Thammasat University students interested in education, sustainable development, business, economics, future studies, urban planning, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 16 July Zoom webinar on Young people’s perspectives on climate change and sustainability education.
The event, on Tuesday, 16 July 2024 at 4pm Bangkok time, is presented by the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education (IOE) Faculty of Education and Society, the United Kingdom.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of climate change and sustainability.
Students are invited to register at this link:
The event announcement notes:
Join this event to hear a discussion on young people’s participation in mitigating climate change and how research can inform Sustainability Education.
In this event, speakers will share research related to young people’s perspectives on climate change and sustainability education across various contexts.
Based on the research-informed evidence, there will be discussions about young people’s participation in mitigating climate change and how researchers, teachers, early years practitioners, parents, etc. can contribute to Sustainability Education for young people to strengthen our collective efforts towards a more sustainable future.
Schedule
- Keynote: Children’s (4-8 years old) perspectives on climate changes through parent-child dialogues: a participatory study with parents as co-researchers in England and China – Dr. Jie Gao, Dr. Yan Zhu, Bin Guo (the UCL-ZJU-Nottingham research team)
- Keynote: What do students (11-14 years old) think about Climate Change and Sustainability Education? – Professor Nicola Walshe (UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education)
- Keynote: Environmental justice in international contexts (provisional title) – Dr. Rachel Wilder (University of Bath)
- Keynote: Gamebooks for Environmental Education: a Design-based Research Case Study – Dr. Jonathan Halls (University of Nottingham)
- Panel Discussion – How can research-informed evidence promote sustainability education in school and family contexts? – Chair: Dr. Junqing Zhai (The UCL-ZJU-Nottingham research team); Panelists: Professor Justin Dillon and Dr Nasreen Majid (UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education), Michael Holland (Nature Educator and Author), Dr. Yuwei Xu, Dr. Wendy Sims-Schouten, Dr Francesca Salvi, Dr Frans Kruger (UCL-ZJU-Nottingham research team)
For further information or with any questions, please write to
Jie.gao@ucl.ac.uk
Last year, Dr. Walshe coauthored an article for the periodical Sustainability: Reflecting on Climate Change Education Priorities in Secondary Schools in England: Moving beyond Learning about Climate Change to the Emotions of Living with Climate Change
The article’s abstract follows:
Schools in England remain a valued and important site of climate change education for secondary school pupils (aged 11–18 years). Drawing on focus group data (n = 85) from young people based in eight schools in England, we explored the language pupils used about climate change. We found that young people’s responses to climate change were predominantly focused on content knowledge about climate change, including the concept of global warming and a range of negative impacts, such as biodiversity and habitat loss and extreme and unpredictable weather. In addition, the young people expressed emotions in relation to climate change that were primarily negative and were focused on fear of the future and fear of frustrated youth action. We highlight that school-based climate change education requires support and resources from policy-makers so that young people do not solely learn about climate change, but rather, they are able to live with the emotions of a future shaped by the impacts of climate change. We highlight the need for teacher professional development which enables them to respond to the emotions young people experience in the context of climate change education.
From the Introduction:
In recent years, young people across the globe have continued to advocate for greater access to education that effectively prepares them to live with the complexities and uncertainties of human-induced climate change, including climate and ecological emergencies. Now and in the future, young people will continue to experience negative emotions such as fear, sadness and anxiety related to the impacts of climate change. In England, schools remain valued as a key space for climate change education for young people by teachers, teacher educators and parents. At the same time, education remains diminished and on the margins of overarching climate change policy-making despite recent statements made by international education and environment ministers that recognised the importance of education in ensuring a ‘climate positive future’ and commitments by the Department of Education in England to ‘put climate change at the heart of education’.
Given these tensions between theideas and expectations of climate change education in policy and practice in schools in England, this research sought to explore the language that young people use when they think about climate change. Specifically, we wished to identify the words and concepts young people use in relation to climate change, as well as what this use of language could tell us about how young people understand and experience climate change.
Finally, we wanted to identify how this understanding can continue to inform school-based climate change education in England and beyond. Ahead of setting out our research design, we first consider the broader context of climate change education in secondary schools (for students aged 11–18 years) in England.
Conclusions:
Through this case study of young people’s initial responses to climate change, we have identified a focus on climate change content knowledge such as global warming and associated negative impacts which include biodiversity and habitat loss, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme and unpredictable weather events. The young people expressed emotions in relation to climate change, which were predominantly negative emotions such as fear of the future and fear of frustrated youth action. Some positive emotions were expressed by the young people, including hope for the future and care for the planet through action. Consistent with a long-standing body of environmental education research, we underline the need for climate change education to move beyond learning about the science of climate change and instead include pedagogies that encompass the emotions of living with climate change, such as enabling constructive hope for the future through action.
We argue that a key action area for policy-makers is to continue to provide the imperative and financial resources for schools to implement teacher professional development that enables all young people to access effective and transformative climate change education.
Such professional development should empower teachers to draw on their age-phase and subject expertise whilst also supporting them to engage with climate change as a challenge that has political, economic, social and ethical complexities, as well as scientific realities.
In England, the recent Department for Education strategy underlined the importance of schools and the work of teachers and school leaders in the context of climate change and sustainability. The ongoing challenge is to provide the support, resources and frameworks meaningfully and consistently for schools to realise this aspect of their work, amongst the many other priorities they have.
The young people in this study underlined both the understanding they had of the impacts of failing to urgently respond to the climate emergency and the fear this has created in them for their futures. What is perhaps remarkable is that they also articulated that an alternative vision is possible, and some continued to have hope that this could be achieved if they, and those who hold positions of authority, act. Therefore, we underline the continued need to urgently ensure that all young people have access to effective and transformative climate change education as a fundamental part of their formal education.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)