Climate Change and Higher Education

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Social movements offer attractive theoretical frameworks for introducing climate change education.

Environmental education has become critically needed at all school levels. In previous articles, we’ve discussed how to present data for ecological awareness in the classroom. However, we also need to reflect on the curriculum and execution of environmentalist education. Assessing the concept and frameworks is crucial for a more effective didactic effort of the subject.

An excellent first step would be to start managing environmental education as part of a general curriculum, not just one more point of the science syllabus. Even if we need some scientific basis to understand aspects of the subject, many social edges also intersect it. Teachers would benefit from approaching the class from those intersections.

As explained by Stanford Associate Professor in Education Patricia Bromley and environmental student activist Sebastian Andrews in a presentation prepared for Stanford University and mentioned in the Washington Post, Bromley and her team have seen growing interest in anti-racist and gender-equity social movements. However, at the same time, she warns about a lack of attention to environmental care and global warming issues. Thus, instead of downplaying the social movements that seek equity, this group of Stanford professors and students propose to leverage their momentum to draw attention to environmental awareness, understanding that the environment is both a social and scientific matter.

The environment is also a social issue

The pandemic has been an indisputable marker of socioeconomic inequality. This social factor is critical to understanding who gets affected the most in a health crisis and why. Natural and climate disasters are no different. According to the Stanford team’s presentation, while some scientific context is necessary to understand environmental problems, civil action and citizen participation can create relief mechanisms for our current ecological concerns.

The basis for the theory and execution of civil actions and citizen participation already exists in social sciences textbooks and lectures; it would only be necessary to adapt them into an environmentalist context. This didactic approach might be the best example of why the natural and social sciences work better together than separately.

How are universities approaching the issue?

The epistemic proposal to make environmental education a topic of interest is a path to a solution. In places where climate change has already been a direct cause of natural disasters, we also need a strategy to raise awareness from educational and administrative perspectives. Not only to teach an environmentalist curriculum but to make the most of it to ensure the campus is more sustainable and safe. The author, teacher, and lecturer Bryan Alexander explains different strategies a university could take, including adaptation.

In this approach, the institution recognizes the magnitude of the environmental crisis threat and seeks to modify its internal dynamics accordingly. Depending on the university’s situation, this could involve physical work, such as building barriers that protect the campus from rising bodies of water or desert storms or elevating buildings as a precaution against flooding.

On the academic front, it can also mean increasing research on climate change and adding environmental subjects to the curriculum. On a larger scale, it involves coordination between the university and the general population to create and maintain the continuity of ecological care campaigns. Other measures that fall within this approach are those relevant to remote education and work, to reduce the environmental damage of mass mobility.

Does your university have environmental education programs? Do you think they are necessary? What measures has your university put in place to improve sustainability on campus and mitigate its overall ecological footprint? Let us know in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta