International Perspectives on Climate Change Education

Education is a key to the advancement of environmental sustainability. Climate change literacy is a complex topic where external factors play a key role. External factors, namely the ongoing debate around whether climate change is real poses a significant challenge to the delivery of a climate change curriculum. The purpose of the following article is to extend previous research and consider how climate change might be taught in higher education institutions around the world taking into account the different international perspectives as well as the socioeconomic disparities specific to each culture. Drawing from survey and interview data, distinguished scholars from Brazil, China, Germany, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the United States of America provided detailed analyses of the social context of climate change and their visions of an education for sustainability. Results indicated that the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change agreement was a notable contextual feature across the countries studied. In addition, the scholar’s visions of an education for sustainability were broad and diverse. Scholars cited an array of pedagogical techniques and curricular design approaches including critical thinking and engagement with skepticism, considerations of the physical and social-scientific drivers of climate change, research-to-practice projects, fieldwork and experimentation, and interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exchange. The implications for the practice of education for sustainable development are discussed. In particular, it is argued that multicultural and interdisciplinary insights, perspectives, and manifestations of climate change are integral dimensions to the pedagogy of climate change.