Educating for empowerment and hope

Climate change education is an emerging field of both practice and research. A 2019 study on the impact of climate change education, led by the University of Florida researcher Martha

Monroe, found that it is most effective when it focuses on personally relevant and meaningful information, and uses active and engaging teaching methods.48 Other teaching strategies identified by the review include: • Engaging in deliberative discussions • Interacting with scientists • Addressing misconceptions • Implementing school or community projects.49

Another 2019 review of climate education literature, by David Rousell at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Australian researcher Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, found that knowledge-based approaches to studying climate science were insufficient, and advocated engaging learners in the emotional dimensions of climate change as a better way of empowering them to become agents of change.50 An emerging theme in climate education research is the importance of hope for counteracting climate anxiety and fatalism, with a distinction made between ‘constructive hope’ and ‘passive optimism’ – the latter of which can have negative consequences, with optimistic people being less likely to take action in order to address environmental issues.51

Schools have a critical role to play in addressing climate change – from the carbon footprint of their operations to the classroom teaching that prepares young people for the future.

Schools have a critical role to play in addressing climate change – from the carbon footprint of their operations to the classroom teaching that prepares young people for the future. Keri Facer, a Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the

University of Bristol, has articulated a new responsibility for the education system to embrace, as the climate crisis unfolds – especially in terms of adaptation that relates to both physical climate resilience and a cultural shift in how we think about environmental issues. She writes:

The unanswered question is whether schools will be liberated as a powerful social resource to facilitate a civilisation shift or whether industrial models of education, too closely allied to the institutions and beliefs of neoliberal modernity, will respond with business as usual.52