Unit information: Climate Change and Education in 2020/21

Unit name	Climate Change and Education
Unit code	EDUCM0090
Credit points	20
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Professor. Keri Facer
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Education
Faculty	Faculty of Social Sciences and Law

Description including Unit Aims

We live in a time that is increasingly concerned with the complex issue of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a 2018 report that we had only 12 years to limit catastrophic climate change. Yet we continue to live in a world where climate warming rapidly accelerates, with unprecedented numbers of wildfires, water crises, destructive storm surges and increased melting of ice sheets. These changes have wider implications, including health impacts such as ‘eco-anxiety’ and social repercussions of internal climate migration and worldwide protests calling for urgent action. Education in and beyond schools can play a crucial role in shaping how we understand and respond to climate change, influencing and being influenced by a range of social, political and environmental forces.

This unit aims to:

• Provide students with conceptual and multidisciplinary frameworks for critically and systematically understanding climate change, and its social and environmental complexity.
• Foster students’ critical understanding of how aspects of education (including curriculum, pedagogy, learning spaces, assessment and technology) can respond to climate change challenges.
• Provide a deep understanding of the wider role that schools and other learning organisations play in developing informed, critical and hopeful actions that adapt to and shape the world around us.

Develop the critical thinking skills students require for generating their own action plans in response to climate change.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an in-depth understanding of a range of ways of knowing, learning about and teaching about climate change from a range of critical perspectives across the social and natural sciences
2. Critically consider the role of education, schools and other learning organisations in responding to the complexities of social, political, emotional and environmental issues related to climate change
3. Examine and analyse how different spaces, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and technology are implicated in educational responses to climate change
4. Develop an in-depth plan of action set in an educational or learning organisation/context that responds to climate change challenges

Teaching Information

Classes will involve a combination of lectures, class discussion, case studies, debates, critical analysis of key readings and group presentations.

Assessment Information

The assessment will have two parts.

• Critical reflection on climate change and education - Students will choose a particular area of focus, relevant to the unit content and their interests and/or context, and produce a written summary of key debates and issues related to this focus. (2000 words equivalent, 50%, ILO 1,2,3,4)
• Action plan - Following on from their critical reflection, students will develop an action plan for education that recognises and critically responds to the challenges of climate change. This might be an action plan at an institutional, organisational, classroom, or community level. It will include an element of an individual action plan and also go beyond this to think about how a particular organisation or community might respond to the complexities of climate change. (2000 words equivalent, 50%, ILO 1,2,3,4)

There will be also be opportunities for formative assessment provided to students. Specifically, students will develop and present a poster of their proposal for the action plan they develop for the final assessment. This poster will provide formative critical feedback from peers and tutors that can support the remaining parts of the assessment. Additional formative assessment will also arise from group discussions, debates and oral critical analysis of key readings.

Reading and References

Corcoran P.B., Weakland, J. & Wals, A. (Eds.) (2017). Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education. Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers.

Facer, K. (2019). Climate Change: how should public education respond?, FORUM, 61(2), 207-216. http://doi.org/10.15730/forum.2019.61.2.207

Hawkey, K., James, J. & C. Tidmarsh. (2016). “Greening the Curriculum? History Joins’ the Usual Suspects’ in Teaching Climate Change.” Teaching History 162: 32–41.

Kahn, P. (1999). The Human Relationship with Nature. MIT Press - http://cognet.mit.edu/book/human-relationship-nature

Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight lectures on the new climatic regime. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Leichenko, R and O’Brien, K (2019) Climate and Society, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Stevenson, R., Whitehouse, H.L., and Nicholls, J. (2017) ‘What is climate change education?’ Curriculum Perspectives. 37 (1), pp 67-71.

Wibeck, V. (2014). Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change: Some lessons from recent literature. Environmental Education Research, 20(3), 387-411.