The burden of bad news: educators’ experiences of navigating climate change education

Abstract

Teaching about climate change should be a top priority for all education sectors. However, research to date suggests that climate change education is sparse and ad hoc across school contexts, is not mandated, and relies on the efforts of an impassioned few. Here, we present educators’ experiences of teaching climate change in Australian classrooms. We find that biases remain in educators’ perceptions of which discipline subjects are, and should be, responsible for teaching about climate change. We reflect on these apparent disciplinary siloes, and advocate for holistic approaches that cut across curriculum divides. Further, we reveal the challenges educators experience in navigating affective dimensions of climate change education. Finally, we recommend that professional capacity building opportunities be developed, alongside additional support services. We outline that such work does not require radical changes in education systems, and highlight that pedagogies already exist within school contexts and subject areas that can support effective and action-oriented climate change education for all.

Keywords:

• Affect
• emotion
• climate change education
• Australia
• educator

Introduction

In February 2021, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres declared the climate emergency to be ‘the defining issue of our time’ (UN 23 February 2021). In line with this declaration, the UN recognises that education is key to addressing climate change as it can encourage ‘people to change their attitudes and behaviour; it also helps…to make informed decisions’ (UN 2021). At an international level, the Paris Agreement (United Nations 2015; Article 12) commits parties ‘to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information’ (p. 16). Notable initiatives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to advance these agendas include an Education for Sustainable Development Roadmap (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation 2020), alongside auspicing the Office of Climate Education which aims to provide information and tools to ‘promote climate change education worldwide’ (Azoulay n.d.). Despite such declarations and initiatives, climate change education in schools, and the approaches used to teach it, vary internationally and across disciplines.

Australia’s latest (2021) Nationally Determined Contributions update did not include reference to children or to climate change education as part of the country’s ongoing commitment to the Agreement (Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources 2021). While education for sustainability is a key component of Australian education policies, details on how climate change is specifically addressed by formal education are absent from these policies (UNESCO, 2015). Arguably, the policy context to support teaching climate change is inadequate (Colliver 2017; Gough 2020; Whitehouse 2021), evidenced by scant mention of climate change in Australia’s V8.0 National Curriculum (Whitehouse and Larri 2019), and narrowly defined improvements to the most recent iteration (V9.0) (Beasy et al. 2022; Tytler and Freebody 2023). A recent review from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2023) on climate change education concluded that while Australia is well positioned to make a ‘substantial and distinctive’ contribution to the teaching of climate change internationally in part due to unique Indigenous histories and geographies, it currently remains ‘in constant need of arguing for its rightful place as a core program of inquiry’ (p. 36). This is despite clear research insights that widespread climate literacy is essential for informed decision-making at every level of society, and that climate literacy is established as a precursor to climate concern and action (Tobler, Visschers, and Siegrist 2012).

In this article, we explore how educators working in primary and secondary schools experience teaching climate change, drawing on data collected from the island state of Tasmania, Australia. We contend that understanding how educators approach climate change education, and reflecting on the dilemmas and joys they experience through their practice, can help to inform the support mechanisms that may be most beneficial for future climate change teaching.

Literature review

Teaching about climate change and involving young people in climate action and mitigation is undeniably important, given the current global climate crisis. Despite this, a range of factors influence whether or not (and how) climate change is addressed in the classroom. Here, we review relevant literature to explicate the current research context for climate change education.

Structural influences

It would be remiss in the first instance, not to draw attention to the increasing pressures that educators are universally experiencing. The ‘the narrowing of teachers’ work, increasingly away from the practice of teaching and learning and toward compliance-driven agendas’ (Gavin et al. 2021, 121) is a key context of climate change education. As argued by Gavin et al. (2021), a de-democratising of education is further limiting the ability for educators to advance teaching and learning initiatives that currently sit on the periphery of curriculum objectives – as does climate change.

In addition, constraints relating to schools’ structural organising of learning influence the ability to conduct, and the effectiveness of, climate change education. While ‘climate change education is about learning in the face of risk, uncertainty and rapid change’, only select discipline areas – specifically science – tend to address climate change (Stevenson, Nicholls, and Whitehouse 2017, 67). While arguably, this is an epistemological challenge, whereby climate change is understood as a problem ‘for science’ (Busch, Henderson, and Stevenson 2019), the difficulty of extending beyond disciplinary boundaries is exacerbated by timetabling and subject siloing in schools. Though science has historically been the disciplinary lens through which climate change is understood and incorporated into curriculum, scholars in environmental education have long acknowledged the dangers of having a dominant discipline, resulting in (science) teachers who often feel ill-prepared to engage and address social dimensions of climate change (Lucas 1980; Robottom 1983). Young people who are engaged through scientific discourse are left with feelings of dread and a sense of helplessness to contribute to climate action (Neas 2023). To counteract this, scholars have advocated for holistic approaches to teaching environmental issues that transcend disciplinary barriers and enable complex understandings (Gough 2002; Reid et al. 2021; Sharma 2012; Tytler 2007; Hsu, Tytler, and White 2022). Furthermore, there are discrete benefits to teaching climate change in an interdisciplinary way. This is because the causes and effects of climate change are complex, and span both scientific and socio-political subject areas (Beach, Share, and Webb 2017). Where such barriers relating to discipline siloes are overcome, interdisciplinary learning can be effective for engaging students in climate change learning (Siegner and Stapert 2020).

Educator knowledge and practice

In Australia, due to the relative invisibility of climate change in the National Curriculum, climate change education delivery, when it does take place, is largely underpinned by educators’ personal beliefs and values (Almeida 2018). Consequently, only educators who are motivated to teach about climate change do so. Educators’ beliefs about why they should teach climate change education are similarly influential. In Ireland, research found educators viewed climate change education as a geographical process that necessitated individual private action – unlike climate change and climate justice experts who view the purpose of climate education as being to motivate political, social, and economic action at the societal level (Waldron et al. 2019). Teachers’ individualised framings of responsibility for climate change action thus limit the range of possibilities recognised by students (Karsgaard and Davidson 2023)

Educators who are motivated by their personal interests and knowledge of climate change are more likely to engage in some form of climate change education. In Texas, USA, researchers have found that a lack of personal knowledge of climate change, together with a fear of accusations of advancing a political agenda, influence if and how climate change is taught (Anchondo 2019). In their research with educators from across America, Liu et al. (2015) have highlighted that perceived knowledge of climate change may not correlate with educators’ actual knowledge, or with attitudes and beliefs. By way of example, research with science educators found they needed further learning and professional development to develop a complex understanding of the science of climate change as well as its historical, social, political and economic dimensions (Herman, Feldman, and Vernaza-Hernandez 2017). Subsequent studies have found that professional development for in-service educators improves educator self-efficacy in teaching about climate change and leads to more climate change education in classrooms (Li et al. 2021). In a study that reviewed barriers to educators taking advantage of professional development (PD) on climate change in the United States, time was identified as the most significant impediment (Ennes et al. 2021). Given these findings, Ennes et al. (2021) suggest that existing strategies that support educators’ access to PD may be equally effective for improving engagement with climate change education PD.

Challenges also exist in relation to effective teaching of climate change. For example, some scholars have suggested that students should understand the climate system before they can comprehend climate change (Shepardson et al. 2012). In a systematic review of literature on effective strategies for teaching climate change, Monroe et al. (2019) identified that most studies aimed to increase understanding of climate science and/or causes of and solutions to climate change among learners. Making climate change information personally relevant and meaningful and creating engaging interventions were identified as main themes of the teaching approaches across the 49 studies reviewed. Of those studies that sought to move beyond learning climate science, effective teaching strategies included deliberative discussions with learners, opportunities to interact with scientists, the debunking of climate misconceptions and the implementation of climate action-based projects in schools or community. Few studies intentionally brought together social and science disciplines to build complex understandings and skills. Yet, research on socio-scientific examples of climate change education practice shows that positive outcomes extend beyond increased students’ climate knowledge, and also increase their climate engagement and literacy (Siegner and Stapert 2020).

Others have identified the way dichotomies relating to time (i.e. past, future) and space (i.e. global, local) do not support the development of climate literacy, and advocate for reimagining educational experiences that promote complex, systems and interconnected thinking (Wildemeersch, Håkansson, and Læssøe 2023). Dialogue between students and educators in climate change education is increasingly recognised as important in supporting young people’s meaning making of climate change. Jones and Davison (2021) found that young people’s educational experiences of climate change are frequently disempowering, contributing to feelings of abandonment and betrayal by older generations. Yet, Valdez, Peterson, and Stevenson (2018) showed that conversations about climate change among young adults and their educators, friends and family, support the development of concern about climate change and actions towards adaptation in the face of climate change.

Engaging affectively

Increasingly, research implores educators to support students’ emotional wellbeing when engaged in conversations about climate change (Baker, Clayton, and Bragg 2021). In a recent Australian national survey of young people aged 15-19 (Jones and Lucas, submitted), 46% reported having conversations about their feelings about climate change with their educators. Young people reported that feeling listened to, and knowing that their educators shared their concerns, were the greatest motivators for engaging in climate conversations with educators.

Conversations about climate change among young adults and with their educators, friends, and family support their development of concern about climate change and promote climate change adaptation behaviours (Goldberg et al. 2019; Valdez, Peterson, and Stevenson 2018). Still, these conversations can be disempowering, if accompanied by a sense of lack of action on climate change. Therefore, educators should be mindful of student’s emotional wellbeing when engaging them in conversations about climate change (Baker, Clayton, and Bragg 2021; Ojala 2015).

A significant body of research has investigated educators’ emotional engagement and the emotional labour of teaching (see for example Zembylas 2014). Climate change, however, presents new and unique affective atmospheres and interactions in the classroom (Verlie 2022). While there is a growing body of research on the emerging emotional experiences of students as they learn about climate change, as explored above, limited research investigates the significance of emotions for educators.

In their study of Australian parents and educators, Baker, Clayton, and Bragg (2021) investigated adult perceptions of children’s emotions about climate change and the needs and challenges involved in supporting them. They found that the principal challenge reported by educators was uncertainty over how to talk to children about climate change in a way that was honest but remained hopeful rather than overwhelming (Baker, Clayton, and Bragg 2021). Findings from this study indicated that carers, including educators, struggled primarily with providing appropriate emotional support for students in the context of learning about climate change (Baker, Clayton, and Bragg 2021). Ojala (2021) reported similar findings in her in-depth qualitative study where she interviewed 16 Swedish high school geography educators, all teaching about climate change. She focused primarily on educators’ perceptions of young people’s emotions and strategies for handling them, rather than educators’ own emotions (Ojala 2021).

Lombardi and Sinatra (2012) explored the influence of educators’ emotions on their own personal perceptions of climate change, concluding that feelings of anger and hopelessness were significantly associated with higher perceived acceptance of climate change. Hufnagel (2015) explored pre-service elementary educators’ sense-making of climate change and reported feelings of guilt and anger expressed by educators as they themselves learned about climate change.

A small number of studies have explored the interrelationships between educators’ and students’ emotions as they encounter climate change in educational settings. Much of this research has engaged with emotions as key influences on knowledge formation and action of students (Ojala 2017). Rather than seeing emotion as separate from learning, there is growing acknowledgement of the interaction between facts and feelings in educational experiences. Ojala (2022) further highlights the interrelationship between educators’ and students’ emotions by emphasising the importance of critical emotional awareness when teaching about wicked global problems such as climate change. This includes recognising that emotions and emotion regulation take place at individual and interactional levels and are influenced by larger societal emotion norms.

The literature to date on climate change and education has primarily focused on knowledge and understanding of climate change science (Boon 2009, 2010), effective learning strategies (Monroe et al. 2019; Sezen-Barrie, Miller-Rushing, and Hufnagel 2020), and on educator experiences (Lombardi and Sinatra 2012). This research suggests that effective climate education strategies include providing students with opportunities to interact with scientists, both to augment knowledge and to participate in climate action projects (for example see Monroe et al. 2019). Climate change education that is delivered in accessible ways, where connections between people and climate change are made clear, can have a lasting impact on students’ everyday decision making, prompting them to consider the climate impacts of their own decisions (Cordero, Centeno, and Todd 2020).

The importance of teaching climate change cannot be overstated, yet as the research demonstrates, there are barriers to implementing teaching about climate change in schools. More research that focuses on Australian educators teaching of climate change is needed - as this national perspective is notably absent from the international literature. Specifically, a research gap exists in relation to educators’ own experiences of teaching climate change. This paper seeks to fill that gap. Shedding light on the experiences of educators who are already engaged in climate change education, as this paper does, will also assist in furthering understandings about how to support educators who are yet embark on teaching climate change.

Methods

In recognition that knowledge is socially constructed, this research is situated within an interpretivist paradigm (Atkins and Wallace 2012) and draws on qualitative approaches to conceptualising the experiences of teaching climate change in Australian schools, closely focusing on the voices of educators. While it is possible to draw out commonalities across participants’ experiences, we recognise that each educator - each individual - has a unique story and that any common themes identified through interpretivist research does not and should not detract from acknowledging the diversity of experiences possible. The study was guided by research question: How do educators engage with climate change in teaching practice?

Participants from this study were recruited from the pool of educators involved in [a climate change education program that connects educators and students with climate experts]. Of the 30 participating educators in 2021, nine volunteered to participate in an interview for the research project reported here.

The lead author conducted semi-structured interviews online between September and November 2021 with each participant. Interviews included questions such as ‘How would you describe you understanding/knowledge of climate change?’, ‘How concerned are you about climate change?’, ‘How concerned do think your students are about climate change?’ ‘Does your, or your students’, level of concern influence your teaching of climate change?’ ‘How do you find climate change is reflected in the curriculum you have to teach?’ ‘To what extent are you able to teach climate change the way you want to?’ Interviews ranged from 30-60 min in duration.

Interviews focused on understanding educators’ perspectives and teaching strategies. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed using Otter Software. Transcriptions were checked for accuracy by Author X. After corrections of the transcripts, a coding scheme was developed and recorded using NVIVO 10. Inductive coding was undertaken, and emerging categories and themes were discussed among members of the research team on to determine the coding framework. The coding scheme employed an iterative process and was refined based on research team discussions and reviewing of data (Braun and Clarke 2022). Once a coding frame had been established, Author X completed coding in NVIVO.

Pseudonyms are used throughout to protect the identities of participants. During the coding process, notes were also taken to develop an in-depth understanding of educators’ perspectives and understanding of climate change. The coding scheme synthesized themes such as the Australian curriculum, outdoor learning opportunities, interdisciplinary teaching, climate change activism, climate change framings, students’ hope and anxiety, educators’ hope and anxiety, challenges of teaching climate change, and motivations for teaching climate change. These themes and codes offered educators unique experiences that can inform challenges and opportunities for engaging/teaching climate change at tertiary/primary schools. The study was approved by the University of Tasmania Human Research Ethics Committee (reference number H26369).

Findings

In this research, a range of personal and systemic factors were found to influence how participants engaged with climate change in their teaching practice. We use three organizing ideas flowing from the coding process to present the findings: understanding climate change, framing climate change and teaching climate change.

Understanding climate change

Many of the participants evaluated their knowledge and understanding of climate change, based on their recall of science. For example, one teacher, Jesse, spoke about his undergraduate degree in science and recounted a study he had completed on ice caps. Almost all participants noted their previous degrees in science, or current engagement with science materials when reflecting on their understanding of climate change. The exception was Chris, who noted that she had not studied science and described not having any professional development on the topic. For Chris, understanding of climate change had developed through her own interest. She described her knowledge in this way: ‘I am definitely not weak, but I wouldn’t say, I’m like a scientist [laughs]’.

In some cases, participants expressed a lack of confidence in climate science knowledge but noted their understanding of social and political dimensions of climate change. For instance, one participant noted that their understanding was ‘structured well enough to be able to explain the [science] basics’, though this participant went on to describe understanding climate change through its societal impacts and the importance of being ‘a participant in democratic society’.

Many of the participants noted the role of ongoing learning to ensure that they remained up to date in their understandings. Information sources such as the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) were discussed, alongside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports:I’ve tried to keep my knowledge up by using things like information from CSIRO, nature briefings and things like that. So, looking at online journals, the latest research and whatever other books and general knowledge comes my way… (Jesse)

While highlighting the necessity of keeping up to date with the latest evidence for their personal and professional interests, participants also expressed a sense of responsibility to do this for their students. Some participants reflected on how they used self-guided professional learning as teachable moments in efforts to educate themselves and their class.

So, when the IPCC sixth report came out, I was unpacking that with my class. So, yeah, that’s where I’m at with that. And it’s an ongoing learning, and I need to stay on top of it for my kids. (Charlie)

When asked to describe their level of understanding about climate change, all participants described having a moderate to strong understanding. While social and/or political dimensions of climate change were mentioned by three of the participants, it was assumed that scientific knowledge was the key disciplinary expertise needed to understand climate change.

Framing climate change

Personally, what I have to do is to try and make sure that I speak hopefully, even though it is not hopeful in my opinion. The direction of things isn’t looking hopeful, but I try and use language that will encourage students to feel empowered and want to make a change and fight for action rather than be like, “OK, well, it’s the end of the world.” So, from my point of view, their concerns about climate change are the reasons why I don’t want to be doing doom and gloom either. So, I try and teach with that idea of action as opposed to just knowing for the sake of knowing and then feeling sad about it. (Andy)

The care that participants have for their students was a key driver of how they framed climate change in teaching. As the above quote from teacher Andy indicates, often the positive messages given to students in classrooms were contrary to participants’ own beliefs and feelings. Others suggested that how they frame climate change in class had changed over time - a reminder that an educator’s practice is not stagnant across their career span. Chris’s change in approach had occurred due to professional and personal growth and insights garnered through experience.

My teaching’s now much more about my students than me. When I first started it was all about me, but I tend to be very gentle and very careful or I’m very focused on hope. (Chris)

While participants emphasised the importance of framing any climate change learning in terms of hopeful messaging, equally, empathy was used as a device to frame climate impacts. Tori explained that framing climate change impacts subjectively, from the perspectives of others, enhances students understanding climate change and supports ‘getting them to think about the fears that people had and why it’s a human response when something’s really complex and hard’. Tori reported considering the variety of emotions people may feel about climate change and challenging students to think through responses from these varied standpoints points.

Teaching climate change

Participants expressed that often they were constrained as to when, how and what they could teach about climate change. Such constrictions were the result of time and timetable pressures at schools, as noted by Kerry and echoed by others: ‘we only really get one period a week at it, which doesn’t allow for really good fluency’. Other barriers noted were the resources available to ‘catch a kid’s attention, capture their heart and their minds…’, which Kylie suggested science education does not do well.

Alongside logistical constraints, participants noted challenges in finding the balance of materials that present the ‘right amount of information that will prompt action as opposed to feeling sad’ (Andy). To navigate this dilemma, Andy reported drawing on the soft skills of classroom management: ‘if they’re starting to ask questions that potentially sound worried or concerned, that’s usually an indicator that you might need to soften what you’ve delivered’. Likewise, Chris suggested that her biggest challenge remained keeping materials positive so as to not overwhelm students and perpetuate feelings of being ‘unsupported by the older generations’.

When integrating climate change education into classrooms, a number of participants mentioned ‘off the shelf’ products, in terms of teaching materials, that they would adapt to suit their contexts. Kerry shared his experience of problem-based learning design and a climate unit that walks students through basic understanding through to deeply engaging with global and local impacts. In particular, he highlighted the value of units including more than 60 climate solutions which students then build upon.

Several participants noted the value that expert speakers have for engaging students. Kerry reflected on why he believed a recent guest speaker was so impactful:

Because, she’s different, she’s not a staff member. I think the kids after a while get a little bit, “You’re [an educator] just a piece of the furniture,” and they don’t always switch on and listen to you…regard you, to be an expert, even though most of us are pretty well qualified these days. (Kerry)

Similarly, participants highlighted the value of ‘real data’, ‘real research’ and hands-on learning in helping to teach about climate change. In teaching about global warming, Kylie reported using a hands-on experiment with balloons and varied carbon dioxide concentrations to demonstrate temperature change. Jesse shared an example from his practice of using CSIRO data and graphs and helping students to translate climate impacts from a global to a local level: ‘Students … are thinking at a very, very big global level, but I think sometimes you need to bring it down to a local level like I mentioned crayfish fisheries, for instance’. Rory similarly emphasised the importance in her teaching of ensuring students were able to move between the local and global, and the individual and societal scale of climate problems and solutions. She noted that:

Instead of the children feeling like they have the weight of what can they do as individuals, which we’ve discussed, and they’ve made a pledge, we’re going to talk about ‘what can the world do?’ As a global citizen, what can everybody do? And working together as a bigger part of the whole, so they’re not feeling that weight on their own shoulders as much, but more what the world is doing, solutions-based technology. (Rory)

While participants shared common frustrations in having the time and resources to teach climate change, all articulated their approaches to ensuring climate change was integrated into scheduled classes. The interviews revealed the significant role that pre-designed learning units have in school curricula as well as the role of community experts and externally created learning resources (e.g. videos, podcasts, films) in engaging students and supporting educators.

Discussion

Focus on science limits climate education

The data presented here indicates that educators assume science is the base discipline for understanding – and effectively teaching about – climate change. There was an assumption that climate change education emerges from a place of science. Statements such as ‘I have a science degree’ were indicative of how educators thought they could engage in climate change teaching. This is in line with curriculum perspectives, that position climate change as a scientific phenomenon/issue (Busch, Henderson, and Stevenson 2019; Stevenson, Nicholls, and Whitehouse 2017). As a result, however, educators who felt less comfortable with scientific information were less likely to engage in climate change teaching. Participants who did not have scientific training felt ill-equipped to teach and talk about climate change with their students. Moreover, while science educators felt more comfortable teaching about climate change, their training left them ill-equipped to respond to student enquiries about other (e.g. social, emotional) dimensions of climate change.

This study indicates that the potential of climate change education is currently limited by its focus on science. Prior research has indicated that science learning alone is not enough to support young people in learning and preparing for climate change (Kelly et al. 2022). More holistic and dialogic approaches to teaching young people about climate change are required (Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles 2020). However, as this study indicates, educators need accessible, practical and holistic climate literacy themselves, if they are to have the confidence to share and teach this information with their students in ways that foster critical thought (and action). Collaborations across teaching subjects/disciplines, as well as outside of curricula (e.g. citizen science, climate games) may also be able to foster the holistic exchanges and learning needed to provide young people with more tangible and ‘real-life’ understandings of climate change.

Knowing and learning climate change

Participants in this study shared a range of strategies that they use to support their teaching practice about climate change, including off-the-shelf curriculum products and expert guest speakers. In addition, participants spoke about the activities they undertake in classrooms to teach climate change. Findings indicate that educators involved in this study could resource themselves with appropriate curriculum and pedagogical materials, and that it was largely the anticipation of difficult affective conversations and the contradiction of personal beliefs (for example, that human-induced climate change may be unstoppable) with hopeful narratives that were the cause of most apprehension.

In conversation about access to climate change resources and information on climate science, participants highlighted their reliance of self-education to stay up-to-date. While for the participants in this study, such an approach was achievable due to their own motivations to teach about climate change, this may be problematic for broader school-based teaching about the topic. Research conducted in 2012-2013 with teachers in Queensland, Australia, found similar stories of self-learning and personal investigation to find suitable resources to support climate change teaching (Nicholls 2016). Nicholls (2016) further found that most teachers in the study relied on incidental conversations rather than teaching climate change explicitly, in part due to a lack of clear curriculum support. Placing the responsibility and choice to engage with climate change on educators has the potential to perpetuate inequitable opportunities for students to engage in climate change education, due to the influence of educators own motivations and beliefs (Almeida 2013). For climate change education to be taught equitably across Australia, as indeed in any national context, a systematic approach to up-skilling and resourcing educators is needed.

However, a lack of professional learning exists for in-service educators to upskill in climate change-related curriculum and pedagogy and similar absences exist in pre-service teacher training (Ferreira et al. 2009). In Australia, constraints on professional learning are particularly problematic in the public (government) school sector, to which Mockler (2022, 166) has argued is a symptom of neoliberalism and the regimes of standards that support ‘instrumental forms of professional learning’ delivery. This raises questions relating to the availability of professional development and in-service training for educators focused on climate change as well as what professional learning should be delivered on climate change, and and how such learning should be delivered (Gore and Rosser 2022).

Navigating climate change affect

As this study indicates, one of the greatest challenges for schools in teaching climate change is that it is a highly emotive subject, both for students and educators. The prevailing cultural norm in western education systems is to downplay subjective experience in favour of factual learning. This norm acts in part to justify what is taught using a lens of objectivity, thus reducing the potential criticism that teaching is politically motivated. It is also a way of maintaining control over groups of young people, who are often portrayed as emotionally volatile and immature (Jones et al. manuscript submitted for publication). Exploration of uncomfortable emotions tends to be confined to the humanities and the arts.

Two of our participants described actively hiding their own negative feelings about climate change and working hard to offer a hopeful framing of the issue. Other participants described looking for signs of worry or concern as indicators that they had gone too far in their teaching about climate change. While these forms of self-imposed emotional constraint are enacted with the very valid aim of empowering and supporting students, it is also likely that uniformly hopeful and positive narratives of climate change in the classroom give students the message that other emotions should be repressed, and not discussed in these spaces. Educators are not trained as therapists or counsellors, and so it is understandable that they do not wish to stray into emotional spaces that they may see as beyond their remit. However, this does not mean that students will not themselves experience negative emotions about climate change – many studies show that a majority of young people feel pessimistic about the future (Denniss and Davison 2015) and reveal how these emotions can motivate climate action (Bright and Eames 2022). Furthermore, young people feel a sense of betrayal by older people (Jones and Davison 2021; Jones n.d.).

Implications

While the findings of this study support previous research that points to educators’ science-orientated understanding of climate change, insights relating to how educators approach the affective dimensions of engaging in climate change teaching are a novel contribution of this study. Educators were deeply challenged in framing climate change with positivity and hopefulness for change, due to the necessity of negotiating and navigating complex personal emotions alongside the emotions of students. Supporting educators with appropriate training and resources so they feel equipped to have ‘hard conversations’ with students about climate change needs to be a priority.

Specifically, we suggest that schools are appropriate spaces to describe, respect and explore feelings about climate change, and that this could be done either through further educator training, or in partnership with counsellors. Such approaches could build on existing pedagogies that harness students’ emotional reactions to historical injustice (see Zartner 2019). One example of recent teaching practice that does not shy away from uncomfortable emotions is the history of colonisation of indigenous peoples. For instance, the Tasmanian educational resource ‘From Gumnuts to Buttons’ powerfully evokes shock, anger, and sadness by helping learners to see European invasion through the eyes of Aboriginal inhabitants (Tasmanian Department of Education, Children and Young People 2018). By evoking and recognising these ‘negative’ feelings, the teaching engages students’ sense of fairness and empathy for others. Similarly, recognising and respecting the spectrum of emotional responses to climate change can help educators to develop students’ collective motivation to change the status quo, honour their feelings of injustice, and foster empathy for the people, places and species most affected by climate change.

In addition, we highlight in this paper the importance of creating spaces for educators to share their experiences and insights from undertaking climate change education. Involvement in this study was a way for educators to advocate for what they believed in - better integration of climate change in schools, greater support for educators, and more opportunities for students to learn holistically about climate change solutions and climate action. In this sense, we draw attention to the emancipatory and advocacy potential that research can afford those that it seeks to engage as an important outcome in and of itself.

There are important limitations to acknowledge in relation to this study. First, the experiences of educators presented in this paper cannot be regarded as representative of all educators, or indeed, in one school/grade level/discipline. We acknowledge that the participants in this study voluntarily engaged in the research and were already involved in initiatives that support climate change education and therefore, reflect the views of educators who, largely by choice, are engaging in this space. Second, we acknowledge that this study was undertaken before the transition to National Curriculum V9.0. Our early analysis (Beasy et al. 2022) would suggest that climate change remains on the periphery to core curriculum teaching, though it is not yet clear how this new curriculum framework will influence educators’ experiences of teaching climate change. Further research will be required to investigate whether this translates into more – and more multiperspectival – climate change education in Australian schools.

Finally, while this study was undertaken within an Australian context, we advocate that our findings advance understandings about the complexities of ‘doing’ climate change education for educators, and that insights are transferrable to other contexts. Delivering holistic climate change education should be a key priority for all education sectors – teachers must be equipped and supported to deliver this complex and emotional topic to children and learners of all ages.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.