Introducing the 3T-Approach to Climate Change Literacy

This essay summarizes key findings from an interdisciplinary project on the role of literary fiction in fostering climate literacy. It discusses prevalent conceptions of the cognitive and emotional impact of reading and suggests the beneficial potential of fiction through the lens of discourse awareness, critical empathy, and systems thinking. Moving from theoretical insight to practical implementation, we describe discourse awareness, critical empathy, and systems thinking in our own “3T-Approach to Climate Change Literacy”: an approach in which teachers draw on a combination of texts, textures, and tasks when planning and conducting pedagogical interventions for climate literacy.