Grounded in Community: Leveraging Partnerships for K–12 Climate Education

Abstract

Partnerships between K–12 educators and people doing climate work in their communities provides opportunities for teachers and students to engage in consequential climate learning that is both culturally situated and locally relevant. This article features several vignettes that highlight examples from various sites across Washington State where science education leaders seeded and cultivated climate learning programs in partnerships with local experts in forestry, ecology, farming, food waste, technology, and environmental justice. Collectively the vignettes offer a diverse image of the “boundary spanning” (Goodrich et al. 2020) and commitments needed to ground climate learning in communities.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Climate science
• community
• culturally relevant
• phenomenon
• action-oriented