Climate Literacy Guide

Listening Session

A discussion with California stakeholders held on May 30, 2023

Recommended citation: ECCLPs. (2023). ECCLPs Climate Literacy Guide Listening Session. ECCLPs. https://ecclps.net/noaa2023

Climate Change Education

Schools are a key platform for climate change education (CCE), which requires the participation of not just schools but entire communities. NOAA and ECCLPs met with stakeholders, from teachers and learners to community members, to understand what is driving and impeding CCE and to assess the alignment of CCE resources with stakeholders’ needs.

The discussions revealed that CCE and action efforts in school are often driven by the interest, motivation and concerns of learners and teachers, especially when they have experienced the effects of climate change firsthand. However, the perceived lack of agency, power dynamics between teachers and learners and the lack of coherent approaches impede effective CCE.

“We've found that informing students of these issues can cause frustration or despair but involving them in solving these problems, in their own way, leads to empowered students who eagerly look for future challenges.”

-School Administrator

“My students know about the California droughts and forest fires. They take care of birds and animals by leaving out water for them. Direct action helps empower them.”

-Pre-school Teacher

Teachers’ and Students’ Concerns

Stakeholders' primary concerns about climate change can be seen in the following responses:

Teachers revealed worrying about human impacts on the environment and the lack of urgent action commensurate with the crisis at hand.
Teachers noted facing a lack of support from their schools, administrators and districts.
Teachers expressed concern over how to teach students to deal with misinformation, along with how to elicit hope and action, while administrators reflected on how to enable teachers to help learners develop agency.
There were concerns about how to teach about climate change in developmentally appropriate ways. At the same time, teachers shared their learners’ concerns, which in earlier grades focused on suffering, fear and frustration and, in later grades, focused on more complex causes and solutions. Across grade levels, teachers noted that learners were concerned about local impacts while they themselves admitted the need for greater awareness of their learners' concerns.

Teaching CEE: Challenges and Needs

Teachers reported being comfortable overall with basic climate justice topics, including basic mechanics and processes, key environmental issues, misinformation and community-led action, which they address primarily through science classes. Nonetheless, they noted further needs for teaching effectively for climate justice.

The lack of specific CCE curriculum was framed as both a gap and an opportunity, in that it allows teachers the flexibility to integrate CCE topics where and how they see fit based on learners’ needs. However, this, along with the lack of resources, especially justice-oriented ones, leaves teachers responsible for creating content or adapting what exists for younger grades.

Teachers also noted the need for more outdoor time, especially for students to apply what they are learning, as well as for schools to model positive behaviors, such as through reducing plastic usage. These efforts, however, are limited by the time and funding available.

The need for community-based resources and action hubs were mentioned to provide CCE content, support action-oriented CCE, and enable teachers to elicit learners’ knowledge through problem-solving and modeling care (see figure below).

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What do teachers need to know and be able to do to teach about the climate crisis?

Listening session participants, who included teachers, administrators, students, non-formal educators and community members, shared similar requests for solutions-oriented CCE which addresses how to tackle the most pressing challenges (35% of responses).

They also expressed the need for foundational knowledge on what climate change is (26%), what the effects are (14%), and understanding the causes (10%). Regarding what we need to be able to do about climate change, civic engagement and cooperation was most frequently named (32% of responses), followed by solutions and larger-scale action (24%) and using data and information (21%). Taking action, protecting our well-being and rights, changing our diets and food systems and exercising consumer choice sustainably were named as well (each less than 10%).

Regarding the Climate Literacy Guide created to support and advance climate literacy, participants shared that they named wanting to see a more explicit focus on how climate change is disproportionately harming individuals and communities (27% of content responses), stronger centering of indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge (18%), and a greater focus on re-establishing our connection with nature (16%).

Moreover, sixteen percent (16%) of responses noted a lack of a focus on equity and justice. Seventy-one percent (71%) of these specifically mentioned environmental justice, while one in ten responses noted the need to establish and recognize motivations for climate action. These included understanding, concerns and frustrations, and directly addressing the importance of climate change education.

*Special thanks to NOAA for this collaboration and all those who attended and/or submitted written comments to provide key insights and feedback to the national climate literacy guide!

Access the summary report from this joint listening session with California stakeholders