Teachers and climate change education A Q&A with Canada’s foremost expert
DR. ELLEN FIELD is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Educa- tion at Lakehead University-Orillia, where she teaches climate change education and environmental education. Her research focuses on the policy and practice of climate change education. She is widely regarded as Canada’s foremost expert in climate change education in the K–12 sector. The ATA Magazine sat down with Dr. Field to discuss her research and her message for teachers and system leaders. (Responses have been edited for length and clarity.) Q. What role can schools and teachers play in addressing such a complex, global issue like climate change? A. The data has been clear on climate change for over 50 years. Have our systems changed accord- ingly? No. So we need to actually learn our way through it, and I think one of the ways that we can learn differently is by learning in schools that it’s okay to change our position based on the information we’re learning. So the classroom can be this very powerful intervention to build some of the capacities that we know the world needs more than ever. At the same time, young people are already hearing about cli- mate change in the news and
slowly shifts over time. But teachers don’t need to wait. They can integrate content and update their practices much faster, and our research shows that motivated teachers do and are teaching climate in subjects where there may not be direct curriculum links. Math, health and art are subjects where we find teachers bringing in climate content. Teachers also have tons of experience in terms of how to scaffold a lesson that’s appropriate for the students in their room based on the subject they’re teaching. I think we sometimes forget that teachers are very good at planning, very good at thinking about who the students in the room are and what their needs are, so often they just need a little bit of support or professional development to integrate it. Probably after six hours of support,
Action-oriented • Use teaching methods that are partici- patory and place-based. • Focus on collective action. Justice-focused • Link and strategize with other justice-related issues. • Address who benefits and who is most affected by our collective inaction. A. There are many climate change teach- ing resources available. Our research has shown that when it comes to teaching climate change, most teachers create their own lesson plans or pick aspects from already developed resources from environmental nonprofits. I think it is important to think about their subject, their students and their local experiences of climate change, and then look for climate activities that will align. See "Recommended Resources" on page 28. you could have a lot of teachers feeling a lot more confident. Q. Where can teachers turn for this type of support if it’s not available through their employer?
increasingly experiencing its effects in their daily lives. When schools fail to address climate change in substantive ways, it creates cognitive dissonance, sending the message that what students are living through doesn’t matter in their formal education. For schools to be responsive, they need to respond to climate change across multiple dimensions: integrating it into curriculum, updating school policies and practices, preparing for climate-related emergencies, and helping students understand both the urgency of the crisis and the pathways to action. This includes building skills for participating in low-carbon economies and build- ing resilient communities. Q. Here in Alberta, many teach- ers are in a situation where the students come from households that rely on fossil fuels for their livelihood. How can they address climate change in that type of setting? A. I think approaching it as an inquiry project and really focusing on an openness to learning. There needs to be an agreement among students that the learning is not going to fall into personal attacks, and that opinions can be ex- pressed, and the learning space is a place to really investigate and learn more about these topics that are
very political and very controversial at times. You don’t want to necessarily be positioning that this is the absolute way to see an issue. You can talk about the consensus of the science, but when it comes to implementa- tion of policy and projects, these are challenging things and you do have to weigh environmental, social and economic impacts. These are complex topics, so they need complex pedagogy and processes for students to be able to learn that complexity. As soon as we start to flatten it and say, well, we all have to be antipipeline or we all have to be propipeline, that’s problematic. So we need to cultivate that willingness to learn and also to learn from each other and to do more research and have flexibility in our position based on what we’re learning. Q. Teachers in the K–12 system are required to teach the curricu- lum that’s created by government. Given this constraint, what is your message to teachers who are con- cerned about climate change? A. Our curriculum is still quite dated, and I think we need to find whatever windows we can as teachers to be responsive to all of the ways that life in the 21st century is changing. It’s often through motivated teachers that this happens, and then policy
Scientific consensus “Human activities, principally through emissions of green- house gases, have unequivocally caused global warming …” “Global fossil fuel use will need to decline substantially by 2050 to limit warming to 2°C, and it must decline substantially by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5°C.”
Modelling shows that limiting warming to 1.5°C requires immediate, rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Learning dimensions of climate change education Cross-disciplinary research suggests climate change education should focus on the following learning dimensions. Cognitive • Teach the scientific consensus on climate change. • Foster critical-thinking skills and media literacy. Socio-emotional
More money is being invested in fossil fuel development than cli- mate adaptation and mitigation.
Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on an individual behaviour’s basis will not result in humanity collectively keeping warming to 1.5 degrees. Instead, it requires government and cor- porate leadership.
• Incorporate socio-emotional con- siderations to overcome feelings of ecoanxiety, denial and inaction.
Ȥ Source: UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Ȥ Source: Responding to Climate Change: A Primer for K–12 Education .
ATA Magazine Fall 2025
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THE ALBERTA TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION
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