Climate-change education and critical emotional awareness (CEA): Implications for teacher education

Abstract

Scholars in the field of education for sustainable development argue that it is vital that educators take emotions into account when teaching about global problems such as climate change. How to do this in the best way is still debated, however. This article aims to contribute to this discussion by arguing for the importance of critical emotional awareness (CEA). CEA is vital for future teachers to gain, but also for their future students to learn to be able to fight sustainability problems in everyday life and in occupational roles. Through theoretical argumentation and insights from empirical studies, the article elaborates on the following questions: Why is CEA important? What components does this concept consist of? Some key characteristics are that CEA combines insights from emotion research and critical social science. It should be anchored in multidisciplinary emotion theories and research and should acknowledge both emotions and ways to cope. It is also vital to recognize that emotions and emotion regulation take place at individual and interactional levels and are, furthermore, influenced by larger societal emotion norms. CEA implies that these aspects are critically discussed in learning situations and that teacher education should give teachers the skills to lead such discussions.

Keywords:

• Education for sustainable development (ESD)
• emotions
• climate change
• teacher education
• critical consciousness

Introduction

In recent years, scholars in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) have started to focus on the role of emotions in learning processes about global sustainability problems like climate change. One aspect that has been at the center of attention is that many young people worry about climate change ( Hickman et al., 2021; Schneider-Mayerson & Leong, 2020; for a review see Ojala et al., 2021 ). Studies also indicate that education about climate change can increase worry (Sund & Öhman, 2014; Taber & Taylor, 2009). But is this worry a motivational force for learning, or is it rather something that leads to weakened wellbeing and hopelessness? And how should educators act when teaching about climate change, if this could risk increasing students’ worry? Although the topic of emotions has become increasingly popular in recent years there is still a need for more empirical research and in-depth theoretical discussions about how best to include a focus on emotions and learning about these issues in ESD. This is not least important because of the profound existential character of sustainability problems like climate change.

In this paper the concept of critical emotional awareness (CEA) will be in focus (see Ojala, 2016, 2022). CEA in ESD is about learning from psychological research, but also from critical social-scientific research and philosophy regarding emotions and how they influence learning processes concerning sustainability problems. Through theoretical argumentation and insights from empirical studies I will elaborate on the following questions: Why is CEA important? What components does this concept consist of? The focus will mostly be on the existential dimension of teaching about climate change and other sustainability problems and related emotions of worry, anxiety, and ambivalence. However, CEA could be valuable to include in other approaches to ESD also, like those that focus on values, emotions, and political aspects (see for example Håkansson & Östman, 2019). The intention is that CEA should be valuable to all teachers who educate about climate change and other sustainability problems at all levels of the educational system, although the critical part is most important to emphasize at higher stages of the educational system, foremost in high school and in higher education. Throughout the paper I will discuss implications for teacher education.

The article is structured in the following way: Firstly, I will deal with the first aim of the paper, that is, to show why CEA is important: I will start by showing how the existential character of climate change makes learning about this issue very emotional and in the worst case risks leading to increased hopelessness. Thereafter, I will present studies showing that teachers seem to be aware of the existential character of teaching about climate change and related emotions but do not always base their teaching in scientific theories about emotions. Instead, teachers utilize lay theories about emotion. In the next section I will argue that although applying a psychological approach to emotions in ESD is important, because of the political character of climate change it is crucial to also combine it with critical theories from, for example, sociology and educational philosophy. I will also describe how CEA is positioned in relation to educational theories and argue that this concept combines insights from theories about emotions and learning and theories about critical consciousness.

Secondly, I will deal with the second aim of this paper, that is, to show what components CEA consist of. The focus will be on the importance of: (1) a multidisciplinary approach to emotions; (2) validating and verbalizing emotions; (3) challenging pre-existing meta-emotions among teacher students; (4) taking account of how people cope with emotions; and finally (5) assuming a critical stance about emotions.

Why is CEA important in climate change education?

The existential character of climate change

Climate change is at its core an existential problem since it is about the future survival of humanity. Or to put it in other words, climate change forces humanity to face the well-known question: ‘To be or not to be?’. In this regard Ojala (2016) has argued that climate change relates to three core existential themes as introduced by the existentialist Paul Tillich (Tillich, 1952/2000): The physical survival of humanity is threatened by climate change, which means that this problem is related to the ontic part of existential anxiety (Ojala, 2016). Climate change is also about moral questions regarding how to live our life in an ethically correct way taking account of the fact that climate change to a large extent is caused by human lifestyle (Ojala, 2016). These kinds of moral aspects are also related to existential anxiety according to Tillich. Furthermore, climate change concerns the spiritual part of existential anxiety in the sense that it prompts questions about whether there is any meaning in being an active citizen when we face such a serious and complex problem (Ojala, 2016).

Empirical research has also shown that people worry a lot about climate change, not least young people (Hickman et al., 2021; Schneider-Mayerson & Leong, 2020; for a review see Ojala et al., 2021). For many, climate-change worry is an other-oriented worry related to embracing strong universal and biospheric values like global justice, equality, and the rights and well-being of nature and animals (Bouman et al., 2020; Helm et al., 2018; Ojala, 2007). Others experience a more personal kind of worry, or grief, for example because they belong to groups of people living in places that are already hit hard by climate-change-related catastrophes (Cunsolo et al., 2020) or because they worry about their future or present children or grandchildren (Ekholm, 2020; Schneider-Mayerson & Leong, 2020). Thus, there seems to be a close relation between climate worry and aspects of life that one values highly.

In addition, feelings of helplessness are quite common, i.e., young people feel that they cannot influence the climate problem (Ballantyne et al., 2016; Jones & Davison, 2021; Strife, 2012; Threadgold, 2012). For example, young people who try to act in climate-friendly ways in everyday life can feel ambivalent due to conflicts related to breaking social norms, inner tensions when factors such as convenience, price, and taste clash with climate-friendly ideals, and structural barriers (Ojala, 2022). These feelings of ambivalence and tensions are, furthermore, not seldom coped with in a black-and-white manner, that is, using binary thinking such as if not everyone is taking climate change seriously there is no point in me doing anything, making it even harder to sustain engagement (Ojala & Anniko, 2020). To summarize, the climate-change problem at its core relates to existential emotions like anxiety, worry, and ambivalence, and one could argue that this needs to be taken into account when teaching about climate change.

Emotions and teaching about climate change

In recent years, there has been an increased interest among educational researchers to take into account emotions of worry and anxiety in education about sustainability problems (Cantell et al., 2019; Hadar et al., 2020; Pihkala, 2020). Not only do young people feel a lot of negative emotions in the face of these problems even before entering the learning situation, but education about these threats also can increase worry (Sund & Öhman, 2014; Taber & Taylor, 2009). Researchers argue that this needs to be acknowledged by teachers to prevent feelings of hopelessness and promote hope and agency (Cantell et al., 2019; Gardiner & Rieckmann, 2015; Hicks, 2014; Phikala, 2020).

There are also some studies about how teachers look upon the emotional character of education about sustainability problems in general, and climate change in particular. For example, some teachers worry that their own anxiety about climate change could influence their students’ emotions (Baker et al., 2021). Furthermore, studies show that teachers in Australia, Sweden, and the US seem to have many diverse ways of responding to their students’ emotions, ranging from avoiding talking about some emotion-laden issues and ignoring emotions, through trying to replace worry with hope, to validating emotions of worry and using flexible emotion-coaching strategies (Cross, 1998. Ojala, 2021; Verlie et al., 2020). What seems to be common to all teachers, however, is that all emotion-coaching strategies are personal and not based in emotion research. Teachers also mention that they want more support and resources to be able to deal with emotions in a professional and constructive manner (Verlie et al., 2020). In addition, Hadar and colleagues found that teacher education in Israel does not give enough preparation for future teachers to deal with the existential and emotional character of sustainability problems (Hadar et al., 2020). What all these studies reveal is the need to include a focus on the emotional character of educating about sustainability problems in teacher education.

One overarching theoretical framework that could be valuable to apply in this context is the concept of emotional intelligence in educational psychology, which is supposed to help students both to acquire knowledge about different topics and to promote mental wellbeing (Humphrey et al., 2007). Thus, in this approach subject and socio-emotional learning are seen as interconnected (see also Restad & Elde Mølstad, 2021). The four-branch ability model of emotional intelligence describes four broad clusters of competences that emotional intelligence comprises (Mayer et al., 2004). The first branch concerns skills needed to perceive and express emotions in an optimal way. The second branch involves skills to use emotions and emotional understanding to facilitate thinking. The third branch is about skills to be able to understand complex emotions, relationships between emotions, and relations between emotions and behavioral consequences. Finally, the fourth branch is about skills to regulate emotions in constructive ways. Insights foremost from empirical psychological research about emotions are then used to give more specific content to the four branches of this model. A central thought in this theory from an educational perspective is that cognition and emotions are intertwined and inseparable parts of the learning process (Humphrey et al., 2007). This model could be valuable to apply for teaching future teachers about different aspects of climate change, such as facts about the natural and social science bases of climate change, dealing with value conflicts, and not least, existential aspects.

To summarize, it is vital that teacher education consider how future educators can work with emotions when teaching about sustainability problems and to base this knowledge in research about emotions, for example, psychological emotion research related to the four branches of the emotional competence concept.

A critical approach regarding a therapeutic view on negative emotions

Although the need for teachers to learn how to handle emotional aspects in educating about sustainability issues seems rather obvious from the article thus far, one could ask how teachers should approach this task. This is not an uncontroversial issue. In a well-known book written by Ecclestone and Hayes (2008) the scholars argued that emotional competence as part of the school curriculum could risk turning into a political tool that undermines critical thinking about societal issues. This educational approach is seen as promoting a therapeutic culture in which positive emotions become the ‘correct’ emotions to feel and negative emotions are alleviated and domesticated to keep young people in their place. This criticism relates to Ahmed’s work on the cultural politics of emotions, where she argued that happiness is used as a political tool to exclude some persons because of their association with ‘unhappy’ feelings, that is, they do not live up to the emotion norms of always looking at things from ‘the bright side’ propagated for in the neoliberal society (Ahmed, 2010). Bauman and Donskis (2013) also argued that this negative view of so-called ‘negative’ emotions seems to be an inherent part of our neoliberal society. This view has entailed that we don’t really ponder about our fears, worries, and guilt feelings in relation to societal problems and that social engagement around these problems is therefore stifled. Thus, according to these scholars, we are governed through emotions both in everyday life and in school.

In relation to sustainability problems Ojala warned already in 2007 about the rather common approach of either medicalizing worries about global sustainability problems or seeing these emotions as something irrational (Ojala, 2007). To accuse environmentally engaged people of being emotional could be seen as a way to discredit one’s opponents in a risk arena where different actors fight about what societal risks should be taken seriously and how we as a society should deal with them. However, there also seems to be genuine concern about especially young people’s climate worry. One could argue that a more constructive approach than recommending young people to rid themselves of worries through for instance relaxation exercises, an approach that risks sweeping important problems under the carpet, is to find ways to help young people face difficult emotions, critically evaluate them, and do something constructive with them (Ojala, 2007).

Relating the aspects described above to educational theories, it becomes important to get a critical understanding of emotions. Freire developed an educational theory about critical consciousness in which critical discussions, reflections, and actions can lead to a better understanding of the root causes of an unjust society and empower people to make plans and take action to change this unsustainable society (Freire, 1974). This theory, which deals with education for change, fits well with the strivings in ESD to prepare students for taking part in change processes for a more sustainable society. However, apart from its focus on hope, the theory is not about a critical understanding of emotions, although core aspects of it can be found in other educational theories focusing on emotions, some of which will be presented below.

Boler (1999) developed the theoretical concept ‘a pedagogy of discomfort’ that focuses on discomforting emotions in educating about difficult, controversial, and threatening societal issues. One main argument in this theory is that educators and students need to engage in a critical examination of emotions in relation to the societal issue in focus, for example, discuss emotional investments in different ideological positions (Boler, 1999). Amsler in turn presented a critical affective pedagogy that perceives negative emotions in relation to societal problems as healthy responses to problems in society (Amsler, 2011). The aim of this pedagogy is to promote a critical comprehension of why some emotions and not others are felt and to promote an awareness of how power also governs people’s most ‘private’ emotions.

Drawing on the ideas presented thus far, CEA is a concept that combines insights from emotion research and critical social science. Below some important components of CEA in educating about sustainability problems like climate change will be presented.

What components does CEA consist of?

Learning about emotions from a multidisciplinary perspective: The example of worry

As mentioned earlier worry is perhaps the main emotion people feel in relation to climate change, but how does this emotion influence people? Looking at psychological research about worry in a general population, we can see that this emotional reaction is far from always a negative thing. Many people seem to perceive their worry as something that prepares them for analytical thinking and as a motivator, making them alert and poised for action and problem-solving ( Tallis et al., 1994; see also Sweeny & Dooley, 2017 ). Quantitative studies have also found that this kind of worry is positively related to problem-solving and an information-seeking cognitive style when trait anxiety is controlled for ( Davey, 1994; Davey et al., 1992; for a review see Sweeny & Dooley, 2017 ). Emotion researchers often see worry as a first step in coping with a problem; it is not only an emotion but also consists of cognitive aspects where one reflects about the problem at hand (Sweeny & Dooley, 2017).

Regarding societal issues, worry has also been found to be associated with critical thinking (Marcus et al., 2011; Valentino et al., 2008). Some political psychologists therefore see worry/anxiety as a precondition for deliberation and something that can make people break with their habitual voting behaviors and start to in a more in-depth manner think about how to vote (Marcus et al., 2011; Valentino et al., 2008). In addition, research in climate psychology has found that climate worry is related to more information seeking (Verplanken & Roy, 2013). As Verlie and colleagues put it: ‘…climate anxiety is not an illness or disorder but an appropriate and even valuable source of discomfort that can provide an important lens to help people re-evaluate what is important to them and find meaningful ways to inhabit the world’ (Verlie et al., 2020, p. 133). Worry, thus, can be a first step to engaging with larger societal issues.

The first component of CEA is therefore that future teachers should be given opportunities in teacher education to learn about emotions and their role in everyday life and learning processes from a multidisciplinary perspective. This ambition aligns well with the third branch of the emotional intelligence model in which learning about emotions and their complex relationships is seen as vital (Mayer et al., 2004). However, it is important to not primarily rely on research in clinical psychology where maladaptive anxiety and depression have been in focus, but to learn from research about emotions in a general population.

On the importance of validating and verbalizing emotions

Besides gaining knowledge about how emotions like worry function in everyday life and learning processes, it is also important that teachers acquire research-based knowledge about how best to respond to emotions in the classroom. To take some examples: What research shows is that it is important to validate people’s negative emotions so that they, for instance, don’t feel that it is strange for them to be feeling what they are feeling (Edlund et al., 2015). How parents and teachers react to emotions can also influence how young people cope (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Gottman et al., 1996; Zembylas et al., 2014). In relation to climate change, a study showed that those young people who coped with this feeling in a constructive way also felt that if they voiced negative emotions about societal issues in the classroom, their teacher would listen to them and respect them (Ojala, 2015). The opposite was true for those who denied the seriousness of climate change, who instead felt their teachers would not take them seriously and ridicule them if they voiced their feelings about societal issues in the learning situation (Ojala, 2015).

There is also research showing that to put words to emotions, for example to discuss or write about emotions, is a first step in gaining some control over them and the problem at hand, and in general this is beneficial because free-floating emotions can lead to lower mental wellbeing and inactivity (Niederhoffer & Pennebaker, 2009). In addition, to promote wellbeing, expressing emotions together with others could lead to a better understanding of stressful and problematic situations (see Stanton & Low, 2012). Providing scope in the classroom to put words on emotions can also be a way to verbalize values that are important for people, since worry often arises when more or less articulated values are threatened (Bouman et al., 2020; Helm et al., 2018; Ojala, 2007). To help young people verbalize their emotions and discuss them could also be a way to deal with power inequalities regarding sustainability problems (González-Hidalgo, 2020). Groups with less power, for example students in relation to teachers, can lack words to talk about their values in order to be taken seriously, because the rules of the communicative process have been created by those who have more power (Lutz, 1996; Scheman, 1996). Therefore, one could argue that it is possible to include a broader set of values when discussing sustainability issues in the classroom by also focusing on emotional dimensions (see Ojala, 2022).

The second component of CEA is, therefore, that teacher education ought to help future teachers to communicate about and reply to students’ emotions in relation to climate change in a good manner both to promote wellbeing and to promote learning about for example values. The importance of verbalizing and responding to emotions is covered by the first branch of the emotional intelligence model (Mayer et al., 2004) but also the theory about a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999).

To challenge pre-existing meta-emotions

In the process of learning about what role emotions play in people’s life and learning processes and how best to respond to for example worry about climate change in the classroom, there is also a need for teachers to become aware of and sometimes challenge their own pre-existing meta-emotion philosophies. Meta-emotion philosophies are generalized emotions and beliefs about one’s own and other’s emotions (Gottman et al., 1996; Katz et al., 2012). For instance, you can feel shame about your anger, or anger about someone else’s worry. You can have a belief that worry is a dangerous feeling in the classroom, and so on. Meta-emotion philosophies, furthermore, involve awareness of and acceptance of emotions, metaphors in describing emotions, as well as emotion coaching (Gottman et al., 1996; Katz et al., 2012). Meta-emotion philosophies are often implicit, that is, they are not always articulated in a clear manner.

Meta-emotion philosophies have primarily been studied in parent-child relationships. Parent’s meta-emotion philosophies through how parents interact with their children can influence their children’s ability to cope with emotions (Katz et al., 2012). However, few studies focus on teachers’ meta-emotion philosophies. One exception is an investigation that explored meta-emotion philosophies among teachers who educate about climate change (Ojala, 2021). This study found that teachers’ beliefs about emotions varied and sometimes included outdated views about emotions, not least worry, as being irrational, or as being rational, that is based in real threats, but detrimental to learning processes. To be able to learn about the latest research about emotions and learning and how best to coach emotional reactions, and not end up selecting aspects that fit in with one’s own former lay philosophies about emotions there is a need to give room in teacher education for elaborating on one’s meta-emotion philosophies.

Taking account of coping

Another vital aspect of CEA is to be aware that when a person feels an emotion, particularly a negative emotion, this person is in most cases inclined to regulate that emotion in some way by thinking in a specific way, doing something, or covering up the emotion with another feeling. In psychology this is called emotion regulation (Gross, 2014) or coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Research about how young people cope with the emotional dimensions of climate change has shown, for example, that young people use both less constructive and more constructive coping strategies seen from a learning, engagement, and wellbeing perspective ( for a review see Ojala et al., 2021; Pettersson, 2014). For example, it is common to distance oneself from emotions one feels (Ojala, 2019). To a certain extent this could be necessary; we cannot worry all the time, but, if used in the classroom, distancing could lead to a situation where students simply do not listen to the teacher. One strategy to cope with climate change among young people that seems to be constructive is meaning-focused coping, which consists of trusting that other actors will do their part and being able to switch perspectives between the graveness of the problem and progress being made in fighting it (see Ojala et al., 2021) Finding a sense of meaning in life in general is positively related to well-being and has been found, foremost, to increase through good relationships (O’Conner & Chamberlain, 2000). In relation to dealing with climate-change worry, Chawla has suggested that developing a relationship to nature can not only be a learning experience but can also promote well-being (Chawla, 2020). Nature-based learning can be something teachers use when educating about climate change.

Regarding conflicts stemming from trying to live in a sustainable way, many young people use black-and-white thinking to deal with related emotions, arguing, for example, that since not everyone is behaving in climate-friendly ways there is no point in me doing anything: a perfect way to abandon your engagement, because it will never happen that ‘everyone’ will act in climate-friendly ways (Ojala & Anniko, 2020). But there are also other ways to cope, like using dialectical thinking, where the young people acknowledge the conflicts but transcend them by taking in a third element such as arguing that ‘I can at least be a role model.’ This way of coping is positively related to engagement (Ojala & Anniko, 2020).

In promoting CEA in school, teachers need to become aware of how they themselves and young people cope, and to help young people critically discuss less constructive coping strategies, which is vital because this approach can disrupt the often implicit influence of these strategies and can make the students aware of their negative influence regarding taking on responsibility and learning about climate change (Ojala, 2016). Only then can the students make conscious and well-grounded decisions about whether they want to continue using them or not. It is also important to provide inspiration to use more positive coping strategies that, besides being related to climate engagement, are also related to positive emotions of hope (see Ojala et al., 2021). Climate hope can help students face the climate-problem and all the negative emotions related to it. Positive emotions can broaden their perspective on problems and help people not only criticize but also be part of envisioning solutions in a creative way (see Fredrickson, 2001). To summarize, it is vital that teacher education give future educators knowledge about the fourth branch of the emotional competence model, namely how people cope with and regulate emotions and how coping influences factors related to learning, like openness to new information and so on (see Mayer et al., 2004).

Critical consciousness concerning emotions

As has been implied above, coping with emotions is not only an individual matter but is also influenced by social processes and cultural emotion norms. In the classroom, teachers and students are involved in bidirectional social processes where emotions are unfolded, negotiated, and coped with (Zembylas et al., 2014). For example, Lönngren and colleagues showed how students studying to become engineers negotiated about the proper way for emotions to be part of their learning, with most seeing emotions as not belonging in the learning process, while others challenged this assumption (Lönngren et al., 2021). Gender-based norms surrounding emotions could also influence what happens in the classroom, for example, that women’s worries are seen as signs of poor psychological wellbeing more often than if men express these emotions (see Conway et al., 2003), or that boys to a higher degree than girls expect that they would not be taken seriously by the teachers if they expressed emotions about societal problems in the classroom (Ojala, 2015).

In addition, an awareness of how larger societal emotion norms influence emotions is important for teachers to gain. For example, questions could be asked about: Why do we use so much distancing as a way to cope with climate worry? Is it mere happenstance that negative emotions have no room in our present society? As has already been presented in earlier sections, Bauman and Donskis (2013) did not see this tendency to denounce negative emotions as a coincidence, but rather connected it to the neoliberal order that dominates today’s society. In this regard, there are also different interest groups that want to influence our emotions, which, according to Marcus (2002), could be seen as a kind of political game where those who say do not worry, are often those in power, and who want to preserve the system, while those who say worry about this want to change the system.

Often the societal emotion norms described above influence us without our knowledge. The sociologist Scheff (1990) even argued that ‘false consciousness’ as described by Marx, that is, when the oppressed to some extent contribute to their own oppression, has an emotional basis. The reason people do not see the structures – political, economic, and internal – that control and limit them is because they are hidden under a veil of shame. As long as this shame is not acknowledged it will continue to operate on an implicit level, and the oppression will continue. Regarding guilt and shame experienced by young people when they attempt to live in a sustainable way but fail to do so (see Ojala, 2022), it could be important to critically discuss these feelings and the rather common tactic of coping through distancing, which could pave the way for learning for more transformative change processes.

To summarize, the final aspect that CEA consists of is an understanding of how emotions and coping are steered by forces outside the person who feels the emotions, like aspects at the social-psychological, cultural, and structural levels. It is, therefore, vital that teachers gain insights into critical social-scientific theories about emotions to be able to promote critical forums for elaborating upon emotions, coping, and overarching societal emotion norms.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued for the importance of promoting CEA in teacher education for future educators to be able to educate about sustainability problems like climate change in a good way. Teacher students should also be able to promote CEA among their future students, which is vital because many young people experience worry, and other emotions, about climate change, which, together with related coping strategies, could influence their learning in different ways and in the worst case lead to a sense of hopelessness. Therefore, future educators need to learn about emotions from a research-based perspective and how they influence young people’s wellbeing and learning. Most importantly I have argued that while applying a psychological approach to emotions in education is important, the political character of climate change and other sustainability issues makes it crucial to also utilize critical theories from, for example, sociology and educational philosophy.

I also presented a suggestion of what components CEA consist of, which has implications for teacher education. Teacher education should in the context of preparing future educators for being involved in ESD focus on: (1) A multidisciplinary approach to emotions; (2) Giving teachers knowledge about how to validate and help verbalize emotions; (3) Challenging pre-existing meta-emotion philosophies among future educators; (4) Helping future teachers to understand what role coping strategies play and how to work with this knowledge with students; (5) Provide an understanding of critical theoretical approaches to emotions and how to apply them in teaching about climate change. Describing a more concrete approach regarding how to implement CEA, however, is left for future research to deal with.

To finish this article with some minor warnings: To discuss CEA and assessment is largely beyond the scope of this article; however, the question about whether and how CEA should be assessed among the future teachers’ students could be seen as an ethically sensitive issue since one could ask whether it is the task of schools to assess young people’s emotional attitudes (see Restad & Elde Mølstad, 2021). This is an important topic to discuss in future work about CEA. In addition, Öhman and Östman (2008) maintained that teaching about sustainable development often tends to become strongly normative and thus risks becoming a form of indoctrination. To avoid falling into this trap, it is vital to realize that CEA is not about promoting the ‘right’ emotions in the classroom (see also Amsler, 2011). The intention with CEA should be to give future teachers the ability to help students take on a research based and critical approach concerning emotions, in this case about climate change, and thereby give them tools to be able to reveal attempts to steer them into feeling and coping in specific ways. Only then will students be truly free to take part, on their own terms, in the transformational process that climate change faces us all with.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no competing interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by The Swedish Research Council Formas under Grant 2017-00880 to the author.

Notes on contributors

Maria Ojala

Maria Ojala is an associate professor (docent) in psychology at Örebro University, Sweden. Earlier she was an assistant professor at the department of education at Uppsala University. Her main research interest concerns how young people relate to global climate-change with a focus on emotional aspects. She is also interested in implications for education for sustainable futures.