Exploring Climate Justice Learning: Visions, Challenges, and Opportunities

Graphical Abstract

Abstract

It has never been so clear that the sweeping and inequitable effects of anthropogenic climate change are upon us—with frontline communities being the most impacted while having contributed the least to producing the crisis. While climate justice action has been a growing social movement deeply interwoven into the broader environmental justice movement, instruction and learning focused on climate justice has been mostly absent from school-based contexts. We need to collectively respond through the educational enterprise more broadly and deeply—and it needs to happen quickly. As we discuss in this special issue, there is important work to learn from and important histories of work to know about.

Keywords:

• Informal Education
• Climate Change
• Environmental Science
• Equity
• NGSS
• STEM
• Teaching Strategies

Further Resources

Much more work is occurring across many other contexts and is ever expanding. The sustained efforts of those such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, the NAACP’s Climate and Environmental Justice Program, the Climate Justice Alliance, UNESCO’s Climate Frontlines, Climate Wise Women, and the HBCU Climate Change Consortium are just a few of the many long-term efforts to foster awareness, learning, and collective action around climate justice.

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported in part by the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) through the ClimeTime initiative and by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1626365. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funder.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deb L. Morrison

Deb L. Morrison ([email protected]), a learning scientist with the Institute of Science + Math Education at the University of Washington, is deeply engaged in research-practice partnership efforts around equity and justice in STEM learning contexts, particularly with respect to furthering climate justice. Morrison has taught middle school science and is passionate about working with educators. More about Morrison at http://www.debmorrison.me. Find her on Twitter @educatordeb.

Philip Bell

Philip Bell is a professor of education at the University of Washington, Seattle, and editor of STEM Teaching Tools. He served on the committee that authored A Framework for K–12 Science Education, which guided development of the Next Generation Science Standards. He and his collaborators have worked to implement the Framework’s equity-focused vision in classrooms, school districts, and afterschool programs. Bell shares resources and ideas on Twitter at @philiplbell.