How can we confront climate denial? Critical literacy+, eco-civic practices, and inquiry (original) (raw)
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Climate change skeptics teach climate literacy? A critical discourse analysis of children's books
Journal of Science Communication, 2019
This critical discourse analysis examined climate change denial books intended for children and parents as examples of pseudo-educational materials reproduced within the conservative echo chamber in the United States. Guided by previous excavations in climate change denial discourses, we identified different types of skepticism, policy frames, contested scientific knowledge, and uncertainty appeals. Findings identify the ways these children's books introduced a logic of non-problematicity about environmental problems bolstered by contradictory forms of climate change skepticism and polarizing social-conflict frames. These results pose pedagogical dilemmas for educators, environmental advocates, and communication experts interested in advancing understanding and action in the face of rapid climate change.
Making Space for Critical Climate Education
About Campus, 2024
Extreme weather and wildfires around the globe, and increasingly sobering assessments about projected futures by researchers, activists, and global leaders have led to a growing consensus that we are at a turning point when it comes to the social and ecological impacts of climate change. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (2022a) has observed that, when it comes to climate change, humanity has a stark choice to make: “collective action or collective suicide.” He also warned we are facing a “biodiversity apocalypse” (Guterres, 2022b). This sense of alarm is shared by many students. According to a recent survey, 39% of US students said climate change is “the biggest issue facing the world today” (Cambridge International, 2020). Another survey of young people across 10 countries found that 59% of respondents felt “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, and over 45% said it negatively affected their daily lives (Hickman et al., 2021). These findings are echoed in my own experience as a faculty member, as many students have expressed to me that they feel highly distressed by the state of the world they are inheriting. They also say they feel betrayed; they believe that previous generations have not done enough to prevent climate catastrophe, and that their university education is not preparing them to confront proliferating ecological crises.
Handbook of Children and Youth Studies, 2024
In the 50 years since the stark warnings put forth in classical works like The Limits of Growth (1972), we have failed to achieve environmental sustainability. This underscores the inadequacies of cognitive, behaviorist, and technological solutions that have been pursued over the past three decades. Young people are most acutely aware of this failure and our precarious future, as evidenced in the School Strikes for Climate movement. And yet, despite the catastrophic severity of the problem, the ways educational scholars and practitioners alike attempt to (re)imagine the future remain limited. Much scholarly work is still aimed at raising awareness, incentivizing certain behaviors, searching for technological breakthroughs, or calls to greater “agency.” Meanwhile, concerned teachers add climate-related topics and encourage paper bags, shorter showers, meatless Mondays, and student activism. Missing from our current imagination is culture, in particular how changing our dominant modes of self (self-construal) is a prerequisite for any significant, lasting move toward sustainability. In this chapter, we sketch out a body of emerging work – both theoretical and empirical – suggesting the necessity of a cultural shift for achieving sustainability. Our argument is that the on-going inability to limit climate change suggests that the problem is primarily cultural, and given that it is cultural, one important way to address it is through education, albeit through educational ideas that differ from the contemporary mainstream.
Climate Change Education through Narrative Inquiry
Journal of Transformative Praxis, 2021
This article addresses Climate Change Education (CCE) and its interface with Indigenous knowledge. Specifically, I explore the potential for transformation towards more holistic climate change education that balances science and Indigenous knowledge. However, the study details the persistent focus of contemporary education on climate science without interfacing with Indigenous knowledge, cultural values, and associated practices that contribute to climate change resilience. This article tackles this gap and the requisite transformation in climate change education through narrative inquiry.
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Climate Change Denial in 2014
This study provides an overview of four approaches to critical discourse studies: Fairclough's dialectical-relational approach, feminist critical discourse analysis, van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach and the Essex School. Each approach has the capacity to produce insights into the way discourse reproduces social and political inequality, including anthropocentric domination over the environment, which manifests as anthropogenic climate change. Climate change discourse is nuanced insofar as there are multiple, complex social identities that are context sensitive in relationality with the living systems which we inhabit. Our relationship with the climate crisis is iterative and continually formed in and through discourse (Lazar, 2014, p.196). Based on a small-scale study of climate change discourse, I tentatively posit that when resisters make psychological projections of their own attributes onto social actors, they take the first unconscious step toward awareness that climate change denial is an untenable position. Furthermore, when resisters assert that climate change is natural and historical, they take the first conscious step in the transition from climate change denial to acceptance of the reality of anthropocentric climate change.
A framework for climate change education in critical geography
Geography, 2023
Unlocking the potential of climate change education to achieve a more just, democratic and sustainable future is a goal of critical geography education. This article presents a compelling argument for using Sjöström et al.'s (2017) Vision III Scientific Literacy Heuristic (3-VSL) in critical geography and climate change education. Through classroom examples, the article shows how the 3-VSL framework can help explore two broad aims. First, the scientific, societal and justicefocused aspects of climate change education can all be captured within the 3-VSL. Second, the plurality of goals inside critical geography can also be considered, ranging from recognising climate change-related harms to engaging in socio-political action. The 3-VSL is argued to be a flexible and robust framework, aiding teachers and students in working for a more sustainable future.
Sustainability, 2023
This paper discusses political discourses as a resource for climate change education and the extent to which they can be used to promote critical thinking. To illustrate this, we present here an activity developed in the online course, Freirean Communicative Educational Situations for Climate Change Education, designed and developed as part of postdoctoral research at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Brazil. The activity aimed to analyze the speeches of the Presidents of Colombia and Chile at the United Nations Climate Action Summit (2019) in a way which approached climate change as a socio-scientific issue. We argue that climate change education should not only involve learning about risk, adaptation, resilience, and basic scientific concepts, but also critical reflection on public policy and discourses and transformative content. This includes consideration of non-formal and informal communications and analysis of how power relations can restrict, motivate, or boost the impetus towards climate change education. These kinds of classroom activities enable teachers to work with a combination of core critical thinking skills, attitudes, and abilities, as well as discussing the details of science and scientific knowledge. This in turn enables the gap between the scientific and political aspects of climate change education to be bridged.
"education of a certain kind": Environmental Education, and the Rhetoric of Climate Crisis
NCTE Conference, 2016
In light of the growing ecological crisis, I problematize the constructivist educational philosophy of John Dewey. Although many view Dewey’s pragmatism as complementary to both social justice education and environmentalism, proponents of eco-justice education such as C. A. Bowers question many of the fundamental assumptions at the heart of Dewey’s theories. I also consider the implications of an eco-justice lens for English teaching and teacher education.