Abstract
Following in IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, international education policies like UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum Guidance have underscored global climate justice towards amending “historical and ongoing inequities across intersecting environmental, social, and economic dimensions.” However, a local/global separation persists in climate change education, which zeroes in on either place-based realities or interconnected systems - or links them atomistically without recognizing their mutual constitution. To remediate this divide, this study considers education through Bosch’s (2025) relational souths framework, which intersects geographical with structural analysis, considering how people are positioned within global systems of inequality. This paper draws on research with six secondary school teachers internationally (from Brazil, Morocco, Qatar, Canada), who participated in co-design of a climate unit for a global networked classroom. Teachers were invited to ground climate change education in local knowledges, languages and conditions; consider how their contexts were linked through climate interactions with earth, air, fire, and water (as organizing elements); and work together with researchers and one another, other beings, and the elements to develop an inquiry-based unit to be taken up in each of their locales - a main outcome of this project. We draw on meeting records and audio recordings, semi-structured interviews with teachers, and the co-designed unit to make practical recommendations for navigating tensions among knowledge systems and contexts in climate change education. Finally, we articulate ways that localized knowledges, places, and agents can be collectively woven into a broader understanding of the planetary condition, fostering pathways towards translocal solidarity in climate action through education.
Presenters
Carrie KarsgaardAssistant Professor, Education, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia, Canada Sheena Wilson
Professor, Media, Communications & Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada Lynette Shultz
Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research, University of Alberta, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Technical, Political, and Social Responses
KEYWORDS
Education, Climate Justice, Teachers, Greening Education, Co-design, Climate Change Education
