What is climate change education in Trump Country?

ABSTRACT

Objective

Research in social psychology and the learning sciences indicates that political ideologies shape how learners and teachers engage climate change science. Because conservative worldviews prioritize the maintenance of existing social hierarchies—specifically race, class, and gender—conservative learners often engage in motivated reasoning by minimizing cognitive dissonance when learning climate change. Social and psychological research on climate change denial affirms that these hierarchies influence how individuals engage, generating a socially situated identity-protective effect vis-à-vis status quo maintenance. What kinds of educational projects might be capable of mitigating resistance to climate change science among political conservatives?

Method

This paper uses cases from rural New York and rural Kentucky to illuminate pedagogical interactions around climate change science in conservative communities as bases for considering alternative educational projects.

Results

We argue that teaching about climate change in conservative contexts demands specificity to particular cultural-psychological conditions, including historical legacies related to patterns of natural resource extraction. These broader shifts in rural political and cultural economy shape ethical-cultural conceptions of teacher and learner identities at geographic scale.

Conclusion

In light of these findings, we discuss pedagogical pathways for overcoming such challenges—some actionable today, others requiring more development—relative to broader conversations in the climate change education literature.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. There is a dearth of effective pedagogical approaches for climate change education in conservative communities.

2. Effective climate change education faces overcoming motivated reasoning.

3. There is a need to further develop climate change pedagogies for conservative communities.

What this topic adds:

1. Climate change education is possible in conservative geographies by attending to local values and epistemologies.

2. While research on effective climate change pedagogies is undeveloped, cases presented within provide salient starting point examples.

3. Problem based learning is an effective pedagogical approach to positively motivate student interest in conservative communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• rural education
• conservatism
• identity

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Doug Lombardi for his guidance, as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided thoughtful feedback during the peer review process. We would also like to acknowledge our students for their willingness to engage the difficult issues.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Notes

1. While the course does examine additional contributors to positive radiative forcing such as methane and halogens etc., we focus on carbon dioxide production given its outsized role in adding CO² to the earth’s atmospheric system.