a shock to the system’s status quo. Climate activists are up against powerful actors. Fossil fuel, transportation and energy companies are highly influential, politically and economically. Although young activist groups get some media attention, they are still a tiny minority of the global population and lack traditional sources of power. While Wright did not support militant resistance, he did see the importance of challenging and confronting power. In addition, Wright pointed to the reformers’ need to face and expose some ‘gaps and contradictions’. One such contradiction is the ‘capital–climate contradiction’, which refers to the contradiction between capital’s need to expand production and the destructive effects of these expansions on the climate system (Stuart, Gunderson and Petersen, 2020).

Wright’s theory of social transformation might explain young activists’ choice of action as a means of exposing and confronting ‘contradictions’. Their activism can be made even more effective if they are supported (and not stopped) by the educational systems in which they study, and by the educators who work with them. This may not be straightforward, however.

First, it’s important to move away from the notion that young people are particularly likely to engage in disruptive action, including breaking the law. For example, activists within groups such as XR include many retired people who are prepared to engage in disruptive action and to break the law as they have less to lose by doing so, and getting arrested will not affect their job prospects or career. Whatever the sector, if you’re teaching topics related to addressing the climate crisis through civil disobedience and disruptive activism, it’s important to reflect on your own views and experiences and how they might inform your teaching, be clear about your institution’s position on educators supporting students in disruptive activism, and prepare a strategy that navigates these considerations. For example, rather than supporting students in how to handle getting arrested you could direct them to the many relevant resources available, including those from XR. It’s also worth pointing out that movements such as XR typically have a range of roles available that don’t involve direct action, including preparation of resources such as posters and props, administration, co-ordination and fundraising.

You’ll now further consider the teacher’s role in relation to climate activism.

Activity _unit3.4.2 Activity 6 The role of teachers in activism

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Read the vignette below from Dunlop et al. (2021) that discusses the role of schools and teachers in nurturing and responding to climate crisis activism.

Reading _unit3.4.1

All teachers of 12 to 13-year-old students were asked to lead a session on the climate crisis. As part of a school professional development programme, teachers were asked by the pastoral lead to reflect on their experiences of teaching the session. A group of three teachers had been asked by students about their views on the climate strikes.

Teacher A explained that while personally supporting the climate strikes, they did not want to voice support during the session because of concerns about students missing too much school, and the impact this would have on attendance and attainment.
Teacher B had voiced support for the strike and for striking young people during the session followed by an explanation of how strikes work, noting that strikes need to be disruptive to work. Teacher B noted to the class that there was minimal disruption to people other than the striking young people – so if they really cared, they should schedule strike action for a weekend.
Teacher C responded that Teacher B was wrong to voice support, because the teachers’ standards require teachers to uphold school policies and ethos and ensure teachers’ views are not expressed in ways that could lead young people to break the law.

Reflect and make some notes on the following questions:

How might you have responded during the session with 12 to 13-year-olds?
Would you respond in the same way to your own students, or students with whom you are familiar? If not, why not? What are the likely consequences of your response?
In general, do you think educators should share their political views in the classroom and/or promote causes they feel passionate about? Do you feel differently about whether educators should promote their views regarding the climate emergency?
Should educators use teaching as a form of activism? If so, are there any caveats to this? If not, why not?

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4 Mid-course quiz

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Now it’s time to complete the first compulsory badged quiz. There are 10 questions.

Mid-course quiz

Remember, this quiz counts towards your badge. If you’re not successful the first time, you can attempt the quiz again in 24 hours.

Open the quiz in a new tab or window then come back here when you’ve finished.

5 Summary

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In Session 2, you’ve considered how the adverse impacts of a changing climate will not be felt equally or fairly between different groups, and thought about how you might ensure learners develop their abilities to reflect, deliberate and position themselves in relation to issues of climate justice. You’ve learned about critical pedagogy, which prioritises dialogue between learners and educators on an equal level, and the critique of social and political structures. You’ve also reflected on how to support your students in addressing the climate crisis through democratic participation, political engagement, and activism.

You should now be able to:

identify key ethical and moral considerations connected with the climate emergency
engage with ideas around transformative learning and critical pedagogy
critically reflect on the educator’s role in supporting young activists.

In the next session you will explore some of the key issues around the practice of climate education and how it can be incorporated into the curriculum.

You can now move on to Session 3.

Introduction

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Session 3 introduces some of the key issues around the practice of climate education. You’ll think about how it can be infused into the existing curriculum and consider some examples, including healthcare, English language and creative disciplines, and discover how educators across sectors and subject areas can harness the power of photography. You’ll also examine the role of technology in climate education.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

design learning activities which support learners in understanding the causes and impacts of the climate emergency
critically reflect on your own practice and identify ways to develop it further
critically reflect on the role of technology in relation to the climate emergency.

1 Teaching across disciplines

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Integrating climate change-related knowledge and skills within an existing curriculum is challenging, whether the integration is done as a multi-course programme, a standalone module or lesson, or through infusion across courses and taught topics, interdisciplinary provision, or informal activities.

Figure _unit4.2.1 Figure 1 How can the climate emergency be addressed through the curriculum?

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This is a photograph of primary schoolchildren in a classroom in Sierra Leone.

Figure 1 How can the climate emergency be addressed through the curriculum?

1.1 Practical considerations

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

There are a number of practical considerations. Firstly, climate emergency-related teaching is a ‘discipline in the making’ in the sense that political, economic, social and scientific advances – and regressions – happen daily. Coming up with a fixed curriculum can be of very little use. Secondly, the syllabus is likely to already be overcrowded. Thirdly, as you’ve discovered, topics related to the climate crisis can be contested, perceived as political, and can divide opinion. And fourthly, there may be a need for hard-to-find specialist experience.

Alongside these practical challenges, when addressing curriculum infusion related to climate change, we are faced with conceptual and fundamental questions such as:

Do I want to ‘teach about’ or ‘teach for’ climate change? In other words, do I want to integrate climate change into a curriculum to ‘teach climate change’ and enrich my learners’ knowledge? Do I want to develop my learners’ capacity to act to mitigate the crisis? Do I want to support my learners’ ability to adapt to the effects of climate change and lay the foundations for a more sustainable and resilient society? Or, do I want to achieve all of these things?
Do I need to rethink the learning objectives of my curriculum?
Do I need to change, add or omit concepts from my current curriculum?
Do I need to readdress the existing framework of skills and competencies I want my learners to acquire?

1.1.1 Rethinking our educational aims and learning outcomes

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The example just outlined has an explicit focus on developing knowledge – one of three main elements typically addressed by educational aims and learning outcomes, alongside skills and values. McCowan (2021) suggests that all three elements are essential for a well-rounded human being to engage effectively with the climate crisis. Indeed, as you’ve already seen, global citizenship education covers all three elements, in addition to behaviours. Focusing on higher education, UNESCO (2019) note that many climate-related programmes are based almost solely on the knowledge element while Facer (2020) suggests that solely gaining knowledge about climate change is insufficient for ensuring action and changes in behaviour, adding that skills and values are essential too.

Taking a closer look at the elements of knowledge, skills and values is a useful foundation for considering ways in which curriculum infusion can be most effective, for example in prompting consideration of the distinctive characteristics of particular disciplines.

1.1.2 Knowledge

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The knowledge element of learning outcomes generally refers to factual or conceptual knowledge. It also is often linked with understanding. When featured within the learning outcomes of climate-related educational interventions, the knowledge element may include such things as: understanding the evidence surrounding changes in temperatures over time; the causes of anthropogenic climate change in greenhouse gas emissions; the aspects of human behaviour that lead to greenhouse gas emissions; and ways of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere (McCowan, 2021). The knowledge element may also include understanding the impact of climate change on people around the world.

1.1.3 Skills

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Climate crisis-related skills are many and varied. They include research and analysis, political skills such as advocacy, organisation and campaigning, as well as skills related to environmental protection and the use of new technologies (McCowan, 2021). Relevantly, UNESCO (2006) lists several skills that are essential for addressing sustainable development, including:

creative and critical thinking, oral and written communication, collaboration and cooperation, conflict management, decision-making, problem-solving and planning, using appropriate ICTs, and practical citizenship.

UNESCO (2006, p. 21)

1.1.4 Values/attitudes

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Values, sometimes expressed as ‘attitudes’, are perhaps the most challenging of the three elements to develop. McCowan (2021, p. 5) suggests values relating to the political and moral spheres are particularly relevant to the climate crisis and ‘have an instrumental relevance in relation to climate change as they shape beliefs, attitudes and behaviours’. McCowan comments:

Values relating to climate change include those relating to the natural world (what Orr [1994] calls biophilia), but also importantly those relating to social justice, equality and liberty. Since greenhouse gas emissions are the result of social, political and economic organisation, reducing them necessarily entails changing the organisation of society and the distribution and use of resources.

(McCowan, 2021, p. 5)

Educational programmes can support the development of values in many ways, including raising awareness of the impact of the climate crisis on the most vulnerable inhabitants of our planet.

1.1.5 Competencies

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Learning outcomes are sometimes expressed using competencies, rather than skills, knowledge/understanding and values. Competence can be thought of as the blend of knowledge, skills, values and behaviours necessary for success in a particular real-life activity or a set of activities (McCowan, 2021, p. 6).

An example of a competency framework is provided within a document that sets out learning objectives for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) (UNESCO, 2017). Learning designers at The Open University have developed the following ‘tree’ graphics to help educators working in higher education visualise these competencies and have conversations about how learners might be supported to achieve them. These graphics can be downloaded here for later reference.

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Figure _unit4.2.2 Figure 2 Key competencies: ways of practicing

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The first of a series of three graphics in the shape of trees with the title: ‘Key competencies: Ways of practicing’. On the trunk of the tree is a circle labelled ‘Ways of practising’. Lines connect the circle to three circles higher up the tree. The first is labelled ‘Strategic’, the second ‘Collaboration’ and the third ‘Integrated problem-solving’. Each of these circles have lines connecting to three smaller circles located on the tips of the branches. The ‘Strategic’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Develop innovative actions that further sustainable development’; ‘Implement innovative actions that further sustainable development’; ‘Consider how innovative actions can be at a local level or further afield’. The ‘Collaboration’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Learn from others and deal positively with conflicts in a group’; ‘Respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others’; ‘Facilitate collaborative and participatory problem-solving’. The ‘Integrated problem-solving’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Apply different problem-solving framework to complex sustainable development problems’; ‘Develop viable, inclusive and equitable solutions’; ‘Utilise appropriate competencies to solve problems’.

Figure 2 Key competencies: ways of practicing

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Figure _unit4.2.3 Figure 3 Key competencies: ways of thinking

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The second of a series of three graphics in the shape of trees with the title: ‘Key competencies: Ways of thinking’. On the trunk of the tree is a circle labelled ‘Ways of thinking’. Lines connect the circle to three circles higher up the tree. The first is labelled ‘Systems thinking’, the second ‘Anticipatory’ and the third ‘Critical thinking’. Each of these circles have lines connecting to three smaller circles located on the tips of the branches. The ‘Systems thinking’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Recognise and understand relationships’; ‘Analyse complex situations and deal with uncertainty’; ‘Consider how systems are embedded within different domains and scales’. The ‘Anticipatory’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Assess the consequences of actions and deal with risks and challenges’; ‘Understand and evaluate multiple outcomes’; ‘Apply the precautionary principle and create their own visions for the future’. The ‘Critical thinking’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Question norms, practices and opinions’; ‘Reflect on one’s own values, perceptions and actions’; ‘Take a position in the sustainable development discourse’.

Figure 3 Key competencies: ways of thinking

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Figure _unit4.2.4 Figure 4 Key competencies: ways of being

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The third of a series of three graphics in the shape of trees with the title: ‘Key competencies: Ways of being’. On the trunk of the tree is a circle labelled ‘Ways of being’. Lines connect the circle to two circles higher up the tree. The first is labelled ‘Normative’ and the second ‘Self-awareness’. Each of these circles have lines connecting to three smaller circles located on the tips of the branches. The ‘Normative’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Consider the norms and values that underlie one’s actions’; ‘Reflect on the norms and values that underlie one’s actions’; ‘Negotiate sustainable development values, principles, goals and targets in a context of uncertain knowledge’. The ‘Self-awareness’ circle is connected to circles labelled: ‘Reflect on own role in the local community and global society’; ‘Reflect on own values, perceptions and actions’; ‘Continually evaluate and further motivate actions and deal with feelings and desires’.

Figure 4 Key competencies: ways of being

Competencies’ blending of knowledge/understanding, skills and values/attitudes may be seen as a progressive move ‘beyond inert knowledge content and rigid disciplinary approaches and towards multidimensional and real-life abilities’ (McCowan, 2021, p. 6). But they are not without their problematic elements. McCowan (2021, p. 6) suggests that:

…competencies represent an exogenous frame for learning: they determine what individuals should be able to do and how they should act on the basis of tasks or jobs that need completing. That may be entirely appropriate in assessing individuals for a particular form of employment, but fall short of a holistic vision of education based on learner agency. Competence-based frameworks do not always contain a sufficient element of criticality and reflection, and in this regard can be more akin to training than education.

(McCowan, 2021, p. 6)

When developing learning outcomes for climate education, paying close attention to the elements they represent can be useful in ensuring that a particular lesson, resource or course takes a holistic approach to the challenges, complexities and flux involved in addressing the climate emergency.

Activity _unit4.2.1 Activity 1 Reflecting on your current curriculum

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Reflect on any climate crisis-related teaching you’re already doing and make notes in the box below. Drawing on your study of this course, consider whether any additional elements relating to knowledge/understanding, skills and values/attitudes might usefully be added to your learning outcomes in order to address the climate emergency in a holistic way.
Consider how any climate crisis-related teaching you’re already doing or planning relates to the different competencies identified in the ‘tree’ graphics above. Can you add any ‘leaves’ to the ‘trees’ to describe examples of ways in which learners in your context might be supported to achieve these competencies in practice?

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1.2 Curricular infusion

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Addressing the climate emergency through teaching and learning can be achieved either in dedicated standalone sessions or by ‘infusing’ climate crisis-related topics into existing curriculum and assessment. You’ll focus on the latter in this part of the course.

While some disciplines, such as science or geography, tend to have national curricula which include some aspects of climate-related learning, these are not the only disciplines where the climate emergency is a key consideration. There are other disciplines where this is the case. One example is health and healthcare.

1.2.1 Climate and health

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The World Health Organisation describes climate change as the single greatest threat to health (WHO, 2022). The 2021 report of the Lancet Countdown, an independent international group that monitors the consequences of climate change on health using 44 indicators (Romanello et al., 2021), explains how there are multiple areas of increasing concern, including:

an increase in the transmission of climate-sensitive infectious diseases, such as cholera and malaria
extreme heat-related impacts on health, including lost work hours and reduced income due to rising temperatures
more extreme weather events and wildfires, which are putting food and water supplies at risk
inadequate measures to tackle carbon emissions and tackle inequities, including those around gender.

Figure 5 shows how different aspects of climate change can affect different aspects of health.

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Figure _unit4.2.5 Figure 5 Effects of climate change on human health

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This is a diagram entitled ‘Effects of climate change on human health’. The diagram comprises two concentric circles surrounded by eight segments. The inner circle contains four elements, the outer circle has eight elements. The inner circle has four sectors labelled: rising temperatures, more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and increasing CO₂ levels, along with symbols representing sun, rain, waves and wind. The eight elements of the outer circle are: extreme heat, severe weather, air pollution, changes in vector ecology, increasing allergens, water quality impacts, water and food supply impacts, environmental degradation. The eight sectors outside the circles are, respectively: heat-related illness and death, cardiovascular failure; injuries, fatalities, mental health impacts; asthma, cardiovascular disease; malaria, dengue, encephalitis, hantavirus, rift valley fever, lyme disease, chikungunya, West Nile virus; respiratory allergies, asthma; cholera, cryptosporidiosis, campylobacter, leptospirosis, harmful algal blooms; malnutrition, diarrheal disease; forced migration, civil conflict, mental health impacts.

Figure 5 Effects of climate change on human health

1.2.2 The provision of healthcare

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The provision of healthcare is, in itself, costly in terms of the climate damage it creates. On a global scale, if healthcare were a country, it would rank 5th in terms of carbon emissions (Benjamin, 2022). In England, the National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions, having a greater annual impact than all the passenger planes taking off from London Heathrow airport (Royal College of Physicians, 2017).

Change is needed. Some changes, which involve little cost or inconvenience, such as moving asthmatic patients to low-carbon inhalers or using lower-carbon anaesthetic gases, can be implemented quickly (Bhopal and Norheim, 2021). Other changes are more challenging to implement, especially when they require a shift in professionals’ accepted ways of doing things or changes in people’s behaviour to prevent illness. Additionally, actions to address climate change can have positive implications for health. This is also true at the individual level. For example:

Eating less meat and more locally grown, plant-based foods reduce carbon emissions as well as the risk of obesity, heart disease and bowel cancer.
Walking and cycling instead of using the car reduces carbon emissions as well as the risk of obesity, heart disease and depression.
Spending time in nature can help people value the environment, while also supporting mental health.

And yet, many people do not grasp the significance of the link between climate and health, including healthcare educators.

1.2.3 Incorporating climate change into the healthcare curriculum

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In a survey of 2817 medical schools in 112 countries (El Omrani et al., 2020), only 15% had incorporated climate change into the curriculum. There were student-led climate-related activities in an additional 12% of medical schools, suggesting that students themselves appreciate the connection between health and climate, even when it’s not a priority for educators. 89% of medical schools did not include air pollution within their curriculum – and this was the case even in countries like India and China, where air pollution is a significant concern for health.

Anåker, Spante and Elf (2021) interviewed 12 nursing students at a Swedish university about their perceptions of climate change. They found that some students were aware of the impacts of climate change on health, including how it can exacerbate inequalities. While some of the nursing students felt they could play an active role in mitigating climate change, including managing clinical waste appropriately or acting as role models, others hadn’t made this connection.

It is difficult to see how climate change can affect healthcare and my future profession as a nurse. Nursing is about saving lives.

(Student nurse cited in Anåker, Spante and Elf, 2021)

A global online survey of institutions training health professionals found that over 70% of them encountered barriers and challenges when trying to incorporate climate change into the curriculum (Shea, Knowlton and Shaman, 2020), including:

lack of time to develop the curriculum
lack of funding
competing institutional priorities
lack of available space in the curriculum
lack of teaching materials and staff expertise.

It is important that all healthcare education supports students to understand the links between climate and health. A priority area is the education of professionals providing mental health support. A paper co-authored by 23 young people from fifteen countries (Diffey et al., 2022) explains how, with appropriate training and once they have explored their own feelings about the climate crisis, professionals, such as counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists, are better placed to support the clients and communities they work with. They can then actively challenge the myth that anxiety or depression about the state of the world is abnormal.

Of course, not all healthcare is provided by healthcare workers. Much is provided by people themselves or their families. Everyone needs to understand the links between climate change and health, and these can be taught through multiple disciplines.

Activity _unit4.2.2 Activity 2 Making connections between climate and curriculum

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Reflect on your own teaching context and practice and make notes on the following questions.

Drawing on your own experience and practice, do you believe that teaching about climate change works best when embedded in an existing curriculum or when designed as a standalone module or course? Would your answer differ for particular disciplines or contexts?
What barriers do you face when trying to incorporate climate change into the curriculum in your own discipline?
Are the learners in your own context aware of the connections between the climate emergency and health? If not, how could you raise this awareness?

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1.3 Examples of curricular infusion

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

There are many examples of ways in which the climate emergency can be incorporated into the curriculum. You’ll consider some further brief examples related to different disciplines before thinking about one creative discipline in more detail in the next part of the course.

1.3.1 English language education

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Harry Kuchah Kuchah, a lecturer in language education at the University of Leeds in the UK, was interviewed about his work for a podcast by the British Council. He discussed the responsibility that the English Language Teaching sector as a whole has towards the climate crisis:

I think we have a very huge responsibility because English language education is kind of the melting pot for what every other subject area does. Language is that tool that we use to communicate all the values that are dear to human beings and that are fundamental to our survival on the planet. The way we communicate, the way we engage with people can make or mar the planet because they can shift people’s attitudes and beliefs and actions consequently.

(Kuchah Kuchah, cited in the British Council, 2022)

Some language educators have the flexibility to design and deliver their courses using a content-based language learning approach (British Council, 2023) – not teaching English grammar and vocabulary in isolation, but through a specific subject matter. In this context, climate change and environment can serve as a subject matter, through which a student can also learn English.

Over the last 10 years there has been a rapid increase in the production of climate fiction, including novels, short stories and poetry. Sarah Outterson-Murphy (2023) provides extensive examples of the climate change fiction that she uses to engage students in her own context as an English language teacher.

While some research suggests that climate fiction is limited in terms of the readership it reaches (Schneider-Mayerson, 2018) and casts doubt on whether the changes in readers’ beliefs and attitudes about climate change have lasting impact (Schneider-Mayerson et al., 2023), these studies are limited to the North American context with participants who are paid to take part. Educators in other parts of the world offer a more nuanced picture. For example, the inclusion of the Indigenous climate fiction text Carpentaria by Alexia Wright as an optional set text in the Australian English secondary curriculum offers new possibilities for engaging with literature, while also disrupting the way in which English has so often been a tool for colonisation and injustice (Phillips et al., 2022).

1.3.2 The power of the arts

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The power of creative disciplines cannot be understated. The arts help us to ‘say what words can never say’ (Eisner, 2002, p. 205) and to have experiences we can have from no other source. As arts educator Elliot Eisner proposes, ‘through the arts we learn to see what we had not noticed [and] to feel what we had not felt’ (2002, p. 12). They allow multiple perspectives to be expressed simultaneously and can support both cognition and emotion.

The arts leave a space for the human imagination that can support empathetic understanding and achieve great emotional impact. This, in turn, can be a catalyst to achieve change. Through the arts we can not only know, but also feel possible futures, and this makes them particularly powerful both as a form of climate-related activism, and as a means of increasing understanding about the impact of the climate crisis.

One way in which the arts, in their many forms, can help educators and learners address the climate emergency is by supporting ‘radical empathy’ in the interests of climate justice. Givens (2020) explains that:

Radical empathy is moving beyond walking in someone else’s shoes and requires taking actions that will not only help that person but will also improve our society. Practicing radical empathy can provide real change in people’s lives, but I would emphasize the word practicing – having empathy is different from practicing empathy.

(Givens, 2020)

Visual art, creative writing, theatrical performance and music can:

help convey climate science data in an accessible way
communicate the extent and consequences of environmental collapse and the urgent need for action
spark dialogue and encourage critical thinking about the complex and interconnected issues surrounding climate change
inspire, motivate and provoke emotions that are sufficiently strong to drive the immediate action needed if we’re to avert catastrophic environmental collapse that will render our planet uninhabitable.

1.3.3 The Turn It Around project

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Examples of the power of creative disciplines can be seen in the Turn It Around project – a live learning tool for adults, made by young people, and intended to reimagine our approach to education and our relationship with nature and the living world during this time of climate crisis. Usually, flashcards are designed by educators for students and children. The project features an ever-growing deck of flashcards designed by young people for education policymakers, politicians, and teachers to challenge them to think, see and act in new ways. Contributions are always welcome.

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Figure _unit4.2.6 Figure 6 Screenshot of some of the flashcards produced by young people around the world for the Turn It Around project

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This is a screenshot from the Turn It Around project website. A variety of art flashcards can be seen in a grid.

Figure 6 Screenshot of some of the flashcards produced by young people around the world for the Turn It Around project

Whatever your sector or subject area, Turn It Around could be used in many ways within teaching addressing the climate crisis. For example, you could:

discuss the themes presented on the existing flashcards and their significance
explore how themes connected with a specific subject area could be presented in flashcards
explore the ways in which art has been used to amplify the messages presented on the flashcards
support students in creating flashcards for the project.

1.3.4 Small Solutions for Big Problems

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Studying collaboration across disciplines within climate crisis-related art projects can support learners in imagining how the arts could support climate action in their own subject area, or area of interest. The video Small Solutions for Big Problems uses animation, illustrations and music to convey research around nanomaterials and their implications for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Animator Suzie Hanna explains in the accompanying brief documentary that ‘what we were trying to do was to put forward quite scientific ideas in a way that is not hyperreal, which is what you expect from a scientific animation, but to do something very textural, almost tactile’.

Figure _unit4.2.7 Figure 7 Still image from Small Solutions for Big Problems

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This is a screenshot from the Small Solutions for Big Problems animation.

Figure 7 Still image from Small Solutions for Big Problems

If you’re teaching climate crisis-related topics in a science discipline, exploring the techniques used in Small Solutions for Big Problems could support discussion of how animation, illustration and music could be used to convey other topics related to climate science. If you’re addressing the climate crisis through teaching in an arts subject, you could support students in storyboarding a video addressing a related topic of their choice, including choosing suitable music and illustrations to amplify the messages being conveyed.

1.3.5 Creative writing

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Students’ own creative writing can be an insightful way of incorporating climate education into the curriculum for learners of all ages. Using tools such as the Our Story app, even very young children can be supported to write and share their own stories. You’ll see examples of people of all ages sharing their writing in relation to the climate emergency in the Letters to the Earth project, which you’ll explore in the next activity.

Activity _unit4.2.3 Activity 3 Letters to the Earth

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Explore the Letters to the Earth project website and find at least one example of a letter that might interest the learners in your own context. Make a note of the URL, so that you can easily find it again and note the reasons for your choice.
Consider how you might invite the learners in your setting to write a letter to the earth. Make some notes about the support that they would need to do this, and how you could incorporate this activity into the curriculum.
If you have more time available, you might like to write your own letter to the earth.

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2 The power of photography

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Many of our most powerful encounters with climate change are through photographs. Photography is uniquely suited to addressing climate crisis-related issues, combining realism with the use of visual devices that can enhance the emotional impact of an image. Educators across all sectors and subject areas can harness the power of photography when addressing the climate emergency in teaching and learning activities, with the potential to increase learner engagement and provide opportunities for creativity and personal expression. In this section you’ll explore some such possibilities.

In their article ‘The power of photography as we enter ‘code red for humanity’’, Greenpeace International Content Editor Tan Lee Kuen (2021) identifies photography’s role in addressing the climate crisis:

There is no denying the power of photography as a universal medium of communication, one that transcends language and cultural barriers. And the planet needs everyone on board in the fight against climate change…Through images, we can see the planet’s vulnerable beauty as well as the devastating impact of our actions and what we could potentially lose without immediate, direct action.

(Kuen, 2021)

Figure _unit4.3.1 Figure 8 Cyclone Aila hit Mousuni Island in 2009, resulting in loss of croplands and fishing boats, and causing severe problems for agriculture and fisheries

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This is a photograph of a woman standing near a number of small boats. These are beached among small water pools, on a shoreline landscape dotted with trees.

Figure 8 Cyclone Aila hit Mousuni Island in 2009, resulting in loss of croplands and fishing boats, and causing severe problems for ...

Photography can support climate change-related awareness-raising and understanding, together with climate action, in many different ways, some of which are more appropriate than others for specific educational sectors, contexts and disciplines. For example, photography can:

Raise awareness of what we stand to lose as a consequence of climate change, and also give a visual record of species before they become extinct. National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore’s Photo Ark project is intended to do just this. The Photo Ark currently features 44,947 pictures recording 13,907 species (at the time of writing in 2023).
Raise awareness of the human impact of climate change. This, in turn, can be particularly relevant in teaching addressing climate justice. Gavin Bell (2021), writing for the Royal Photographic Society’s journal, asserts that ‘science can explain the causes and effects of climate change, but it takes photography to graphically illustrate its human cost’. An online interactive by UN Women is just one example, using photography to show how the impact of climate change is greatest for the world’s poorest people, especially women and girls.
The Iranian photographer Solmaz Daryani also works in this way. She was shortlisted in the 2020 Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Science Photographer of the Year competition for her images showing the human impact of dust storms and flash floods in Afghanistan. Her series The Eyes of Earth: The Death of Lake Urmia, 2014 also shows the catastrophic impact of climate change on humans and the environment, with images of parched agricultural land, abandoned tourist resorts and dilapidated pleasure boats stranded far from the shrinking waters. The RPS 2020 exhibition gives further examples of how photography can show the effects of climate change and the ways in which we are working to reverse them.
Act as a catalyst for conversations. This function of photography has particular relevance for use in educational settings, especially in the context of online, blended and technology-enhanced teaching where access to impactful images should be straightforward. Sudhanshu Malhotra, Greenpeace Multimedia Editor, comments:
‘The role of photography is to start a conversation so that people can start talking about what is happening and wanting to know more. It has the ability to create a chain reaction. A strong image can stay long in our memories and has a strong recall value. It stays with us.’ (Kuen, 2021)
Increase the ways in which students of all ages can get involved in climate crisis-related activism and awareness-raising, especially now that most mobile phones are equipped with cameras. Drones and action cameras can add to the range of perspectives. Whatever your subject area, supporting students in taking climate crisis-related photos, and in using them to raise awareness and drive change, can be a valuable endeavour, especially as many young people will already be familiar with the process of sharing images through social media platforms such as Instagram. There are many resources available to support students’ photography skills, for example:
1. The Royal Photographic Society Science & Photography resources for educators have some suggestions about how science and photography can complement each other.
2. The Climate Visuals: Seven principles for visual climate change communication (based on international social research) report offers guidance about strategies that can help ensure climate-related images are effective.
3. Marie Gardiner (2019) offers some useful advice in her article ‘Picturing Climate Change: How to Photograph your Environment’.
4. Friends of the Earth’s ‘How to take good photos and videos’ page has some good basic tips, with a focus on campaigning.

2.1 The risks of climate-related photography

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

When using photography as part of climate crisis-related teaching, especially when supporting learners to take and share photos as part of climate action, it’s important to address some of the risks this might involve and the need to act responsibly.

In her article ‘The path less Instagrammed’ Christine Peterson discusses how social media, especially Instagram, is harming nature due to individuals’ behaviour when searching for the perfect shot, and due to the impact of sharing the location of rare species with a wide audience. To avoid doing harm in this way, good practice includes:

Not geotagging images, and removing GPS data from photos to avoid others being able to find out exactly where they were taken. There are many online guides explaining how this can be achieved with free tools.
Following laws and guidelines for staying on paths and not trespassing.
Keeping your distance from wildlife, to avoid stressing them.
Not using a flash.
Not touching or feeding wildlife, as this can cause health problems and lead animals to become over acclimated to human presence.
If using a drone, doing so in a way that ‘will not stress out, spook or endanger wildlife or humans’ (Nature Conservancy, 2019).

2.2 Sources of images

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

The Climate Visuals collection is a great place to start, especially as many of the photos are openly licensed, meaning that they can be used without cost. You might have noticed that they’ve been used throughout this course to show real people working towards positive solutions to the climate crisis. The Collections page contains categories such as ‘Ocean Visuals’, ‘Climate Causes’, ‘Climate Impact’ and ‘Climate Solutions’. To find openly-licensed images first register with Climate Visuals, then search for a specific theme. Doing so will allow you to filter the results by ‘Creative Commons licence’.

Figure _unit4.3.2 Figure 9 Christel Jacques leads her Wildlife Club of 8-year-old children on an outing to learn about mangroves in the Seychelles

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This is a photograph of Christel leading and teaching the club. She is pointing at something out of frame. Four children are visible, they are looking in the same direction and writing on clipboards.

Figure 9 Christel Jacques leads her Wildlife Club of 8-year-old children on an outing to learn about mangroves in the Seychelles

Nature-focused photography contests can be an effective way of inspiring people to take photos of natural environments and species that are affected by the climate crisis, and can also bring together multiple perspectives on similar issues. In addition, related online exhibitions can be a rich source of imagery for educators. For example, the annual photo contest held by The Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organisation, regularly attracts entries from around the world. In 2021 the contest received over 100,000 entries from 158 countries, and in 2022 a Climate category was introduced, intended to give photographers the opportunity to capture and share what climate change looks like in their own community and context. The 2022 winners from India, Bolivia, the United States, Bangladesh and Norway offer powerful images of the destruction and devastation caused by climate change and by human actions such as the dumping of waste and sewage into the natural environment.

Other online exhibitions connected with photo contests include the Environmental Photographer of the Year and the Commonwealth Foundation’s A Lens on the Climate Crisis in Africa. The latter features photos from 24 photographers in 12 African Commonwealth countries. A video on the exhibition webpage features the photographers explaining their work and is worth a look if you have the time.

Activity _unit4.3.1 Activity 4 Using photography in your own practice

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Spend around 15 minutes browsing some of the resources mentioned above and select an image that you find particularly powerful. Make a note of your chosen image and the reasons for your choice in the box below.
Consider how you might use photography in your own teaching to support your learners in addressing the climate emergency, and note down your ideas.

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3 The role of technology

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Technology use is growing exponentially, globally. But is it good or bad for the environment? In this section of the course, you’ll consider the positive and negative impact of technology on the climate, and the role of technology in environmental activism and in teaching addressing the climate crisis. Exploring these topics should give you some ideas you could explore with your own students.

3.1 The growth and impact of technology

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Computers’ speed and power have been doubling every 18 months to two years since the 1960s. We are always ‘on’ – streaming from multiple devices, having infinite storage. During the Covid-19 pandemic, most societies came to rely even further on internet-connected technologies and services. Although there are considerable differences in behaviour by geography, the ‘Digital 2022 global overview report’ revealed that the ‘typical’ global internet user now spends almost seven hours per day online, with the daily average increasing by four minutes per day (+1%) over the past year.

The use of social media is also growing. As of 2022, the average daily time on social media among internet users worldwide amounted to 147 minutes per day, up from 145 minutes in the previous three years (Statista, 2022).

Figure _unit4.4.1 Figure 10 How does technology affect climate change?

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This is a photograph of a hand holding up a smartphone. The phone is being used to photograph the sunset.

Figure 10 How does technology affect climate change?

This growth has detrimental effects on the climate – from the exploitation of natural resources to reproduction of poor labour conditions. The humanitarian organisation ALBOAN points out that:

The environmental rucksack of our technological equipment is very heavy – much greater than the device’s real weight. To produce one smartphone, we use 44.4 kg of natural resources. For one computer, it’s around one tonne.

(ALBOAN, 2022)

In his talk ‘Studying digital education in times of climate crisis: what can we do?’ Professor Neil Selwyn gives further examples of the resource demands of technology.

Bitcoin uses an astronomical use of energy consumption, which, at the moment, is estimated to be on [a] par with Thailand, the 13th biggest country in terms of energy consumption. But crypto is not the only technology that has an environmental problem. In terms of just standard Artificial Intelligence (AI) modelling, for example, it is estimated that deep learning techniques now needed for training AI produce a carbon emission equivalent to New York City.

(Selwyn, 2022)

A covert human workforce is a crucial component of creating and maintaining technological services. For example, with AI-driven technologies, the more data you have – images, videos, text – and the more precisely it is labelled, the more sophisticated the algorithm is likely to be. The 2022 National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) report found that over 80% of data annotation employees are from rural, semi-rural and underserved backgrounds (Mehrotra, 2022).

3.2 Technology, capitalism and the climate

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Such endless growth in the use of technology is often linked to capitalism – an economic system in which private entities and individuals are encouraged to purchase or sell material goods to turn a profit. Many consider capitalism to be an unsustainable concept, as infinite growth cannot take place on a planet with finite resources.

Furthermore, the primary indicator of growth used to measure how well a country is doing – the gross domestic product (GDP) – calculates wealth by the products made and sold in a country, but ignores some significant factors in these GDP calculations. One thing that isn’t counted in the GDP figures is the environment. GDP considers the final products made and sold; the environmental costs aren’t considered. This means that the charge on nature for making a product is ignored, regardless of its impact on the environment.

Understanding the root cause of the environmental crisis and the negative impact of technology on the climate are the first steps in tackling the problem. For example, the theory of ‘degrowth’ holds that an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to the finiteness of material resources on Earth. Jones (2020) breaks degrowth into four ‘pillars’:

Simplicity – doing more with less.
Care – putting people and nature at the heart of how we live as a society (rather than growth and material commodities).
Conviviality – breaking our dependence on material things and technology.
Destruction of accumulation – putting our needs before our wants.

In the article ‘Digital Education Tomorrow’ (part of the open educational resource Digital Education and Degrowth), these pillars are discussed in relation to sustainable digital education. The article (and the wider resource) is an interesting read, if you have time, and raises issues that would be worth exploring with students.

3.3 The positive impact of technology

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As outlined previously, technology, in its many forms, can have a very negative impact on the climate. However, it can also have a positive impact and value in addressing the climate crisis and its many challenges.

For example, some tools based on AI technologies can enable automatic determination of the location of wildfires, enabling rescue services to receive information much faster. Other AI-based tools help extract more information from satellite images. The implementation of forecast analytics for the analysis of these photos helps to evaluate the probability of wildfires, so they can be prevented or held back before they start spreading. A 15-year-old Egyptian student, Nadine Abdelaziz, co-founded Treasury Water, an award-winning app that decreases water use in homes by monitoring and calculating water consumption and educating users on how to use water wisely.

The report ‘Climate change and AI’ gives a detailed account of the ways in which AI is supporting action addressing the climate emergency, while also detailing AI’s detrimental impact on the environment and offering recommendations for government action. Even though some technological innovations can make a difference, they still require adoption and diffusion to bring about mass-scale positive environmental change. This can require long-term changes in both attitudes and behaviour.

Perhaps the key positive contribution of technology to sustainability is its affordance to connect environmentally conscious people and businesses, amplify their voices and provide access to information about climate emergency to the widest audience. Selwyn (2022) argues that in the future, educational technology should be reserved for disadvantaged learners. He also suggests that in the short term, education technology might be a ‘Trojan horse’ or a way to educate people without them realising. In this way, climate education can be introduced to wider society, so that everyone learns to appreciate the urgency of the climate crisis.

3.4 Education, activism and digital technologies

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

As already mentioned, technology can have both positive and detrimental effects in the context of the climate emergency. Teaching in any sector and discipline can usefully address the role of technology as both a contributory cause of environmental collapse and as part of the solution.

3.4.1 Technology and activism

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Teaching students about how technology is being used in the context of climate activism can be informative while also offering examples that students may wish to put in practice themselves. Additionally, it’s important to raise awareness of how technology can be used to oppress and misinform.

Digital technologies have transformed the political practices of social movements, organisations and collectives around the world. Examples where technology has made a difference to activism include protests against state oppression, such as the Arab Spring protests in the early 2010s, recent protests against other forms of oppression, such as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, and the school strikes for climate.

Technology, and particularly social media, allows a rapid coordination of thousands of people, as well as an incorporation of diverse forms of protest linked to art and culture, such as body art, concerts and flash mobs. All these recent protest movements had a strong youth presence. Powered by technology, activists are able to spread their messaging, expose inequalities and climate emergency, and advance social justice movements on a grander scale.

Figure _unit4.4.2 Figure 11 Technology enables protest movements

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This is a photograph of a crowd of young people on a Fridays for Future march. Many placards are visible with a mix of German and English messages.

Figure 11 Technology enables protest movements

3.4.2 Digital repression

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

It is not only the oppressed, but also the oppressors, who have been using digital technologies for political practices in recent years. Feldstein (2021) discusses the rise of ‘digital repression’ by authoritarian governments in some countries: the use of technology to surveil, coerce or manipulate individuals or groups in order to deter specific activities or beliefs that challenge the state. The author identifies five types of digital repression:

surveillance
censorship
social manipulation and disinformation
internet shutdowns
targeted persecution of online users.

Feldstein explains that:

In many cases, these techniques can overlap: disinformation is both a way for governments to manipulate or distort the truth, but also as a tool of censorship (especially when using tactics known as ‘flooding,’ where legitimate critics of government policies are drowned out by a flood of pro-government posts).

(Feldstein, 2021)

3.4.3 Technology, activism and education

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Whether technology is used to help activists or to help oppressors communicate their agendas, the use of technology in political practices has influenced the relationship between activism and education, leading to new possibilities and experiences.

Forero and Álvarez (2019) discuss how technology and social media platforms offer constant contextual and relational learning, when not only the final readership audience, but everyone involved in using digital technologies learns from each other through the sharing of ideas and through the emerging social interactions, both online and offline. The different formats that technology supports – text, audio, video – allow everyone to learn about a topic of interest in a format that best works for them; access to diverse standpoints encourages the construction of informed and critical opinions. Activists who use digital technologies learn how to choose an appropriate digital tool to reach their audience, how to debate and participate in online discussions, and how to develop attitudes that are favourable to the respect of online and offline interaction rules. Forero and Alvares (2019) explain:

As can be seen, processes of activism mediated by digital technologies are themselves educational as they involve diverse types of learning. These types of learning are primarily aimed at people who participate directly in activism but can reach more broadly when social movements intentionally seek this societal education. Through dissemination of different educational content on digital platforms, or through educational spaces (workshops, courses, popular education experiences and even universities), learning is created by social movements and powered by digital technologies. Of course, just as activism mediated by digital technologies is inherently educational, education cannot be conceived of only as part or dimension of the processes of resistance and social activism. As has been widely discussed, education is in itself a form of activism or, at least, a political exercise.

(Forero and Álvarez, 2019)

Since digital technologies can be used to promote any social agenda, fake news and misinformation have become commonplace. False and inaccurate news have become especially prevalent during the Covid-19 pandemic, spreading rapidly on social media, resulting in what some experts call an ‘infodemic’ (UNESCO, 2021).

Fake news did not avoid climate change. Recent research showed that among 1,700 adults surveyed in the UK, almost half the respondents were unable to correctly identify 50% of fake climate change news headlines, and almost half (44%) of all respondents were unaware of how often they encountered misinformation online (Biddlestone and van der Linden, 2021).

The role that education can play in tackling fake news lies in the continuous effort to develop critical thinking skills among learners, as well as the skills concerned with evaluating any given information for truthfulness. It is important to help learners recognise their own role in combating fake news, encouraging them to do fact checking. Another recent study (Lewsey, 2022) suggests an effectiveness of ‘pre-bunking’ – creating educational stories or short videos that pre-emptively refute short extracts of misinformation and familiarise learners with the manipulation techniques used in these stories. Researchers behind this study compare this exercise to a vaccine:

By giving people a ‘micro-dose’ of misinformation in advance, it helps prevent them falling for it in future – an idea based on what social psychologists call ‘inoculation’ theory.

(Lewsey, 2022)

Mike Caulfield’s openly licensed book ‘Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers’ is a valuable resource to support students in identifying misinformation and fake news. As it’s openly licensed, and available in multiple formats, it could be adapted to include examples specific to the climate crisis, or to a particular context. If you do use the book and adapt it, please share the adapted version so others can benefit from it. Another openly licensed resource, ‘Understanding Misinformation: A Lesson Plan Toolkit’ contains numerous adaptable lesson plans and other resources to support teaching on this topic, including a section on climate science.

3.5 Social media

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Social media can be a divisive and risky medium. People disagree about the benefits and dangers inherent to such services and about social media platforms’ providers utilising people’s usage data. Even so, when used carefully social media and social networks continue to be powerful tools for addressing the climate crisis, by:

raising awareness about key issues regarding climate science and the impact of the climate crisis on humans, animals and the planet
mobilising individuals into collective offline and online action (as in the 2019 Extinction Rebellion protests in the UK)
creating climate-conscious digital communities that span contexts
offering a means of sharing climate-related research to a very wide audience
emphasising the connections between global and local impact
helping alleviate climate anxiety by supporting accurate information sharing, relationship-building, and peer support
supporting disaster planning and response, for example by sharing information about current events and connecting people in need with others who may be able to help them
tackling misinformation.

You’ll explore some of these affordances next.

3.5.1 A help or a hindrance?

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Social media can be an effective tool for outreach to a wider audience. However, it also raises questions about the efficacy of using social media to encourage collective action. For example, might social media users engaging with climate crisis-related content demonstrate predominantly online behaviours but remain apathetic and disengaged with the core message and change required in the real world?

In answer to whether social media is a ‘help or hindrance’ to realising collective action offline through raising awareness online, Greijdanus et al. (2020) conducted a research review of the relationship between online activism and social movements. Their findings highlight a positive correlation between social media use and offline activism. Their review also highlights how sharing views asynchronously enables greater awareness of key messages among like-minded people, and can inspire action in others worldwide.

3.5.2 Spreading the message

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In recent years, social media platforms such as TikTok have been promoting the use of their platforms for serious messaging, such as climate change awareness content, via their platform’s newsroom or similar. For example, EcoTok is a group of 21 educators and activists from diverse backgrounds and experiences with the aim of raising awareness of the impact of climate change and teaching about climate science and activism. Using a hashtag with over 260 million views, with already over 115K followers, they allow people to share their diverse experiences with the general public. These calls for action might also reach your learners, where they will need to critically evaluate their nature and consider how they want to engage with them.

One of the main advantages of using social media to spread messages about climate change is its outreach to larger audiences, among which are low-income countries disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis and which might have limited access to authoritative information sources. For example, the Samoan activist Brianna Fruean addressed international leaders at COP26, reminding them that ‘you wield the weapons that can save us, or sell us out’ (Shapiro et al., 2021). Brianna’s message on the climate crisis was heard by people in industrialised nations via the UN Climate Change TikTok channel and received over 1000 likes. However, it was also shared on YouTube and other social media platforms all around the globe, receiving many thousands of likes and views. The benefits of using social media to spread the message go beyond the originating platform it was shared on. Additionally, these platforms are used by official organisations, formal and informal groups or individuals alike, to generate collective action and diverse discussion on the issue of the climate emergency.

Activity _unit4.4.1 Activity 5 Social media

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Listen to the audio clip below, in which Desiree, a third year Bachelor of Science student, talks about the impact of TikTok in raising awareness about the climate emergency among students in Samoa. What difference did the use of social media make in this context?
Use the notes box below to record your own ideas (including any concerns) about using or promoting social media for climate change activism with learners in your own context. (You might find it useful to review the list in Section 3.5 to get some ideas about how teaching in your topic might cover some of the uses of social media mentioned.)

Download this audio clip.Audio player: Audio 1

Audio _unit4.4.1 Audio 1 Desiree discusses TikTok’s role in activism

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Transcript: Audio 1 Desiree discusses TikTok’s role in activism

DESIREE

For Samoa, recently, this TikTok thing came up and the majority of youth in Samoa are more into doing these actions on TikTok and love to be on TikTok. Therefore, the Faculty of Science held a climate change-related topic, having the students, not just from the science faculty but as well from the other faculties, to participate in trying to raise awareness of climate change and the climate emergency. So, I’d say it was very effective because even the students who didn’t even think of talking about climate change were able to. They made an effort to participate in this event.

End transcript: Audio 1 Desiree discusses TikTok’s role in activism

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Audio _unit4.4.1 Audio 1 Desiree discusses TikTok’s role in activism

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4 Summary

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In Session 3 you’ve considered how climate education needs to go beyond providing learners with knowledge about the climate crisis and develop their capacity to act. You’ve drawn on examples from different disciplines to reflect on how climate-related teaching might be incorporated into your own curriculum. You’ve also explored how educators across sectors and subject areas can harness the power of photography when addressing the climate emergency in teaching and learning activities.

You should now be able to:

design learning activities which support learners in understanding the causes and impacts of the climate emergency
critically reflect on your own practice and identify ways to develop it further
critically reflect on the role of technology in relation to the climate emergency.

In the next session you will explore how collaborative learning can contribute to addressing the climate emergency, focusing on citizen science and virtual exchange projects. You will also review what you’ve learnt during the course and create your own climate education action plan.

You can now move on to Session 4.

Introduction

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Session 4 explores the power of collaboration. You’ll discover how citizen science can contribute to addressing the climate emergency through public participation and collaboration in scientific research. You’ll explore theories of collaborative learning and learn about the potential of virtual exchange projects to support climate education. Finally, you will review what you’ve learnt and create your own climate education action plan.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

design collaborative learning activities which support learners in understanding the causes and impacts of the climate emergency
critically reflect on your own practice and identify ways to develop it further
design an intervention that responds to the climate emergency through an aspect of teaching or learning.

1 Citizen science

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Having considered some aspects of teaching across disciplines and some examples of curricular infusion, this section has a narrower focus, but one which can still be valuable across sectors. You’ll explore how citizen science, or community science, can contribute to addressing climate change through public participation and collaboration in scientific research. You’ll also explore how citizen science can be used within the context of online, blended and technology-enhanced teaching and learning addressing the climate emergency.

Learning about citizen science will help you envisage ways in which the climate emergency can be addressed collaboratively, and may be particularly helpful when designing your learning plan at the end of the course.

1.1 What is citizen science?

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Citizen science has been defined in various ways. A common definition positions it as a partnership between citizens and scientists to conduct research using standardised protocols. Citizen science projects exist in multiple fields including biology, conservation, biodiversity, climate research, geography, social sciences and health, with natural science, social science and geography being the most common areas of focus (Haklay et al., 2021).

Figure _unit5.2.1 Figure 1 Citizen science projects exist in many fields, including conservation

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This is a photograph of a man removing rubbish from a lake.

Figure 1 Citizen science projects exist in many fields, including conservation

Typically, citizen science projects involve individuals in large-scale data collection, identification or analysis. Pocock et al. (2014) suggest that citizen science projects necessarily involve both learning and engagement, stating that:

Engagement alone is not citizen science. Perhaps you have an important message to convey but with no need to gather data. There are many examples of engagement working really well to raise awareness of a particular issue by communicating with many people without it being citizen science.

(Pocock et al., 2014)

Figure 2 collates possible levels of public participation in citizen science projects.

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Figure _unit5.2.2 Figure 2 Levels of participation in citizen science (Kythreotis et al., 2019, p. 5).

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A table entitled ‘Levels of participation and engagement (adapted from Sui et al., 2013)’. An arrow passes from Level 1 at the bottom of the table towards Level 5 at the top. This arrow is accompanied by the text: ‘Increasing levels of citizen participation and engagement’. Level 1 is labelled ‘Crowdsourcing’, Level 2 is ‘Distributed Intelligence’, Level 3 is ‘Participatory Science’, Level 4 is ‘Extreme Citizen Science’ and Level 5, which appears in parentheses, is ‘Citizen Social Science’. A series of bullet points sit alongside the levels, but they are not allocated precisely to each one. Six bullet points span the lowest four levels, from the bottom upwards these are: Volunteered computing; Citizens are sensors; Voluntereed thinking; Citizens as basic interpreters; Participation in problem definition and data collection; Collaborative science-problem definition, data collection and analysis. One bullet point is separate from others and is associated with Level 5: Citizens as key agents of research, action AND policy change at ALL levels of engagement and scales of decision-making process.

Figure 2 Levels of participation in citizen science (Kythreotis et al., 2019, p. 5).

1.2 Citizen science and the climate emergency

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Citizen science partnerships offer significant potential to address the climate emergency in communities across multiple scales and settings. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group two report (2022) emphasises the value of citizen science, stating that it ‘can help deepen climate knowledge and sharing’. Haklay et al. comment that:

Although increased citizen engagement with climate research is not a full alternative to top-down political agreements or technological change, it can certainly catalyze the speed and ambition of the technological, social, political and economic changes required to meet collective climate commitments regarding mitigation and adaptation.

(Haklay et al., 2021)

Kythreotis et al. confirm that:

By acting as volunteers, citizens are important for data collection to inform climate research (Bonney et al., 2014; Lahoz and Schneider, 2014) as a means to understand trends, causes, impacts, and responses to, climate change.

(Kythreotis et al., 2019, p. 3)

Citizen science projects provide opportunities for people to learn about climate change and the scientific process, and to get involved more actively by contributing to the development of critical datasets that can inform local or large-scale decision-making. Such projects can involve citizens across different geographical regions, of different ages and with different degrees of decision-making power, collaborating around important climate change issues.

The collaboration of diverse audiences can increase the capacity of a community to respond to climate change issues and prepare for an uncertain future. Involving diverse audiences in exploring the climate emergency can also be beneficial in widening understanding of the impact of environmental collapse, as climate issues are not universal and what might be good for one sector or region may not be as good for another. For example, growing organic cotton can reduce harmful fabric, but it requires large quantities of water.

The development of technologies, and especially handheld devices, constantly increases the potential for citizen science collaborations across borders and empowers citizens to participate virtually in projects addressing both local and global issues. Online citizen science projects can offer endless possibilities, such as engaging people in one or more research phases, from data collection to data analysis and discussion of study findings.

1.2.1 The value of local participation

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Kythreotis et al. (2019, p. 5) propose that citizen science projects with a local focus can be particularly impactful, stating that ‘citizen engagement in policy and behavioural change is more likely to occur if issues are framed around audience values and more local and tangible concerns; and if individuals believe their actions make a difference’.

The following citizen science projects have a focus on local issues and could provide inspiration for developing your own citizen science project, perhaps in collaboration with students, to contribute to action addressing the climate emergency.

WOWnature

The WOWnature project addresses air pollution in Po Valley in Northern Italy. Po Valley has one of the worst air qualities in Europe. The project invites local citizens to measure air pollution with innovative sensors via the WOWnature web-based platform, within and outside urban forests. In this way, the collected data will contribute to assessing the efficacy of forests as a mitigation measure for air pollution. The participants in this project are empowered to co-develop solutions and policy proposals for the local authorities.

Open Soil Atlas

The Open Soil Atlas focuses on soil pollution in Berlin, Germany. The project involves educating citizens via a series of free workshops on how to make observations, test the soil, interpret results and draw conclusions. The participants collect data – such as soil quality and GPS location – using a digital entry form, which generates a high-resolution soil quality map. The evidence is then used as an indicator for policymakers and other ecology initiatives, informing them about which areas can be exploited for agricultural purposes and which need remediation.

rePhotoSA

The rePhotoSA project is looking at how and why landscapes are changing across southern Africa. Participants ‘donate’ historical photographs of the southern African landscape, which are then digitised, added to the online database and compared with new views. These comparisons have spotted large changes in the area’s biodiversity, with invasive plants consuming the grasslands vital to absorbing atmospheric greenhouse gases.

1.2.2 Critiques of citizen science

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Citizen science partnerships have the potential to enable the highest levels of participation (as depicted earlier in Figure 2). The aim is to engage citizens with climate science in order to co-produce evidence that will lead to action and the co-design of climate change policies. It is worth noting that this is not always the case. Many citizen science projects involve the public in collecting and analysing data, rather than determining the project focus and selecting research methods. As such, citizen science has been criticised for perpetuating existing power relations and not democratising science, thereby limiting the opportunity for communities whose voices are typically not heard to influence the direction of scientific investigation.

Kythreotis et al. (2019) suggest that the potential of citizen science to involve citizens in policy-making has not been fully exploited and argue that ‘more work is needed to further integrate citizen action and climate policy-making’. They propose a form of ‘citizen social science’ (CSS) that could see the techniques of citizen science (CS) being applied in a more democratic and policy-focused way. They explain that:

CSS embraces the principles of a ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ approach in an Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems context; where a co-learning journey (where citizens take a lead, often over government/policymakers, in making decisions about how best to formulate policy) is encouraged for more transdisciplinary research and to bring together different ways of knowing. (Bartlett et al., 2012)

Kythreotis et al. (2019, p. 4)

They argue that where citizens are ‘catalysts and drivers of climate policy transformation’ (p.4) it is more likely that overlooked environmental stressors will be addressed, thereby widening the climate science evidence base and increasing understanding.

1.3 Developing a citizen science project

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One of the motivations for teachers to address the climate emergency in their teaching is the demand for it, whether from learners or the public.

Learners may be interested in a very local problem, or something that has not been addressed via an existing community/citizen science project. For this reason, several organisations, communities, schools and individual teachers have developed their own projects, incorporating help and advice from experts, and inviting people to engage and contribute. Several citizen science platforms offer space and guidance about how to do this.

Zooniverse Project Builder

Zooniverse Project Builder provides you with some steps to help you build your own project. These steps include defining your project, building a workflow depending on what you want your participants to do (for example, to classify or mark pictures), and then uploading the data you want your participants to work with.

An important Zooniverse aspect is adding information in dedicated pages linked to your project. This helps participants to understand better the motivations of your project, the best approaches for classifying, and the outcomes of your project. An aspect which could enrich the participants’ learning experience on Zooniverse would be receiving feedback on exemplar activities to help them contribute data of better quality.

nQuire

The Open University-developed nQuire platform supports organisations and communities to engage the public in large-scale interactive surveys and science investigations, called missions. nQuire supports two types of nQuire missions:

confidential missions: all data are anonymised before sending for analysis
social missions: all responses are open for other participants to view and discuss online.

Missions can include a rich mix of elements such as:

sounds or images as prompts
the ability of participants to upload a picture or sound as a response
a variety of response types, such as slider scales.

Figure _unit5.2.3 Figure 3 The MK Tree Growth Project on the nQuire platform involves the public in monitoring the growth of urban trees

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This is a photograph of a notice on a tree explaining the MK Tree Growth Project. It says ‘Measure me! Help track this tree’s growth! This project aims to gather data on how quickly trees across Milton Keynes are growing. You can use the band on this tree to measure how much it’s grown’. Then there is a QR code leading to further instructions.

Figure 3 The MK Tree Growth Project on the nQuire platform involves the public in monitoring the growth of urban trees

Activity _unit5.2.1 Activity 1 Exploring nQuire

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Go to the nQuire site and sign in – signing in is optional.
Browse the nQuire missions.
Click on ‘Investigating your local environment’.
The mission will take you to a page containing information about the project and a number of questions you’ll need to answer. Reflect on the topic and the questions.
Think of a specific climate emergency-related topic where you could start using the nQuire platform.
Make a note of any ideas you have for including a citizen science project in teaching within your own discipline or context or across sectors.

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

2 Collaboration and collective action

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It’s widely acknowledged that tackling a challenge as complex as the climate crisis requires collaborative approaches, with people working together across cultures, geographies, subject specialisms and age groups. In this section of the course you’ll explore how we, as educators and learners, can support each other and achieve effective action through collaboration.

Roschelle and Teasley (1995) define collaboration as:

a coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem.

(Roschelle and Teasley, 1995, p. 70)

This definition is helpful as it emphasises the nature of collaboration as an interactive process, as well as its expected outcome – to have a shared conception of a problem. The definition also emphasises the importance of coordination and synchronisation in supporting effective collaboration.

There is plenty of evidence about how collaboration between learners can reinforce knowledge, improve attainment, and improve attitudes towards learning (for example, see Johnson and Johnson, 2002; Johnson et al., 2014). There is also an agreement among learning sciences scholars that just allowing learners to work together is not sufficient to get positive results (Kester and Paas, 2005; Slavin, 2014; Dillenbourg, 1999) and that learning activities involving collaboration should include an element of guidance, moderation or instruction (Kirschner, Sweller and Clark, 2006).

Next, you’ll consider how theories of collaborative learning can inform effective climate education.

2.1 The Community of Inquiry framework

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The Community of Inquiry framework, shown in Figure 4, considers the elements needed to engage a community of learners (Garrison, Anderson and Archer, 1999). The framework suggests that a worthwhile educational experience depends on the relationship between three types of presence:

Social presence – the ability of participants to identify with the community, communicate purposefully in a trusting environment, and project their individual personalities so they develop interpersonal relationships.
Cognitive presence – the extent to which learners are able to construct meaning through sustained communication.
Teaching presence – the design and facilitation to support and enhance social and cognitive presence, for the purpose of realising educational outcomes. Learners, as well as educators, can contribute to teaching presence.

Figure _unit5.3.1 Figure 4 The Community of Inquiry framework, adapted from Garrison, Anderson and Archer (1999, p. 88)

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A diagram featuring three circles all intersecting with one another. The three circles are labelled ‘Social presence’, ‘Cognitive presence’ and ‘Teaching presence’. Where social and cognitive overlap is ‘Supporting discourse’. Where cognitive and teaching overlap is ‘Selecting content’. Where teaching and social overlap is ‘Setting climate’. The sector where all three overlap is ‘Educational experience’.

Figure 4 The Community of Inquiry framework, adapted from Garrison, Anderson and Archer (1999, p. 88)

We need to bring together our bravest, most imaginative ideas, and to collaborate across ages, locations, discipline areas and skill-sets to address the climate crisis. Therefore, it’s important for learners to develop and practise collaboration-related skills, as the basis for effective climate-related action.

For example, Applebaum et al. (2017) designed a collaboration intervention for secondary school-aged learners to be able to integrate and expand their ideas about the causes of global warming. The researchers used computer simulations to help the learners understand complex mechanisms, such as the effects of greenhouse gases. They then designed an additional structured discussion activity between the learners, so they could use the interaction with their peers to gain new insights.

Figure _unit5.3.2 Figure 5 Interacting with peers brings new insights

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This is a photograph of two women looking at a laptop.

Figure 5 Interacting with peers brings new insights

2.2 Theories of collaborative learning

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When designing collaboration-based interventions to support the learning process for complex topics such as the climate crisis we can usefully draw on several theories which give insight into how learning together works. Some of these theories may be familiar to you. Others may be less familiar.

Constructivist theories position the learning process as an interactive one. That is, learning will take place first between learners, rather than within learners’ individual minds. According to Vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural constructivist theory, an effective learning process is based on social interactions with others, while Piaget’s (1985) socio-cognitive theory positions contradictions and other social interactions among learners as an instrument for developing their individual understanding.

Figure _unit5.3.3 Figure 6 The learning process is interactive. Smallholding farmers in Karajgaon, Latur District, Maharashtra, India attend a Women Entrepreneurs Training session on tackling heat stress in dairy farming to improve milk yield and milk quality

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This is a photograph of two women sat together. One is showing the other something on a phone.

Figure 6 The learning process is interactive. Smallholding farmers in Karajgaon, Latur District, Maharashtra, India attend a Women ...

Communal Constructivism takes collaboration one step further. It sees interactions between learners as supporting not just the learning of individual learners, but also a collective purpose of constructing knowledge for those learners’ community (Fountain, 2007).

Other theories see learning taking place in – and for the purpose of – a shared or collective cognition. Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1996), for example, considers cognition as distributed across individual learners, artefacts – some of which may be digital – and the environment. Connectivism (Siemens, 2005; Downes, 2007) places learning within a dynamic network of interactions, again – between individual learners, artefacts (some of which may be digital), and the environment. These theories explain why, when solving complex problems, there are advantages to coordinated and diverse groups of people working together (Janssen et al., 2010). As Kent and Cukurova (2020) explain:

… similar to the use of distributed computing or cloud computing, the effect of collaboration on the individual’s learning is mainly achieved by affording more resources at the individual’s disposal. In this sense, collaborative learning can be considered as a network of interactions between learners and artefacts that scaffold and set the context for individual learners by allowing them to be exposed to other people’s relation making and to other people’s LTM [long-term memories]…. This scaling – from interactions between newly introduced and already established knowledge at the individual level to the set of interactions between learners and concepts at the collective level – is instrumental to our conceptualisation of group ‘cognition.’

(Kent and Cukurova, 2020, p. 61)

The British organisation Collaborate summarise their insights from their work experience and interactions with social activists, third sector leaders, politicians and senior public servants in their ‘Manifesto for a Collaborative Society’. In their Manifesto, they say:

We are living in a time of transition. The complex and global nature of the challenges that face us as individuals, communities, nations and as a planet is becoming rapidly clearer. Long-standing assumptions that things will only get better no longer hold. The mindset we need today is collaborative. It is based on the story of ‘us’. Its premise is that we are part of a bigger whole, and it asks us to acknowledge the interconnectedness of people and planet, that we are part of a living system.

(Collaborate, 2021)

The Manifesto makes repeated reference to climate change and could be a useful document to explore with your own learners, maybe as a way of identifying opportunities and challenges connected with local collaboration addressing the climate emergency.

2.3 Virtual exchange

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One educational practice that has many applications for supporting collaboration within teaching addressing the climate crisis is virtual exchange. Virtual exchange involves bringing together groups of learners from different cultural and/or geographical contexts for extended periods of online collaboration under the guidance of an educator within a programme of study (O’Dowd, 2020). A different term: telecollaboration is often used interchangeably with virtual exchange to emphasise that this pedagogy uses online rather than text-based activities.

2.3.1 Virtual exchange in practice

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Virtual exchanges are increasingly more commonplace as access to information and communication technology – internet, digital devices – has become more prevalent in classrooms around the globe. Virtual exchange projects also enabled continuity of learner collaboration when student mobility was substantially undermined during the Covid-19 pandemic. Virtual exchange can be used within any programme of study, including within teacher education to help prepare teachers for the classrooms of the future.

Figure _unit5.3.4 Figure 7 Virtual exchange involves online activity within a programme of study

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This is a photograph of a woman working on a laptop. The screen shows a video call in progress with three participants.

Figure 7 Virtual exchange involves online activity within a programme of study

Virtual exchange in education has been around much longer than is commonly assumed. Kern (2013) finds the origins of this pedagogy in school pen-pal exchanges in the early 1920s. In the early 1990s, with the emergence of the internet as a potential tool for learning, exploration into virtual exchange as a means of promoting collaboration projects between learners really burgeoned.

The early virtual exchanges mainly focused on language learning and utilised an e-tandem pedagogical model (O’Dowd and Dooly, 2020). In e-tandem, native speakers of different languages communicated together with the aim of learning the other’s language.

Subsequently, virtual exchange practices began to move towards more comprehensively integrated online projects within programmes of study. They aimed to promote not only language competences in learners, but many other skills from digital literacy to climate citizenship. These projects also included more collaborative work, such as: constructing websites together, student-to-student ethnographic interviews in synchronous online sessions, deliberate reflection on intercultural perspectives in shared forums based on news articles, and a more recent 3D pilot programme at Harvard University that involved complete immersion and interaction with other cultures (Mills, 2018).

The complexity of the virtual exchange has increased over time, not only in the duration and configuration and implementation of the activities required (O’Dowd and Dooly, 2020), but also in the integration of numerous multimodal communication media. Virtual exchange learners are often required to pay attention to written, aural, and visual input at the same time, as well as to pay attention to other tasks associated with collaborative learning, such as adjusting their behaviour to overcome the lack of understanding with their project partners, when needed, and find an effective way to divide the work in the tasks.

2.3.2 Implementing virtual exchanges

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Virtual exchange can be organised and implemented in a wide variety of ways. The Training Manual on Telecollaboration for Teacher Trainers (EVALUATE Group, 2023) based on the outcomes of a large-scale telecollaboration research project EVALUATE gives six key recommendations about what can make a virtual exchange project successful:

A minimum duration of 6-8 weeks which allows for sufficient time to establish working relationships between the students.
Genuine collaboration between the online partners and not merely the exchange of information.
The exchange’s topics and tasks are related to the students’ course syllabus and are relevant to students’ learning needs.
Collaborative tasks gradually increase in intensity and degree of collaboration as the exchange progresses.
The exchanges are firmly integrated into the students’ classes and the teacher plays an important role in helping students prepare for their online interaction and reflect on their experiences and the outcome.
Students receive credit or recognition for their participation in the telecollaborative exchange.

One of the first things to consider when planning a virtual exchange is the task sequence the students will carry out. A task sequence is a collection of tasks that are combined and follow on from each other during a virtual exchange project.

There are many different types of tasks which have been developed for virtual exchange over the years. For example, you can find over 100 tasks for university telecollaboration on the UNICollaboration platform. The Training Manual on Telecollaboration for Teacher Trainers discussed above suggests using the Progressive Exchange Model when planning the task sequence. The model involves three interrelated task types, which students move through in sequence:

Information Exchange tasks – where learners provide their virtual exchange partners with information, for example, about their personal biographies, local schools or towns, or aspects of their local cultural practices. It is important to realise that these cultural practices are not necessarily determined by geographical boundaries but that they represent all kinds of cultural relations and ways of living, such as being a supporter of a local football team or playing an active part in the local climate group. These tasks function as an introductory activity for the two groups of learners, who are not yet familiar with each other.
Comparison and analysis tasks – requiring learners to carry out comparisons or critical analyses of cultural and/or local products or events from both contexts such as books, surveys, films, newspaper articles, or local actions for climate. These tasks generally require learners to provide their partners with explanations of the cultural and/or local significance of certain practices and then to engage in dialogue to establish similarities or differences between the two contexts.
Collaborative product tasks – requiring learners to work together to produce something. This could involve, for example, the co-authoring of a website or online document, or the co-production of a cultural adaptation of a text.

By following this process, students develop transversal skills that can be used in a wide variety of situations in life and in work, for example digital literacy, intercultural competence and problem solving.

Next, you’ll look at an example of virtual exchange in practice.

2.4 Case study: virtual exchange

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Porto (2016) conducted a study of a virtual exchange among 70 participants: 50 fifth and sixth-form children aged 10–11 in Argentina and 20 seventh-form students aged 12–13 in Denmark. As part of the exchange, students had to carry out a series of virtual exchange tasks for six months. The project aimed to support children’s understanding of environmental issues and ability to recognise similar issues in their own surroundings, by encouraging the children to explore and reflect on environmental issues both locally – in their own communities – and globally. The exchange was carried out in English, which both groups of children were learning as a foreign language.

Design and task sequence

A wiki page was set up for the project, which the participating children used to document the different activities and also to communicate with each other asynchronously. The project involved a wide range of tasks:

Carrying out a litter analysis in participating children’s schools and then comparing and discussing results in the wiki.
Carrying out a survey among family members and friends regarding their environmental habits, uploading results to the wiki and discussing them.
Analysing critically (audio)visual media images and texts, produced in Argentina and in Denmark, to gain awareness of the power the media has in each country in creating stereotypical images of environmental issues that may influence attitudes and behaviours.
Collaboratively designing posters to raise awareness of environmental issues via Skype and the chat option in the wiki.
Taking action locally by carrying out some civic actions in their communities. The Argentinian children created videos and songs and shared them on a Facebook page of the project they designed themselves. In Denmark, children put up collaborative posters in their school and their community centre; they also contacted Greenpeace and the local newspaper and shared information about the project.

Learning outcomes

The study reported developing children’s digital reading and writing literacies, as well as the skills involved in intercultural citizenship, namely observing, discovering, describing, analysing, relating, comparing, contrasting, perspective-taking, criticality and reflexivity. In so doing, children discovered commonalities among themselves, reflected on how their interest in the environment brought them together, and in this way created a sense of bonding that transcended geographical boundaries.

The Climate Action Project

A further example of virtual exchange is provided by the Climate Action Project, which brings together teachers and students aged 3-21 years across hundreds of countries to collaborate on environmental topics over a six-week period. The Climate Action Project website offers helpful guidance on running a virtual exchange-based climate action project, including a handbook, lesson plans and an app. The website also shares the outputs of projects that have already taken place.

Activity _unit5.3.1 Activity 2 Virtual exchange in your context

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Reflecting on the examples above, can you imagine using virtual exchange to teach about the climate emergency? Make some notes in the box below about how virtual exchange might work with learners in your own context. Think about the benefits and challenges, as well as the technologies you might use.

If you already have some experience of facilitating virtual exchange, think about how you could develop it further in your context or share your experience with other educators.

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3 Your plans and ongoing support

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In this final part of the course, you’ll review your learning and plan how you’ll use what you’ve learned in your own teaching practice. You’ll do this through two activities, the second of which has a series of parts. On completion, you’ll have written an action plan that you might use to:

gain permission to carry out your plan in your educational setting
explain your ideas to others, including colleagues and parents
use as the basis for an application for funding to support your climate education project.

3.1 Planning for your practice

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Before you begin work on your action plan, it’s important to pause and reflect on what you have learned in your study of this course, how it relates to what you already know and what implications your learning might have for your own practice.

Activity _unit5.4.1 Activity 3 Critically reflecting on your learning

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Read back through your responses to earlier course activities, and any additional notes that you’ve made while studying the course.
Write a critically reflective commentary, covering:
- your reaction to some of the course topics
- the impact of the course on your thinking around the role of education in the climate crisis
- the impact of the course on your own professional practice or personal approach to the climate crisis
- any aspect of climate education you would like to learn more about
- any ideas to address the climate emergency through teaching or learning in your own practice.

You’ll develop one of these ideas in the next activity. Note that critical reflection does not involve ‘criticism’, but rather ‘critique’, meaning analysis. The points you make should draw upon the course materials. For example, you might wish to describe how you’ll try to embed the principles of climate justice into an element of your role as an educator – here you would describe the changes to your practice that you plan to make and point to specific elements of climate justice topic that have inspired you to make these changes.

3.2 Your climate education action plan

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Now that you have completed your reflection, move on to the next activity in which you’ll create your climate education action plan. Creating this action plan will help consolidate what you’ve learned on the course. You could use your action plan as the basis for implementing climate crisis-related teaching in your own setting. In addition, you may wish to share your action plan with other educators, both for feedback and as a way of collaborating to pool resources and discuss ideas.

Activity _unit5.4.2 Activity 4 Your climate education action plan

Timing: Allow about 90 minutes

In this activity, you’ll design an intervention that responds to the climate emergency through an aspect of teaching or learning. Examples of interventions could include:

a lesson or workshop plan
a digital storytelling project
a citizen science initiative
the creation or development of an educators’ community of practice
a climate café initiative
the creation or transformation of a curriculum
the creation or transformation of an educational policy at an organisational level.

Although you might decide to try more than one of your ideas, you’re encouraged to focus on just one for now to make your plan manageable and achievable. There are three parts to the action plan: describing your context, describing your intervention; and explaining the rationale for your project.

Part 1: Context

Provide a summary of the educational context for which you’re developing your intervention, to include information about:

the subject area
the wider learning programme, course, community initiative, organisational initiative, policy framework that the intervention sits within
target learners/participants sector, level, qualifications, if relevant key topics.

You might also consider and summarise:

any interactions you will need to make for the intervention to be successfully delivered
whether you will need the support of any gatekeepers to get access to your audience
whether you will need to undertake any promotional activity
whether you will need to lobby or negotiate with individuals holding the power to take the actions you want to happen
opportunities for flexible and accessible delivery to ensure your intervention allows for equitable, accessible, safe participation by diverse groups, given the target learners/participants and context.

Part 2: Intervention

Produce a detailed description of how your intervention would be implemented. Your description should include:

An intervention title.
The key goal(s) or (where appropriate) up to three learning outcomes that the intervention will achieve.
Information about any teaching and/or learning activities involved, with timings, including noting whether the focus will be on individual or group learning (or both). You should include at least one activity that gives the opportunity for assessment or for reflection.
Details of any technology involved, including giving learners a choice of technology where appropriate.
Any supporting resources to be used. For a lesson or workshop, these may include academic or teaching resources, worksheets, quizzes, etc. For policy developments, resources may include existing policies and legislation, either in the direct policy area or from other areas that may be used as inspiration. You should also consider any human resources required, including your own time, and any funding needed.

Write your intervention description so it could be shared with people in other locations or contexts, and they would have the information they need to deliver something similar.

Part 3: Rationale

Provide a rationale making the case for the intervention itself and explaining the reasons for the decisions you made when designing your intervention. This should include an explanation of how your intervention sits within the local, national or global climate crisis movement and how your design decisions have been influenced by the relationship between the local, national and global contexts.

Explain the decisions you’ve made in respect of as many of these as are appropriate to your context:

the underpinning pedagogic theories, frameworks and/or models that support your intervention
how you will engage participants in activities and their role in delivering your goals for the intervention
any technology involved in the intervention
supporting resources you plan to use in the intervention, or that you plan to draw upon if working in a policy context
the aspects of accessibility, equity and flexibility that you considered
any ideas covered within this course or elsewhere, and why they are relevant.

Sharing your action plan

Once you have completed your climate education action plan, you might like to share it with someone you trust for some informal feedback. This might be a friend or a colleague or someone you know through one of the sustainability networks or communities of practice that you’ll find out about in the next activity. We hope you’ll use the same networks and communities to share your feedback about how your ideas have worked in practice. You might also want to share your action plan with others.

3.3 Ongoing support

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

We hope that what you’ve learned through your study of this course will support you in your teaching.

As you make plans to teach others about the climate emergency and about how they can act and make a difference, you’ll be thinking about the ongoing support that your learners might need to do this. As you’ve discovered, for people to take action, they need opportunities to talk about their climate concerns within their own communities, explore the emotions they feel and realise they’re not alone. One of the best ways to make a difference is to involve others and to collaborate.

Your own wellbeing and support

As we’ve emphasised throughout your study of this course, it’s also important to think about your own wellbeing on an ongoing basis. Who will support you as you continue to build on your own learning and put it into practice after you’ve completed the course?

Perhaps you have friends and colleagues in your own context you can share your learning and ideas with? If you found this course valuable, please tell others who may find it useful, spreading the word to friends and colleagues or on social media.

For continued support, why not join one or more communities of practice where members can share ideas and perspectives, ask questions and discuss solutions for addressing the climate emergency? These are initiatives based in the UK, although many of them will be of interest to educators around the world. However, if you are not working in the UK you may wish to also investigate whether similar initiatives exist in your own country.

The Open University Sustainability Network

The Open University Sustainability Network on LinkedIn provides a space to continue to connect to each other in a supportive, professional network and to share sustainability news, tools and tips. Membership is open to everyone in the OU family with an interest in sustainability, including learners from other formal and informal curricula, OU course teams and contributors, and wider OU staff and alumni.

Sustainability in Higher Education Developers (SHED)

If you’re working in further or higher education in the UK, you might be interested in joining SHED, a community of practice within the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education. This group is for educators who specialise in education for sustainability or incorporate sustainability issues in their work.

UK Schools Sustainability Network (UKSSN)

Multiple regions of the UK have seen networks set up for school students to share information and take action on sustainability. The UKSSN brings together all of those networks under one national umbrella. You can read more about them at the Transform Our World website.

Activity _unit5.4.3 Activity 5 Connecting with others for ongoing support

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Think about the support that you’ll need to take action after you’ve completed this course. Make some notes about the sources of support that might be available to you and if you’d like to do so, join one or more of the communities listed above.

4 End-of-course quiz

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

Now it’s time to complete the second compulsory badged quiz. There are 10 questions.

End-of-course quiz

Remember, this quiz counts towards your badge. If you’re not successful the first time, you can attempt the quiz again in 24 hours.

Open the quiz in a new tab or window then come back here when you’ve finished.

4 Summary

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

In Session 4 you’ve considered the power of collaboration for learning about the climate emergency. You’ve examined how citizen science enables public participation and collaboration in scientific research and you’ve thought about how you might use the nQuire platform in your own context. You’ve explored some of the theories of collaborative learning and thought about how virtual exchange projects can be used to bring together groups of learners from different cultural and/or geographical contexts for online collaboration. Finally, you have created your own climate education action plan and considered the support you can access to help you put your plan into action.

You should now be able to:

design collaborative learning activities which support learners in understanding the causes and impacts of the climate emergency
critically reflect on your own practice and identify ways to develop it further
design an intervention that responds to the climate emergency through an aspect of teaching or learning.

We very much hope you’ve enjoyed the course and that it inspires you to experiment with new ways of addressing the climate crisis in your teaching. Please do promote this course to others, via social media or through any networks you’re a part of. If you’d like to use social media to share any ideas for climate education activities, or to discuss the content, please include the course hashtag #OU_Introducing_Climate_Education.

References

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

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Acknowledgements

The Open University — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:08:26 GMT

This free course has been designed by a team of educators who have expertise in online education: Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman, Dr Kathy Chandler, Dr Simon Ball, Dr Irina Rets, Dr Carmel Kent, Dr Maria Aristeidou, Dr Koula Charitonos.

Figure _unit5.8.1 Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman, @laperryman, (she/her)

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Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman, @laperryman, (she/her)

Leigh-Anne is Associate Director, Curriculum, at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET), leading the development of IET’s postgraduate curriculum, including the Masters in Online Teaching. Leigh-Anne has many years’ experience as an educator and has written for several Open University courses. Her research expertise includes equitable online learning, the impact of open educational practices and open pedagogy on learning and educational equity, and gender equity in the global South. Leigh-Anne is particularly interested in the ways in which open educational practices can amplify education’s role in addressing the climate emergency.

Figure _unit5.8.2 Dr Kathy Chandler, @KathyMChandler, (she/her)

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Dr Kathy Chandler, @KathyMChandler, (she/her)

Kathy is a Lecturer in Online Teaching at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET). She has extensive experience of tutoring students studying health and social care and supporting colleagues to develop their skills in online teaching. Her research interests include online communities and digital pedagogy. She tries to live simply and sustainably but thinks that individual action is not enough, and that education has a key role to play in working for climate justice, giving everyone the skills to take collective action to transform our politics and the global economy.

Figure _unit5.8.3 Dr Simon Ball, @simonjball, (he/him)

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Dr Simon Ball, @simonjball, (he/him)

Simon has a PhD in Freshwater Ecology and many years’ experience researching, writing about and teaching inclusive and accessible online teaching and learning. He has written content for, and taught, several Open University courses on this topic. He believes that actions towards environment- and climate-friendly living need to be embedded into all aspects of life, across all global contexts, to empower everyone to live sustainably regardless of their income.

Figure _unit5.8.4 Dr Irina Rets, @IrinaRets, (she/her)

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Dr Irina Rets, @IrinaRets, (she/her)

Irina is a Lecturer in Online Teaching at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET). Irina has extensive experience of designing, teaching and carrying out the assessment on undergraduate and graduate courses in applied linguistics and technology-enhanced learning in three different countries. With expertise in inclusive Artificial Intelligence (AI) and linguistics, Irina’s current research focuses on social justice and technology. Irina strongly believes that teaching and research on or with the use of educational technology needs to critically reflect on environmental and sustainability issues.

Figure _unit5.8.5 Dr Carmel Kent, @carmel_kent, (she/her)

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Dr Carmel Kent, @carmel_kent, (she/her)

Carmel is a Lecturer at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET). Carmel’s research focus is on Online Learning Communities, Interactivity in Learning and on using computational methods for Learning Analytics. Carmel is also focused on the use of AI models as Learning Affordances and on Ethical AI for educational applications.

Figure _unit5.8.6 Dr Maria Aristeidou, @aristeidoum, (she/her)

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Dr Maria Aristeidou, @aristeidoum, (she/her)

Maria is a Senior Lecturer in Technology Enhanced Learning at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET). Maria’s research focuses on the design and evaluation of engaging learning technologies, and the improvement of the learning experience and outcomes of diverse student bodies. Her expertise also includes the design and evaluation of citizen science communities and tools that support people’s participation in biodiversity and sustainability research.

Figure _unit5.8.7 Dr Koula Charitonos, @ch_koula, (she/her)

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Dr Koula Charitonos, @ch_koula, (she/her)

Koula is a Senior Lecturer in Learning + Technology at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET). Koula is concerned with understanding aspects of human learning supported by technology in ways that contribute to projects of educational justice. To this end, Koula’s work focuses on the study of knowledge work in professional settings and on pedagogical practices across formal and informal settings, while maintaining a strong interest in education in crisis contexts. Koula’s work foregrounds that educational spaces and practices can be transformative and have capacity to help create more just futures.

Contributors

Many people kindly agreed to participate in the audio and video recordings especially produced for the course Teacher development: Addressing the climate emergency. We warmly thank them for their generosity in giving their time. Those whose contributions appear within this free course, Supporting climate action through digital education, include the following:

Simon Behrman, Associate Professor at Warwick University

Sally Hayns, Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM)

Desiree Lesatele, Student, National University of Samoa

Doreen Osborne, Climate Café Founder, Glasgow

Mary Troup, Climate Café Founder, Glasgow

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Introduction and guidance

Images

Course image: Abir Abdullah/Climate Visuals (climatevisuals.org) https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc-nd/ 4.0

Figure 1: Some climate-related education takes place in primary schools 10:10/Climate Visuals https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by/ 2.0

Figure 2: This course takes a position of ‘constructive hope’ courtesy: Kathy Chandler

Session 1

Images

Figure 1: Nature and biodiversity is identified as a key area of work for ‘green skills’ courtesy: Kathy Chandler

Figure 2: In Tinginaput, India, Bundei Hidreka shares her engineering skills with Rohim Miniaka, teaching him how to make a solar lamp credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith / UK Department for International Development CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic | Creative Commons

Figure 3: Taking time to notice nature can support your wellbeing courtesy: Kathy Chandler

Figure 4: Doreen Osborne, climate café founder courtesy: Doreen Osborne

Figure 5: Mary Troup, climate café founder courtesy: Mary Troup

Figure 6: Individual actions add together to make a difference. Cyclists taking out a group of school children to encourage cycling in Bogotá Ashden / Ashden https://climatevisuals.org/ asset/ 1428/

Figure 7: The impact of air travel is a particular concern Suhyeon Choi/unsplash

Audio/Video

Video 2: How to talk with children about climate change: BBC Ideas/The Open University How to talk with children about climate change - BBC Ideas A BBC/Open University Partnership

Session 2

Images

Figure 1: Plant-for-the-Planet Official on Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic | Creative Commons

Figure 2: mad mags on Flickr https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc/ 2.0

Figure 3: Scottish Government/Climate Visuals The Scottish Government - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) CC BY 2.0 Deed | Attribution 2.0 Generic | Creative Commons

Figure 4: Dan Dennis/unsplash

Figure 5: Greta Thunberg urges MEPs to show climate leadership European Parliament © European Union 2020 European Parliament (europa.eu) CC BY 2.0 Deed | Attribution 2.0 Generic | Creative Commons

Figure 6: 14995841/Pixabay

Figure 7: Insure our Future on Flickr PDM 1.0 Deed | Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal | Creative Commons

Figure 8: World Economic Forum 2022 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic | Creative Commons

Figure 9: Department of Education Sign with graffiti Teachers, scientists, parents and children protest at Department for Education to demand climate and ecological truth be taught in schools - Extinction Rebellion UK Extinction Rebellion https://extinctionrebellion.uk/

Audio/Video

Video 1: Adapted from panel: Building power through youth organizing https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Wvy5vyJuEsg CC BY 3.0 Legal Code | Attribution 3.0 Unported | Creative Commons 350.org

Session 3

Images

Figure 1: Annie Spratt/unsplash

Figure 2/3/4: UNESCO (2017) adapted from Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247444

Figure 5: adapted from Figure 8.1 ‘Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health’ in Ebi, Hess and Watkiss (2017) Health Risks and Costs of Climate Variability and Change. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK525226/

Figure 6: courtesy: Artists Literacies Institute, artistsliteracies.org Turn It Around, https://turnitaroundcards.org/

Figure 7: still image from 'Small Solutions for Big Problems', an animation by University of Cambridge (hosted on their public engagement YT channel) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZiXsjoi5Es Creative Encounters/University of Cambridge

Figure 8: Sujan Sarkar/Climate Visuals https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en

Figure 9: Ryan Brown/UN Women https://climatevisuals.org/asset/1150

Figure 10: Hoil Ryu/unsplash

Figure 11: Mika Baumeister/unsplash

Session 4

Images

Figure 1: Thirdman/pexels

Figure 2: Levels of participation in citizen science (Kythreotis et al., 2019, p. 5) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2019.00010/full#B97 TABLE 1. Levels of participation and engagement (adapted from Sui et al., 2013).

Figure 3: Kate Hand / MK Tree Growth Project https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1852cb7f7c5843be860a2bec0f2fa0ee

Figure 4: adapted from D.R. Garrison, T. Anderson and W. Archer (1999) ‘Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education’, The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2).

Figure 5: Van Tay Media/unsplash

Figure 6: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Ashden https://climatevisuals.org/asset/1550

Figure 7: Anna Shvets/pexels

Images of course authors:

Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman

Dr Kathy Chandler

Dr Simon Ball

Dr Irina Rets

Dr Carmel Kent

Dr Koula Charitonos

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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