Safe spaces or a pedagogy of discomfort? Senior high-school teachers’ meta-emotion philosophies and climate change education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore senior high-school teachers’ beliefs about the role of emotions in climate change education and their perception of how they deal with emotional reactions in the classroom. The theoretical framework consists of meta-emotion philosophies, teachers’ beliefs, and critical emotion theories. Sixteen Swedish teachers were interviewed. Four overarching emotion beliefs were identified: a disapproving view, a danger-oriented view, a partial acceptance view, and a complexity view. Four overarching coaching themes were found: avoidance, action-based and reappraisal-based coaching, strategies to approach negative emotions, and flexibility and adjustment-based coaching. Implications for teacher education are discussed.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1845589.

Keywords:

• climate change education
• ESD
• emotions
• teacher’s beliefs
• meta-emotion philosophies
• coping

Notes

1 Hermans (2016) looked at how teachers themselves cope with their own emotion regarding climate change.

2 These were the most common emotions in relation to climate change mentioned by the teachers in the interviews performed for this study. The teachers, however, also touched upon interest and disinterest as common responses among the students. Since these are more general states of educational feeling, not specifically related to sustainability issues, they fall outside the focus of this study and are not analyzed.

3 The names of the respondents have been made up by the author.

4 The interviews were conducted before the Friday’s for Future movement started.