hello everyone uh welcome to this event
today uh i just saw in the title slide
but i'll say it again this is how does
climate crisis
how does the climate crisis change the
curriculum innovating in education and
the future of work
this is an event which has been
organized by the climate crisis thinking
in the humanities and social sciences
network which is part of the oxford
research center in humanities
and this event is also part of a series
of events of podcasts of panel
discussions that are part of the uk
university's top 26 networks innovation
showcase so today with cop 26 kicking
off it's a great time to be
part of this group my name is bill
finnegan i am a doctoral student at the
school of geography and the environment
at the university of oxford
and my research is looking at climate
change education and also school
sustainability for secondary schools in
the uk
and i'm really here just to kind of
moderate this panel we've got a great
group of people and um
the format is is basically we're going
to start with some introductions kind of
brief introductions from each of the
panelists and then we have a series of
questions we're really approaching this
very informally um
kind of direct questions to particular
members of the panel but then anyone who
has anything to add can can jump in at
any time
and um for anyone joining us for the
webinar um there's a q a function so put
any questions you have for the panel
there we'll be keeping track of that and
then towards the end of the panel we'll
try and bring in as many of the audience
questions as we can
um so for the introductions i think i
should be easiest if i just go down
the list as it appears for me and zoom
so i think we'll probably go through
kind of
first name alphabetical if that's okay
so amanda do you mind starting just with
an introduction again
uh
who you are where you're coming from and
a bit of context like how it relates to
the topic of of today's session
sure um hi everyone i'm amanda power i'm
an associate professor of medieval
history in oxford um i'm also the
co-convener of the the climate crisis
thinking in the humanities and social
sciences network um so
my research has increasingly been about
how um having a historical background to
to thinking about how we got into the
situation that we're in and why we're
having trouble dealing with it
my research is sort of partly about
disinterring that and and making it
speak usefully both in educational and
other contexts um
i think that's perhaps enough for me for
now
um aryan do you mind introducing
yourself as well
sure are in walls i'm i'm located in the
netherlands at the moment at wageningen
university life science university
and i'm also a unesco chair in social
learning for sustainable development
my background is in environmental and
sustainability education
and
one of the key themes at the moment that
we are working with is what we call the
whole school or all institution approach
to sustainability so we're looking for
more integrated
approaches to anchoring sustainability
meaningfully
in curriculum in in the school as a as a
as an operation but also in school
community relationships and
finding new ways of teaching and
learning that are more relational that
are more holistic
that can also tackle
problems like climate change in a more
systemic way looking at the root causes
also looking at new kinds of
competencies and qualities that we need
to do this in a good way
great thank you
um james will you introduce yourself
hi everybody i'm james robson i'm deputy
director of scope that's the center for
skills knowledge and organizational
performance at the department of
education at oxford i'm also a lecturer
in higher education my work focuses on
structures policies and political
economies of higher and tertiary
education systems
with a particular focus on the
intersection between education
employment and sustainability
along with skills supply and demand
research ecosystems and social justice
i'm really excited to be part of this
discussion today
i think the curriculum and education and
training systems more broadly should sit
at the heart of any conversation about
sustainability and the climate crisis
and
you know some of my work focuses on this
in terms of skill supply and demand in
terms of looking at what we mean by
green jobs and green skills and how
education and training systems can
supply the skills that are required by a
changing future but also how we can
envision new futures and new ways of
working
to actually drive change at a systemic
level
great thanks kim
hello i'm kim paul green i'm a freelance
sustainability educator based here in
oxford
my background is in science i was a
biochemist once upon a time um in
business where i used to work on
sustainability consultancy work for
businesses and in education where i run
an education business uh primarily
focused on the international
baccalaureate deployment programme
um so now currently my two main roles
are that i run a teen summer school on
sustainability at the environmental
change institute at the university here
in oxford
um and i'll tell to talk a little bit
about that uh later and i'm also the
youth educator in residence at white and
woods which is the university's research
woodlands and i'm responsible for sort
of bringing groups of students into the
woods and talking to them about
biodiversity climate and just
enjoying being out there
um i'm also working with local schools
and teachers here in oxford on a range
of sustainability projects um currently
we're doing one on sustainable fashion
i'm gonna do a fashion shoot at the
natural history museum next week um and
one on planting for pollinators and and
all sorts of different things there's
lots going on in the teacher and school
um environment here
thanks great
um rahul can you introduce yourself as
well
uh
rahul chopra i currently
lead and
coordinate a global climate change
education project of the international
union of biological sciences
this project which is called drop xu
which stands for transdisciplinary
research oriented pedagogy for improving
climate studies and understanding is a
project which seeks to kind of integrate
climate change education
into the curriculum of many many
different subjects
uh in addition to sort of you know
you know doing some work with with the
teachers across the world
uh i also have i'm the convener of what
is called the national resource center
on climate change at isr pune which is a
university in india
our job there was
to essentially create a mooc for teacher
training and we titled this climate
change guide for teachers of all
disciplines
and even though it is not really part of
the curriculum as a separate standalone
subject
we got several thousand people who
registered for this course
so i think these are the two main hats
related to you know today's discussion
that that i currently wear uh in
addition to this i had founded an
environmental studies undergraduate
program at a liberal arts college in
pune it was the first of its kind in
india it's called flame university
my background and training in the
beginning was from the university of
chicago but it was in geophysical
sciences but i was exposed to climate
change understanding and the science
from the big guys there uh very very
excited to be here and learn and talk to
everybody on this particular panel thank
you for having me
great thanks and um and then to complete
the panel i'm stephen can you introduce
yourself as well
thanks very much and yeah thanks joseph
for having me i'm really excited to be
here and have a really important
discussion and these great people my
background is a secondary school
geography teacher and i now work as a
geography teacher educator so training
people to become secondary school
geography teachers and i'm primarily
interested in questions about um subject
knowledge and about teachers subject
knowledge and particularly where they go
to to get the information that they're
then using to teach and i see that
research being located at the interface
between the academic discipline and
school subject
of geography but also this relationship
between disciplines and school subjects
in general so ask these questions about
how knowledge is transformed and how
these massive disciplines are made
accessible and to much younger people
and one of the recent projects that
we've been involved with and with
colleagues including um rahul and james
and others and on climate change
education features in india has asked
this question about information for
teaching about climate change education
of educators in india across a range of
scales from um kind of primary context
right through to postgraduate context
and across many different states it's
then kind of raised really interesting
questions and has really been useful for
understanding the ways in which and some
of those kind of comparative aspects of
this and and some of the big ways in
which particular kind of knowledge
production centers um are dominating in
this whole debate um but yeah that's it
for me
great um so in this conversation we were
really going to start with that kind of
that central question which was kind of
in the name of the event which is
how does the climate crisis change the
way
we teach to change education so
um you know we're gonna start with
amanda but i think we'll also bring in
steve on that and again it's thinking
about how each subject is conceptualized
taught related to other subject areas
um so amanda do you mind as you convened
us especially do you mind starting us
off on that question surely um
so i think i thought i might start off
at a a sort of stepping back um
sort of far away from the curriculum to
think about how we conceptualize our
disciplines um and then come a little
bit closer to it um so just a few
general remarks to start with i mean it
i think it's very striking that if
education had begun from say the early
1990s to reflect deepening scientific
understanding around climate change
more than half the current working and
voting population would have been
equipped at school to understand what's
happening and to make informed choices
in all areas of their life including
politically and that would have been
building incrementally generation after
generation um since that well over the
last 30 40 years
since this wasn't done in most countries
and in most disciplines
we're increasingly finding ourselves in
in the shocking position that the the
mainstream teaching curriculum for most
subjects
barely acknowledges or addresses
planetary realities and i'm aware that
this is a starker feeling for someone
working in the humanities where it
really doesn't and there are subjects
that that do address it um much better
and there are ways in which individual
teachers and individual schools have
tried to introduce programs that do do
this um but i think on the level of um
educational policy there's still a a
a a great rupture between
the world that
that scientists and and and many other
researchers describe and and the sort of
a future that people are being educated
to to enter into and i suppose that was
that reflection that was partly um
producing this panel
um so i think it's it's probably not
putting it too strongly to say that that
we are still educating generations to
live and what's an increasingly
threadbare fantasy of growth stability
and opportunity
um and that like most of the adult
population today students coming out of
schools are still lacking the emotional
conceptual and ethical equipment to deal
with with this real world um and i think
in terms of how um
politicians
particularly but but many others sort of
see education as it is about competition
to get the best results rather than
collaboration um valuing educational
outcomes by monetary earnings
predominantly and teaching students i
mean this is perhaps particularly a
problem in my field to be proud of their
country rather than to be critical and
useful citizens of it and i think these
these are probably sort of roots to
disaster in terms of producing adaptable
societies but i think also the the very
bleak picture of student mental health
is is very likely to be a product of all
these factors
um so i think if we if we're wanting to
think about how to reconceptualize i've
drawn this darkly i appreciate um but
but in order to um start thinking about
how we would
reconceptualize beyond adapting the
current curriculums like how if we were
starting a new
set of school quickly from scratch what
how would we want to build it
um i think recognizing the roots of the
existing disciplines and what they've
they've sort of grown up to teach is
quite important
so i mean i think it's it's fact that
most modern academic disciplines um as
well as our ways of thinking about
teaching and producing knowledge are
actually very old um and they were
formulated within a conceptual and a
governing framework that invested humans
with
uh with um
a sense of domination and agency over
environments um and was very interested
in developing that human domination um
over environments and other humans
and i think built into that was the
sense that truths were produced by human
investigations um
and that was something that particular
types of humans were uniquely equipped
to do whereas others were objects of
that knowledge production and as
education broadened in the population is
still a sense that it's a top-down
business of teaching um
groups of people who need to learn
knowledge that have been produced by
others rather than making a more
participatory type of education
um and i mean historically speaking
people who are closer to environments
whether they're barbarians or peasants
or rustics or indigenous populations
were always seen as people to be taught
things rather than people whose
knowledge would be valuable and so a lot
of this is is flipping
the assumption that the closer you are
to to natural environments the less you
actually know that's important for our
societies
um
so i think a lot of the sort of core
paradigms um
need rethinking and and the more we can
involve
students in those sorts of free thinking
i think the more exciting and more
engaging they're going to find their
education um so if we stop thinking that
that development and modernization um
for the sake of it are the most
important things for a society to be
doing and we start thinking about
sustainable practices involving students
in in those questions and those
knowledge production um you know there's
um those kind of radical transformations
to how we even produce knowledge i think
um
would represent an important paradigm
shift
um
a bit more in in slightly more concrete
terms um i think for the humanities it's
going to be very important to restore
the environmental context to all all the
disciplines so at the moment we do have
a very significant rupture between the
world as we think it is or we used to
think it was and a very unsettling
future
and a sort of
disturbing and unsettling present
um how can we bring those things back
together so that we can understand the
present situation is very very deeply
rooted in human history and human values
um
human storytelling um
the ways that that humans have sort of
put together their sense of self there
isn't really a rupture between
the very dominant modes of understanding
ourselves and and
the very long history through which
these things grew um
so
i think um
to do that one needs to
develop new forms of interdisciplinarity
so bringing sciences and geographies and
humanities together um to learn how we
look at these planetary past climates
volcanic activities anthropogenic
impacts on microregional ecologies
looking at
pathogens and bacteria disease and its
impacts all these things can move easily
between sciences and and humanities
fields to give us a much richer
understanding of how the planet works
um teaching students to think on
different scales from the ones they're
used to i think is really crucial
um
and i think humanities can just two
final points before i hand over to steve
i think in in humanities um thinking
about how human societies have
experienced and responded to both very
catastrophic environmental changes and
smaller scale ones that are a bit
difficult to pick up in the time but
incrementally have a big effect so the
little ice age is the sort of classic
example of a sort of shift in
environmental conditions that did
require different forms of resilience
and provided societies with different
opportunities
um and
i think the final thing that i'd want to
say is that humanity's subjects um when
they're radically reconceived i think
can offer this sort of
emotional and ethical teaching that that
is going to be really crucial i think
for future generations so
there isn't much that hasn't happened
yet um in history that um can happen to
individuals so that the ways in which
we'll experience loss and
destabilization and the ways in which we
might be able to gather ourselves to
work together um
to to live sustainably to have hope um
to see things in terms of collective
benefit rather than individual
competition
all that materials there it's in their
historical experience it's in literature
it's in music it's in poetry it's all
there to be accessed and and mobilized
as a kind of living cultural tradition
um and i'm
not meaning just in the west i mean it
all all countries all peoples have their
ways of talking if these are sort of
brought back as um as kind of
living ways of thinking and inhabiting
the world rather than something that you
study and get examined on i think all
these would be very important
transformative um
ways to approach education
steve
hey well thank you very much
that's not to expect just so many
different areas and to pick up on i know
when bill was kind of framing that
question there were a couple of
different ways in which i was kind of
keen to think through particularly
starting with geography and then working
out in what ways does this one subject
then relate to other subjects and and
how does climate change do something
different to that relationship and i
guess the way in which you've kind of
framed that about
these past things having happened and
there's nothing new that's gonna happen
that hasn't already that kind of
fundamental question is the climate
crisis something that is then
fundamentally new to education and
transforming to education in a way that
actually kind of other things haven't
been um or their big continuities with
other kind of debates and other
challenges and other problems that
education's kind of needed to impact and
needed to address and i guess for me the
way in which um the subjects are
addressing this question is a really
helpful kind of point to
kind of go into that conversation and so
the way in which you might think of
subjects being these kind of
big senses of knowledge production that
have generated some really kind of like
incredible insights into
various different things that we
experience and engage with and so on
but have got also this really
problematic past that looking in a
particular context of geography and
doing that from um kind of an oxford
context there's been so many debates
recently about the ways in which these
massive figures in oxford geography
people like alfred mckinder had
particular really racialized and racist
views of the world and of geographies to
produce these imperial systems means
that we've got i mean what are these
ripper cash and colleagues have called
the kind of i'm drawing on mignola's
work the shadow and shine of
disciplinary knowledge and of the kind
of knowledge that you might teach in
school
and because of the ways in which these
debates about climate change are then
tied up in these big disciplinary
systems then actually those kind of
racialized ways in which that knowledge
has been framed and also those just
massive stories that have been told
about countries and about development
and about economics and about progress
and all of the different ways in which
we've kind of envisioned and
conceptualized the ways in which
countries might interact and i mean you
mentioned amanda a few times this notion
of kind of competition and particularly
in terms of education kind of completely
buying into that and completely taking
on that narrative about um really just
kind of other forms of exceptionalism
that you want education to then produce
people who are able to kind of compete
and to win and so on and and so for me
the big ways in which this disciplinary
knowledge is is tied up in all of these
different conversations and means that
kind of some of the work of untangling
that and some of the work of kind of
speaking back to those um disciplines
and those subjects
and means that there's just this
brilliant opportunity through climate
change education to do some of that work
and i mean you mentioned this notion of
kind of critical um citizens and
critical people who are able to then and
ask these kind of really hard questions
and and i think some of those big themes
that you brought up would be really
useful ways in which and we might think
of subjects kind of interacting so these
big questions about scale and about time
and about certainty and uncertainty and
a couple of and really interesting
things that have kind of come up through
the recent work that we've been doing
with um teachers in india so one
particular question um kind of on a
temporal
layer so we've got this massive thing
climate change that we might understand
over kind of vast geologic
time but then there's also experience in
this kind of the immediacy and there's
one kind of way in which teacher was
describing the real challenge of
engaging students um
so i think that's a really kind of
polarized thing that some students kind
of incredibly um motivated and are
really kind of um advocating for big
change in curriculum and most others
like with any subject kind of not and
completely disengaged and and this
teacher then kind of coming to this
point where they say um i can't get them
to think about it until the ac breaks
the air conditioning breaks and then
bang it's too hot and suddenly it's this
kind of embodied experience thing that
then is kind of ah this is an issue and
i think you've seen that a bit in the
ways in which various different and
wildfires and others have been reported
over the last kind of year or so you've
had these kind of moments where there's
been these extreme weather events
that then has kind of forced the
conversation and has meant that kind of
um some strong kind of denialist forms
have been much harder but then for the
teachers then got this really tricky
dilemma how do we deal with describing
something that is big changes over time
and relating that to these immediate
embodied things and that question i mean
there's obviously been lots of work done
in kind of
climate science and looking at kind of
the science around weather attribution
and the really kind of quite complex
ways in which and there's no
probabilities that are down being kind
of thrown to say oh this event was kind
of like three times more likely a
hundred times more likely and so on but
quite how a teacher might kind of engage
with that big question about kind of
scale and time and i think there's some
really fascinating ways in which history
and geography and others and kind of got
to speak to those debates and another
thing that um i was going to also pick
up on a kind of a question from the q a
and kind of relate back to parts um of
this in terms of this knowledge
production centers so nikita's question
and can we say a bit more can i say a
bit more about what i meant by some
knowledge production centers dominating
the debate um and just to give another
quick example from that work that we've
been doing and with colleagues in india
we did a uh just one kind of little
simple illustration of this we did a
google search and at the same time but
two different places so i did the search
in oxford and then colleagues in pune
did the same search so we're on google
and we searched for climate change
teaching resources and and both did this
search at the same time so we've got our
own computers with their own kind of
histories and our own kind of logins and
all the rest of it and in those two
obviously kind of geographically
separated places then compared the top
10 results from those searches
and the similarities absolutely
staggering and so neither of us had any
resources that were produced um in india
or in websites that were based in india
even though one of those searches is
done in india and we both had a single
primary school in doncaster and they had
a little page on climate change
education i've obviously done some good
kind of seo stuff and so they had that
page and then have various other um
things there are some kind of irish
resources and various other resources
particularly and kind of from an english
context and when google is such a
powerful filter through which teachers
are accessing information about climate
change and that kind of digital
mediation of all of this stuff and being
the ways in which information is is
accessed and then is also kind of made
visible and that seems to be a really
striking example of the way in which
finding local resources or finding
information that's representing this big
global challenge um but in a specific
context has actually been shaped in
particular ways and there's been kind of
framed through particular lenses that
either gives examples from particular
places or is just tied up in the broader
um kind of discourses so these metaphors
and narratives and so on and of those
particular places and so i think that's
another big challenge a curriculum level
and for teachers is how does these
questions about scale and place
work out how do we kind of get the
information resources and so on and that
allow us to look in our particular
context and and then to do this really
challenging intellectual work of
relating those things to them this
bigger broader global scale
um great kim i think you might wanted to
come in on this question as well um
did you have something to add
um i could come in later though in
whichever order you want
okay i guess there's a question of if
anybody who wants to jump in on this
kind of initial question and how it's
been set up by him by amanda and steven
um
james did you want to hop in now i i
just wanted to add a quick point in
relation to uh to steve's um final
points about the mediation of knowledge
which i think is really important um i'd
just like to um
say i i thought that as starting off
um
yeah statements um amanda and steve
which were excellent and very enjoyable
to listen to
um but this point about knowledge is is
really important when teachers are
engaging with knowledge and accessing
knowledge that's mediated by the
internet
it really shapes the way in which
knowledge is constructed the internet is
not a neutral space google is not
neutral as as
as steve has highlighted but google is
just one place in which teachers access
knowledge
um
a lot of teachers in research i've done
use social media to access knowledge and
there's
you know
one of the one of the worst places for a
lack of neutrality um it's it's
knowledge that's algorithmically shaped
social media is um embedded or is
permeated with a whole range of
political and economic and commercial
agendas which fundamentally shape the
kinds of knowledge that exists on there
and the ways in which
teachers interact with it and so that
kind of process of
mediation interaction and engagement
is it's so important that we need we
really need to understand this in more
depth i think to
explore the ways in which teachers are
constructed
through their
interactions with perhaps non-neutral
knowledge
and the way in which different
commercial and political agendas shape
teachers perceptions of climate change
and then how that gets reframed within
the classroom so i think it's such an
important point that that we need to uh
need to keep coming back to really
great um thank you for that um it's
actually going to um shift this out over
to aryan you know aryan when we first
got in touch about this panel you kind
of flipped the com this question on its
head and kind of said
you know we reframed it how does the
curriculum
change the climate crisis and so i think
um coming from that direction there
might be different ways to interpret it
but it you could be talking about how
how the way we are taught now
has got us to where we are but also how
that curriculum shapes the possibilities
of the future and potentially
kind of a maybe a kind of a just
transition or whatever you might see as
has the best way forward so could you
come into that yeah yeah sure um well
for one you could say that um
education um
um we should kind of interrogate the
goodness of education in a way not all
education is good and
it's not like the more we have of it the
better
i think we need to really think about
what is education strengthening in
society and what is it silencing or
weakening in society and i think there
is a hidden curriculum of
unsustainability in our schools and
universities where we cultivate certain
mindsets or certain values
that that really work against uh
sustainability uh and just as an example
uh the mindset of expansion and growth
um
individualism
uh taking care of yourself
is is very you know emphasizing personal
growth all the time that you always must
develop otherwise you fall behind that
is very much uh
promoted advocated and embedded in our
schools and universities
so our curriculum you might say which
also is indeed siloing much knowledge
and and and
dissecting the world in in categories
boxes disciplines where we're very good
at making distinctions drawing
boundaries but we're terrible at seeing
connections seeing relations
interdependencies so there is this
curriculum of unsustainability that's
quite strong and as david orr you
probably you know david or bill from
oberlin college has said
in the past you know we don't think
about this critically we are basically
education is is creating more effective
vandals of the earth
and the people who are the most have the
biggest ecological footprints are not
those with we you know there are not
those growing up in the slums of mumbai
they're people with master's degrees
bachelor degrees and and and phds
uh so i think this is something to think
about so the question then is um how can
we redesign reorient education in such a
way that we become more relational uh
that we can decenter the human at times
that we can also think about uh
sustainable contraction
in addition to sustainable growth that
we also learn to live within boundaries
and limits that we also learn things
like empathy and compassion where we can
change perspectives where we also had
learned to accept that there is no such
thing as neutral knowledge you know we
need to actually politicize and we need
to pluralize agendas and we need to
understand where does knowledge come
from who generated it with what kinds of
questions underneath um
and and learn to interrogate that and
that has to do with critical thinking of
course um and something else that i
think is missing and and that we need to
pay more attention to is the moral
compass
we can develop all kinds of qualities
like creativity dealing with conflict
pluralizing
dealing with ambiguity and chaos and
complexity and uncertainty
but we can use that to to you know to
expand uh a market share of a company
that we might work
for or to increase shareholder value or
in other words the moral compass of that
we have that kind of tells us what's
good what's important what matters uh
which has to do with ethics and values
is often ignored in our schools and
universities so we also need to
bring in
pay more attention to ethics and values
in addition to all the other
sustainability qualities competencies
like
systems thinking
which you often hear
anticipatory thinking dealing with
uncertainty social emotional learning
which has been ignored in schools and
universities how do we deal with anxiety
stress
we kind of walk away from that in our
schools and
you know we cannot blame our schools
either it is often teachers school
leaders who do not get any space for
more relational ways of teaching and
learning for going outside the classroom
for using the local environment as a
living laboratory for for learning about
existential questions
how we are affected by climate change
how we how biodiversity in our local
communities is disappearing how our
everyday problems are nested in the
wider global world how what we do
affects people far away
elsewhere but also in the future but
also what happens elsewhere in the world
how that affects us
there's no space for that often because
we have national curricula we have a
very much a
curriculum focusing on measurement
testing excellence
and that is kind of killing learning in
our schools ironically so there's
something that needs to be happening and
in some countries like in like i work a
lot in norway and in sweden but also
when you look at finland and a little
bit hopefully in the netherlands there's
some curriculum revoir reforms taking
place that create more space for more
localized curricula a little bit off the
google grid where we need to actually go
outside
find knowledge and information
investigate ourselves through forms of
citizen science we become independent
from google
just like the energy transition is
trying to get localized self
interdep independent
forms of energy creation food creation
we also need to think about knowledge
creation in that way now these are just
some thoughts i want to throw uh throw
at you bill and the audience
to consider
great um i
lots of ideas already on the table now
and i feel like i guess one thing i just
want to come back to is
i've been part of other panels or
watched other panels where people have
talked about climate change education
it's been very much within the system as
it is now as in you're talking about you
know do you talk about climate science
or climate mitigation or climate
adaptation in a science class
um and you know maybe if you're looking
across disciplines it's kind of a
special project but it's still very
narrowly defined with how schools work
now and it seems like with both of these
questions we're talking about schools
working differently education being a
different
experience and so i don't know if
there's anything else
i worry that we can also get very
abstract when we talk about these things
and so i don't know if there's anything
else that we can
hook this on to that feels more concrete
about what that looks like what that
feels like as a learner or as a teacher
um anyone have any any thoughts about
that
um i saw both kim and roll um
kim i saw you first you got you i'm
jumping
i was just gonna um do a shout out
really for extracurricular education
which i think is is really growing
around these areas around um you know
wildlife and biodiversity
uh the movement was in ugcse in natural
history in the uk
um
massive growth in forest schools and
things i think there's kind of a demand
developing from students and their
parents for
for new types of education taking kids
out of the classroom
in the way that's been described
you know and i'm one of those you know
i'm running summer schools i'm running
weekend events i'm enticing schools
through sort of well-being and field
work and things out out into the woods
um
and giving them extra bits of knowledge
about climate change and biodiversity
while they're doing their transect
measurements um i kind of see this as a
bit of a test bed for for new approaches
and hopefully a bit of a trojan horse
that you know if we can show how well
these types of extracurricular education
work maybe that's a stimulus
to first for schools and the national
curriculum to sort of bring some of
these approaches and yeah getting out of
the classroom um into the mainstream
school system
um great and raul can you come in on
this one as well yeah so i think thanks
bill this kind of fits in with the work
i've been doing last couple of years
which is on our project
which really you know is about getting
you know the down to like how do we
actually implement this right and i
think that's the important sort of
question because the ideas everybody
knows this is the most critical issue of
our time but what do we do in order to
get a potential solution right and if we
say
that
solutions will be a combination of let's
say
geoengineering policy level change
but also recognition that
the impacts of climate change and
solutions would come from
local places by local people who
experience the local sort of situation
there and a combination of all of these
three might lead to that right so if we
start to move from that assumption
that education can be situated towards
trying to find the solution let's say
and that sort of speaks to what amanda
said initially and aryan too about
saying you know what is the purpose of
education overall
right and if we start to look at these
from issues and the sdgs become a good
enough place to get started with no
poverty who doesn't want that you know
climate change or you know biodiversity
and protection of species etc etc so we
looked at climate change right and the
idea is
what do we do how do you go about
getting people to be aware of climate
change right so let me just start off
and say through the project we've done a
survey of curriculum across the world
and it is underrepresented almost in
every country it doesn't matter if it's
a developed country but it's a
developing country the us seems to do a
lot more compared to most countries
because they seem to have a lot more
freedom and flexibility in the private
universities there but it is
underrepresented certainly at the school
level it is fairly
you know cosmetic at the college level
which is undergraduate and this is where
we focused a lot of our material on
you know where would it be offered right
and so if it would be offered it would
be offered in an earth sciences program
it would be offered maybe in a geography
program maybe in an environmental
sciences program now that course if you
start to look and see how many
students are actually enrolling in those
programs that would be a very small
sort of number of you know when you when
you look at who are enrolling in
colleges right
psychology is very important
popular economics is very popular
sociology is very popular and so on so
forth so so our goal was to say that you
know
curriculum
reform takes time if you want climate
change to be introduced
to everyone who comes into college and i
get it that you know i'm dealing with a
constituency who can afford to go to
college so let's keep that aside and the
formal education system so let's just
keep that aside for a second we realize
that
but
you know uh the proportion of people who
would get this information in an earth
sciences or geography program would be
very very small right
instead if you want to take it to
everyone how do we go about doing this
so we started looking and seeing ways in
which
we could develop lesson plans that
teachers of all disciplines could use in
their teaching
what would they use they would teach a
topic in their discipline but we would
provide them with the climate change
case study exercise or hands-on activity
we focus as much as possible on local
resources rm that might help to sort of
understand that
the learning is best done in your own
local situation so let's give local
examples local case studies maybe even a
story an amanda that is incredibly
powerful when you just put in a you know
local story about an impact which is
taking place to somebody you know and
that person relates to it from that
location you start with that
and then you put in a hands-on activity
but you're doing it while you're
teaching a topic in the discipline
right so what we're trying to do is
we're trying to basically integrate it
into the teaching the day-to-day
teaching
across disciplines now why are we trying
to do this well number one and i think
you mentioned who's trained to teach
climate change at this point
we didn't have it well you know most of
us would not have had it in our
undergraduate training let's say
number one right so where are we trained
to do it number two teachers are
incredibly stressed for time right
three they are given these syllabi by
you know boards and
uh you know higher up authorities and
they have to stick to that so their
primary job is
not to like you know spark interest or
to make somebody aware etcetera etcetera
it is like i got to finish my what is
given to me that's my job right so how
do we do this so we know we sit down and
we say okay if you are a teacher in the
humanities
and you are doing a senior level class
on post-colonial studies here's an essay
by the picture they read that and you
know try to link it to climate change if
you're a teacher in economics here's
tragedy of the commons use it to
understand you know
things related to emissions or so if
you're a math teacher you have to teach
you know calculus here's carbon dioxide
data and this is a hands-on activity to
you know go ahead to learn that right so
you know this way we've kind of gone
across disciplines we have 10 of them
and we managed to sort of put together a
fair number of resources to actually
implement this right and i think this is
sort of one uh you know effort on on our
part it's small and it's proof of
concept still we have close to 600
resources there right now
uh which potentially could be a way in
which you know we get people aware of
climate change to begin with
and just finish up by saying that
imagine a kid who has gone through a
class
of you know briefly understanding what
is the science of climate change then
going to an economics class and learning
about cost benefit analysis
and microeconomics through climate
change and then going to a biology class
and learning about biodiversity using a
climate related example then goes to a
math class and learns calculus and
understands co2 emissions are
responsible
then goes to a you know
psychology class and understands what is
climate psychiatry and you know how is
mental health getting affected by that
goes into history and understands you
know how civilizations might have
declined due to climate change in the
past
that kid and you put it with examples
related to their location potentially in
their language which we're working on
that kid would know more than me
right and that kid would then
potentially come up with a solution
which would work for his or her location
so that's sort of been the driver one
part for me and i don't know if this
talks to anyone else i'll stop after
this which is for me the personal driver
was
you know how do you democratize
education while you're doing this so the
digital allows for that so we have
digital tools number two you know a
fantastic lecture that stephen might
give in his classroom if it is out on
youtube i will collate and curate that
and make it available to
teachers across the world to also use it
we magnify this by getting experts from
around the world who created so much
information already out there we can get
into whether that information is
you know
doctored for rack of another word
through google and other search engines
but it becomes one way in which you can
get quality education and make it
accessible to all so that's just you
know
our project which kind of talks about
the practical nature in which we are
trying to implement this
by not shifting the curriculum
completely it will take time
until that happens because that's a
bureaucratic process but
while we can actually get teachers to do
it in their day-to-day activities itself
without stressing them or burdening them
excessively
so that they could actually you know
impart that knowledge goes to the kids
they come up with solutions for the
future
let's stop there
stephen did you want to follow up on
that yes okay and i'm just going to kind
of make a point um kind of like using
some of those points that are always um
to kind of um
like speak back to one of the
things that kim was talking about and
and i guess i just wanted to kind of um
pick up on the the use of
extracurricular um things um for climate
change work and and i guess my point is
probably slightly more um like i think
critical or cynical is the right way of
putting it um but about the um the kind
of the way in which um kind of
extracurricular work uh currently has a
kind of um a role to play so i think um
first kind of thing i'd say is that the
the way in which um that kind of splits
along so that that being engagement in
extracurricular stuff and splits along
kind of um classed and raced and type
and issues
means that yeah the types of people who
are currently engaging in that kind of
work and kind of represent one
particular um normally kind of like very
privileged
um kind of part of the population and
the other i was interested in the um
thing kim he said about um if we can
kind of show that it works then that's
maybe a kind of a way in and so there's
kind of a certainly kind of like greater
interest and and these things are like i
mean they're completely sold like
absolutely brilliant things really
important um but i think this kind of
point about if we can show how well they
work and
and it's related to the things other
people have said about the importance of
these big narratives about how we define
a good education system and means that
for something to be able to be shown to
kind of work well in education at the
minute and really the kind of the
dominant paradigm is so reductionist
around grades and we've seen recently
the kind of link between particular
subjects at degree level and earnings
and the kind of the the narrative that's
told around what counts as kind of
quality um education that's working well
um is really impoverished and so i think
that um actually the kind of the the
most urgent thing currently are these
questions about teacher professional
development and about the ways in which
individual teachers who are
already in front of and accessing and
teaching
vast numbers of young people worldwide
and mean and the kinds of freedoms that
they have got even in the kind of most
rigid formal systems and actually this
work they're doing in terms of curating
selecting particular forms of
information and knowledge and the ways
in which they're kind of critically or
not engaging with the kind of
presentation of particular narratives
and so on and and in contrast to that
the kind of complete lack of climate
change education that they many of them
had in their own formal education and
means that for me this kind of how do we
equip teachers how do we kind of empower
teachers how do we do the kind of work
and that we're all talking about in
terms of um trying to make little subtle
shifts how can we make maths um examples
not just about you spent this much money
how much change is there and how to kind
of make more money and what's the
interest on this but instead to ask
about these bigger kind of questions
about climate and so on and so and while
like i'm completely in favor of this
extracurricular work and i think it's um
fantastic i think i'm probably like very
um uh cynical about the like the real
potential for that to kind of affect
broader change and so you see this kind
of like how can we upskill teachers how
can we um
provide this kind of professional
development that being something that um
actually presents across multiple
different curricula um and across many
different types of kind of exam
certifications and so on and some really
kind of and like subversive let's get
attempts maybe um to reframe these
debates and to ask some quite different
questions
um
i know both kim and arya want to come in
on this one um kim did you have a quick
follow-up
yeah just quickly because i know you
want to move on um yeah i just wanted to
say that in the experiences i've had
with kids on summer schools and
um just coming up sort of for day trips
and things
that the enthusiasm and the excitement
when you start having these
interdisciplinary conversations is
incredible they really love it
and
you know we've had conversations which
bring in finance and economics and
politics and we talk about you know the
local politics national politics the
science how is science done how is how
do people know what the scientists are
saying you know that i think the kids
are i love making these connections but
it can be done quite quickly and more
overtly we're just giving them the forum
to do so um so i think that what they
are learning amazing things and with the
opportunities to make connections they
they've really got from there
that's all i wanted
um and aryan did you have a follow-up as
well yeah i think uh you know it i i
agree that the extracurricular
activities uh
can provide an opening for engaging uh
in these big existential questions like
climate change
at the same time i do think that we we
need to
kind of upscale the informal learning
and bring it more into the classroom in
a way there are so many everyday
activities whether it's you know the the
things that we eat
every day uh the way we walk to school
or drive to school depending on where
you are or bike to school
um the way we deal with water in our
communities the way we deal with extreme
weather events
so i i think that should become more in
embedded in the curriculum rather than
than resorting to leaving schools and
finding these spaces outside of our
schools i think it's it's a
responsibility
for for our schools to to
to uh
to open up uh uh these connections
between the life world of the of the
students and the and the local
environment and existential issues that
emerged there and this can be done in
very concrete ways i mean already some
examples were mentioned of going
outdoors and and the monitor you could
do monitoring of biodiversity which is
done in communities of water quality of
noise noise levels and
monitoring diets and and and seeing how
you can reduce uh
meat protein intakes and diets very
important to also mind the gap between
you know being aware and understanding
these issues and actually doing
something about them in our everyday
lives and also pointing out the
inconsistencies and sometimes the
hypocrisy
we must avoid uh to use greta toonback's
words a blah blah blah curriculum
uh you know and there's a lot of talk
about this but not a lot of action and
if we do that they do that and then it
will lead to maybe skepticism cynicism
apathy powerlessness which is the exact
opposite of what we really want to
achieve so this combination so somebody
asked the question what does the
sustainability education or pedagogy
look like i think it is the relational
seeing the connections it is the
critical asking difficult questions
becoming uncomfortable even
uncomfortable together about
these inconsistencies in our everyday
lives and the fact that you know like
this is politicizing why do we still
subsidize kerosene uh um why is there a
lot of subsidy for industrial
agriculture within the european uh
uh so these are difficult questions why
do we have uh the way why do we treat
animals the way we do in in in in bio
industry um
these are so that's that's
the critical kind of interrogation of
our everyday ways of being and and and
problematizing the normal and and and
making the common less common is the
transgressiveness i would call it in
academic terms is also important and
then of course the ethical which i've
already mentioned and the transformative
they're actually
learning to make change there are some
great examples of repair cafes where we
extend lifetimes life cycles and
wherever young people repair old vacuum
cleaners where they repair old furniture
and where they actually
have a little entrepreneurial enterprise
in the school where they actually sell
these
things to to people who
who want to support their work but also
who need and a vacuum cleaner very cheap
and that money is then used for in a
kind of a micro economy to purchase
solar panels where they have a
discussion about what kind of panels do
we need then
which panels are the most sustainable or
are they made in a fair way
and this is also i think important that
we do not
reduce the sustainability puzzle to the
climate crisis
it is a bigger crisis it is actually
it's a crisis of of my the way we think
it's a crisis of values it's a crisis of
what does it mean to be human and i
think this is often neglected we talk
about her pista dutch pedagogue talks
about three
important
purposes of education qualification
which has to do with skills and
qualities that we need to develop to do
to function well in our lives and our
work then socialization the the social
the social cultural norms and and ways
of being that we want to hand over that
we find important
and then subjectivification
which is about
creating space for people to reflect on
who they are where they are to be who
they are becoming whether they can
become who they want to be in the world
what keeps them from becoming who they
are are they being notched into becoming
something they don't want to be how do
these processes work and these these are
again have to do with social emotional
aspects that we often neglect
in education so when we talk about a
pedagogy for sustainability
those are critical questions we need to
be addressing
i'm following up on that
kind of fiesta's model um
kind of the purpose of education i kind
of wanted to bring james you into this
thinking about kind of the future of
skills knowledge and work um you know
what
what education might be preparing young
people for
um and
um
i guess you know again with that future
lens
what are the what are the future green
jobs or green skills that that we need
to be thinking about through the
education system so um james do you want
to come in on that
yeah it's an important point and
in a sense i suppose the the usual way
of addressing this issue is to talk
about the
ways in which the nature of work are
changing radically and rapidly
with increased digitalization ai
automation
and how that intersects with
climate-constrained environments the
nature of work changing within those
sorts of concept contexts
um and the
more broad ways in which green jobs need
to
permeate our economy and the kinds of
skills that are needed but i don't want
to do any of that i don't want to talk
to that particular i want to flip the
question around a little bit um it'd be
a bit naughty if that's okay
um i think
yeah clearly
appropriate and adaptable education and
training
is critical
for ensuring young children as young
people and children have relevant
knowledge and skills to engage with the
climate crisis and become responsible
climate informed and climate active
citizens and amanda and steve did really
well and i thought they highlighted this
really nicely in their emphasis on
critical citizenship
i think there's a danger in this or
partly
a danger of reinforcing neoliberal
discourses here and emphasizing
responsibilization on individuals
um and individual young people
particularly reinforcing the message
that the climate crisis is rooted or the
solution to the climate crisis is rooted
in small scale individualized activity
where it's not you know we know it's not
it's it's it's about systemic change
it's about structural change it's about
economic change
and it's addressing the the kind of
inherent structural violence that
companies and firms are doing to our
ecosystem
and so i think you know actually
taking a step back and and looking at
things at a system level in terms of
skills is is a more appropriate response
and so a major strand of my work is
trying to look at
things at this systems level and examine
how
education and training systems intersect
with the economy and this changing
nature of work
but
for me this intersection is a key
mechanism for
the the long-term structural and social
change that's needed to fundamentally
disrupt the currently destructive ways
which
you know our economies and labour
markets are operating
i think this comes down to the the point
that iron made about the the hidden
curriculum of unsustainability
and how these sort of neoliberal
assumptions are embedded within it
and we end up reproducing a sort of
cycle of um constant growth
or an assumption that constant growth is
the only way forward rooted in the sort
of individualistic
idea of the self
so i think one way of thinking about
this and thinking about this disruption
is about problematizing the relationship
between skill supply and demand
education
training systems are usually positioned
as responding to employer skills
requirements right
so supplying labour markets with young
people with the skills that meet
employers demands and this is is largely
a one-way linear relationship
so in in terms of the climate crisis
this can be seen as companies developing
green jobs usually under pressure or you
know under increasing pressure from the
state from governments maybe from
society
and education in training systems
responding by helping students develop
green skills
and of course you know this is important
but
if we're thinking about disrupting this
i think we can
we can actually challenge this linear
understanding of skill supply and demand
and adopt a more cyclical framework for
thinking critically about
education and training in ways that can
actually
shape labour markets and economies
making them greener and more sustainable
rather than simply responding to them
for me this this work
you know this looks at helping how
students can envision green futures and
green careers
and by doing that i think young people
can be empowered to be agents of
economic change
by developing green skills for
themselves
being being agentic in their skills
formation process
and envisioning
sustainable careers
and forcing employers to then respond to
their demands
for greener careers
greener futures as the next generation
of workers
you know this sounds
quite utopian in a sense it sounds
i don't know sort of rooted in marx's
principles in a way but
i don't think it is i think there's a
genuine possibility here for change
for rooting economic change in students
agencies now recently i did a um an hrc
funded project
where i worked with
the ceos and chairs
of um about a third of the ftse 100
um
you know i interviewed all of these uh
these business leaders
and one of the the major messages that
was coming across was a shift that they
were describing from
shareholder capitalism where the
emphasis and purpose of business and the
labor market is on maximizing profits
to stakeholder capitalism
where the needs of the wider
stakeholders and increasingly that
includes society
are driving the ways in which firms work
so
change is possible one of the things in
which these participants were really
emphasizing
was that
a new generation of employers also have
employees were demanding businesses
change to be more values led and values
driven
and so they were then having to respond
to these values and taking take a stance
on key issues like climate change like
um
a whole range of issues and so i think
by empowering young people to actually
put themselves in positions to change
the lane market or to to demand change
of the labor market
we can we can start to
get some kind of structural change
within the economy
but how do we do that i mean you talked
about sort of practical aspects of this
um and rooting this in
in reality in some kind of tangible
sense of of doing something for me
um
i think helping young people to do this
kind of envisioning of future careers of
futures and future skills
is rooted in uh storytelling skills
um these help young people to think
creatively about different futures
uh and so some colleagues and i have
developed what we've called a narrative
skills framework for the kinds of skills
that help people
deal with different kinds of futures and
think through different kinds of futures
uh we've published that in a um a
report called storycraft where you can
unpack some of those skills these skills
they're not they're not sort of generic
transferable skills that help people
think about futures i think they're
rooted in subject knowledge they're
rooted in different forms of knowledge
this is where the issue of um i think
the humanities comes in a lot of a lot
of the skills associated with stories
having narrative craft
are rooted in the humanities but they go
broader than that because what we're
talking about are
complex futures that draw on knowledge
and knowledge of bodies
from a whole range of disciplines
and so this is where the importance of
actually interdisciplinary work comes in
i think that that aspect of narrative
narrative skills and interdisciplinary
work is crucial in actually thinking
about the future of work and the future
of skills
and driving some kind of
systemic
and structural change within the economy
in the late market
i'm great thanks for that i mean that's
kind of nice bring us full circle back
to kind of some of our starting ideas in
terms of the humanities and how we
approach this um
i've got just one more question before
we start going through the q a and
bringing in
um some some of the
audience questions um
but
some of this
talk there's kind of a talk about kind
of story and values and i think the
emotional angle of engaging with climate
change and and for young people as
learners to be
facing this existential crisis and and
so much kind of uncertainty about their
future instability kind of traditional
systems and careers kind of falling
apart so it's just a question i'm just
going to pose this to you kim actually
since you've been directly engaging with
lots of of young people
um climate strikers students in your
different programs
um
how does that come up in terms of of the
skills young people need to
be emotionally resilient
in the in the face of climate change and
kind of and navigate this uncertain
future
gosh whenever i think about this um
question i i really relate it back to my
business career
um
and thinking about how poor adults are
at bringing their emotions into their
into real life and how their you know
all our emotions are squished out of us
and i was in the fortunate position to
be able to run a business as a single
mum uh with that with a young child and
had to take all my emotions and trials
and tribulations to work and as a result
had to allow all my employees to do so
and as a result of that we ended up with
an organization where everybody was
allowed to bring everything to work and
it worked really well we had a very
strong team and from that i started sort
of following other business leaders who
were
embracing that um kind of just being
nice to your employees vibe
um and it you know it just strikes you
how little of that there is around still
and that's
what i can see this is the same in
schools and that we're not allowing
children to bring their emotions to
school
we control behavior rather than looking
at the underlying causes of that
behavior and there is some fantastic um
work being done about particularly in
primary schools about helping them
identify what their emotions are to name
their emotions and allow them to bring
that to bring those to the party
and i feel that that's something that
needs to be carried through the whole
school system to to the older kids too
um i mean again i think with the sort of
taking kids outdoors it changes the vibe
between the teachers and the students
and allows the people to be a bit more
human and to get out of the constraints
of the functionality that you have in
school there's this sort of constraint
constrained conversations and
relationships you have in school because
everybody's trying to keep their
distance from everybody else
so i really think we have to we have to
we have to set the example
um
and allow the kids to bring their own
emotions there and help them help them
manage that and not see that as a scary
or bad thing
um great so
there's lots of questions in the q a i
see that um some of the panelists have
been responding directly kind of
answering answering in the chat
um there's some other resources being
shared so lots of information there
worth kind of scanning through that
um
one thing that jumped out at me and it's
in part related to something we wanted
to dig a bit deeper into anyway was a
question about kind of an international
perspective on this what what countries
are doing well with with this kind of
thing
different forms of climate
sustainability education which countries
are lagging behind that's come up a
little bit in terms of rahul and steve
talking about the collaboration they're
working on but
i um
i guess you know it's another thing to
reflect on especially you know aryan
your work for unesco and kind of being
part of these networks of
environmental and sustainability
educators
leaders of education and then also the
research you mentioned working with
educators in many different countries
um
are there are there particular places we
should look to
um
or
is is maybe is the country the wrong
scale to be thinking about are there are
there particular cities that do this
well school districts schools um but any
any reactions on that kind of in
international models
so i don't think any one country jumps
out maybe some of the scandinavian
countries have a lot more flexibility in
the curriculum
and i think
you know wherever that is afforded to
teachers i think there is of course a
big channel to make change right but
again that is individual dependent and a
lot of this is based on
you know currently at least when we've
run these workshops with hundreds of
teachers in different countries
the interest is always individual driven
currently and i think in order to
address this set of wider skill
we are trying to say
it needs to get into the system the
multiple systems we can get into we are
advocating for the formal education
system i'm not saying it's the best way
is the way i we are currently doing it
and of course there is a
a wonderful amount of work which is
happening maybe in the informal
education system as well
right so uh you know certain countries
are far more receptive i would feel in
wanting to introduce it into the
curriculum
uh you know we had our national
education policy of india which was
released last year
and it does emphasize
you know adding the environment into a
lot more of the curriculum it doesn't
get into specifics of how much and how
climate change makes its appearance a
bit but but you know the reality is that
finally in order to get this into the
system it has to go through its own
process this tends to be bureaucratic in
most parts of the world
and it takes time but you know i wanted
to also pick up on something that james
said which i think would be very
interesting when we imagining the future
of work and you have mentioned you know
everyone talks of work as going to
change in the future and ai coming in
and so on and so forth but we don't
often mention that maybe education will
also change in the future the same tools
can be used for effective pedagogy and
effective education
so i might be equally utopian
and silly in imagining that there might
well be a time when we could get
you know knowledge to places you know
which are not where you're not
constrained by location
right and and and i think you know in
the future if we are going to depend on
the digital
and i know this will bring up questions
uh you know you could uh have access
in places where you didn't consider you
know
in the past right
now
the customization of knowledge right is
something which is also going to be
problematic but i think that will be at
the key or heart of you know how people
will gain knowledge in the future as
well
right and i think that is something to
think about
uh you know you know uh as a future
model itself right in terms of education
also evolving over time and the means of
doing it are there right now so why not
embrace that as well
uh
you know so so i i don't see any one
country standing out in terms of saying
that we are you know it's there in every
part of our curriculum
it often makes its appearance as
extracurricular work
sometimes it will make its work in
projects or so at the school level
countries like the us have climate
change courses open to all their
undergraduates uh you know some of the
private universities and places like
india have it
but you know when you look at the
large-scale government sort of colleges
which follow
a model curriculum a model syllabus
that tends to sort of you know closet
climate change into a geography
curriculum
and this is outdated and it is outdated
in most countries i don't know how
stephen you'd answer this well how quick
it would be to say change the curriculum
in the uk for undergraduate it doesn't
happen quickly
on the flip side you know as educators
and as people who are aware of what is
going on
i in my lifetime i've never seen kids go
on strike
to get something in the curriculum
so that's never happened right so of
course it has to be you know put in a
much more meaningful way
but again you know there are issues i
was saying well
if it is even put in the curriculum do
you currently and i'm talking at a
global level have enough teachers to
actually impart that knowledge right so
it's uh it's something we have to think
about starting right now
uh and i think we have the tools things
are out there for free which can be
totally packaged and used by many many
yeah
just having that bill because i need to
i'm gonna have to i'm actually teaching
in in just half an hour so i'm just
gonna be my last contribution to the
panel
uh very interesting conversation a lot a
lot has been said and uh
um
yeah just to to to uh echo raoul in in
in many ways uh i think uh it it it is
uh the key i think is how much space is
there for autonomy and
self-determination at the local level to
address and engage with
these kinds of issues that emerge in our
everyday lives and at school schools
need to become yeah responsive they need
to be relevant to today's challenges
they need to be responsive and they need
to be in a way responsible by also
addressing the moral and ethical
components that also has to do with
professional development of teachers to
what extent are they able to do that so
how is your support professional
development structure developed in a
country and then indeed in the nordic
countries you see quite good
professional development quite a lot of
space for localized curricula
and they're not pushing a climate change
education or human rights education or
development education or consumer
education or global citizenship
education or soil education or water
education we must be careful that it
doesn't become a competition between
what what is the best or most important
global challenge that's missing the
point entirely and we fall in the trap
of who's best or what's ranked first and
second you know
and it is a systemic global dysfunction
issue that we are dealing with here
that's much deeper so it has to do again
the purpose of education question where
is that question still being addressed
and often it's not even asked that
question and that's a very important
starting point
so i do think that there is more
resistance resistance in society against
this culture of accountability
management and control focusing on the
pisa rankings and and and
you know we see universities that do not
want to be ranked anymore
we see uh parents and and teachers and
and school administrators who are really
fed up with having to do this kind of
performative tasks that are being
you know checked by by inspectors and
then they
their their whole
performance reviews of teachers it
depends on on the test scores of
students etc etc
there's resistance because a lot of uh
young people are suffering from that uh
there's you know in some countries where
it's really pushed hard there's high
suicide rates among young people uh in
parts of southeast asia for instance
this is going to change this is going to
lead to some change in our schools that
will open up more space for these types
of topics that we're talking about here
today there's one thing where i kind of
i'm a little bit anxious
raw you say you
twice you said something quite positive
about the us in terms of its engagement
in climate change education i think the
us has the worst and the best of
everything
so it also has another side you know
there are states like oklahoma where you
cannot talk about climate change in the
classroom it's a non-issue
and that is another extreme that we also
that is quite worrisome and bill
probably knows more about that
so with that uh um
thank you uh bill and thank you other
fellow panelists and uh i hope that
there will be some more audience
interaction coming in
but uh i i need to sign off
now great thank you arien
um
amanda i was wondering if you wanted to
follow up on that um in terms of kind of
how education engages with issues like
politics and and power um
is that is that something to dig a
little bit more deeply into
it's obviously a really tricky one i'm i
i'm thinking of the sort of the
quotation we're probably all very
familiar with from madre lord's work
about in the master's tools will never
dismantle the master's house
um and how how you
i mean the uk government for example in
the slot which is normally used for
teaching climate change recently
attempted to say you couldn't criticize
capitalism now how you talk about
climate change without criticizing
capitalism is sort of difficult to
imagine and if it were actually being
police and i have to say it was probably
more likely to be some kind of warning
shot um but i mean i think that there
are more more indirect ways of doing it
i think it should equip students with
the skills to to be um
critical both of the curriculum but also
i mean i think one of the things is
going to be absolutely essential i mean
one can imagine all sorts of dystopian
futures from from this point forwards
and and certainly having a population
that's very vulnerable to different
kinds of propaganda or to divisive
rhetoric
um or to misinformation about what's
going on all these things i think are
going to be as
dangerous as any other possible threat
that comes with climate change and i
think that's one of the things that that
it's crucial to equip students with and
i mean a lot of that is done
i mean in my experience it's sort of
hard to put it in the curriculum um it's
it's more a sort of it's a it's a kind
of critical stance it's a set of skills
that come conversationally and i i i
suppose just give a very concrete
example um from my own teaching i've
been
slowly trying to teach students to think
differently about power partly by
rooting it in environments and ecologies
and and what's possible and what the
consequences are of acting and acting
power in certain ways but also the the
role of um different systems of power in
in inculcating and developing education
and value systems and i mean right back
to the earliest states how do you how do
you
create a situation where the vast
majority of populations producing food
for a small number of people who live in
the cities who have high culture
um how do you create that kind of
compliance and what are the long-term
effects of creating a population where
you just can't um you can't engage your
critique um systems of power if you're
most people and if you are the people in
power you also don't want to because
you're invested in it and i mean this is
not just sort of ancient history or that
you could teach it by means of ancient
history then you only need to ask the
students whether the world has changed
as much as all that and then they can do
the rest of it for themselves if you if
you encourage them to do that
um so i'm not particularly meaning to
destabilize the government kind of
in secret ways but i do think that
there are all sorts of
if if if it's not possible or or um
problematic to
to be too direct in your in in building
this critical thinking there's a whole
host of ways within the curriculum that
that that i think can be employed i mean
i think it's been used for a very long
time the holocaust has for a very very
long time been the way of teaching the
consequences of divisiveness in society
um so this isn't a new suggestion i mean
very little needs to be a new suggestion
in some ways
um so i think that the sort of creative
thinking about understanding power and
politics and
the kind of key terms like development
is development is that a criteria
against which we should be measuring
either individuals or societies and if
we are then what are we asking of them
and what are the people who don't count
as if you know sufficiently developed um
so i think that um one of the really key
elements to
dealing with climate change is is
teaching
teaching people to to understand a bit
better what's going on and and not to
just accept things that they're taught
great we we've got i think seven minutes
left and so i i don't know i wanted to
leave it open to the panelists i know
you've been scanning the q a's as well
so was there anything that you saw in
the q a that you wanted to bring
to the whole group um or we could just
go around for kind of concluding remarks
from each of you
um but it was there anything in the in
the q a that anyone wanted to
to raise with the group
yes i've seen there's a various kind of
comments about kind of
interdisciplinarity and that i think are
really important and one um
comment i can't say now um but was
asking um a question about the way in
which um kind of other systems beyond i
mean there's a geography context but
these other systems kind of vital to be
able to understand um climate change so
i i guess i just want to kind of just
really quickly kind of massively agree
with that and say that um absolutely
that kind of interdisciplinarity that a
lot of different people have spoken
about from different directions and and
the ways kim is doing really powerful
other ways and actually students kind of
really like looking for these links and
then really kind of like being powered
by being able to see these links and
that absolutely that kind of that
question of um kind of who's producing
this knowledge and what kinds of
expertise might we be able to draw on
and i think there's some like kind of
really unresolved big tensions that get
raised through that as well like james
talking about his narrative skills not
just being kind of generic but drawing
um really strongly on these kind of um
subject-specific
questions um but from the kind of
geographical perspective then kind of
what counts as geography is also this
massive vexed question and kind of draws
really widely on lots of different
things and and so absolutely trying to
kind of engage with like multiple um
plural types of knowledges and seems to
be so important particularly because
this whole question of um these
solutions the way that kim's phrases at
the end that they the real problem that
solutions kind of change are political
and we can't discuss political issues
but that question of kind of what does
this mean and these different solutions
that you can see being prioritized as
just neutral but of course we need to do
certain forms of kind of carbon capture
of course we need to use certain forms
of sequestration whatever um that get
presented as kind of scientific
and neutral um responses how can we kind
of engage with these big narratives
they're being told about these solutions
what problems and how has the whole
thing been kind of conceptualized and so
um yeah absolutely kind of um say that
this kind of interdisciplinary is is
vital and how can we kind of really
critically engage with these um like
necessarily and unavoidably political
questions
i'm saying my kind of like big last
response is just the importance of
teachers and just to say that this kind
of question that rahul placed me earlier
about um the curriculum how long would
it take to change the curriculum like
joining stenhouse's broad definition
between the curriculum as intended in
the curriculum as reality that the
teachers real role in kind of creating
the reality of that and means that
whatever the the curriculum is actually
and you can change that tomorrow by um
framing it in a slightly different way
you're asking a different question about
it and so kind of empowering and
equipping teachers seems to be kind of
absolutely central to lots of us
um that's great and i think yeah it'd be
great to go around kind of some closing
words from everyone and in the context
you know cop 26 starting this week you
know action for climate empowerment
being the lens through which
education and public engagement um is
written into the paris agreement written
into the
the un agreement on climate change um
any kind of concluding thoughts based on
what we've been talking about so raul
can we start with you actually any final
final words
yeah i think uh you know thank you to
everyone here learned a lot it's been a
fantastic discussion uh just to conclude
i think you know
what we've not really discussed too much
or so is uh access to knowledge
which would actually
be a critical thing when we're talking
about a global issue
and uh you know i think
those are sort of
you know discussions which are happening
for understanding the impacts of climate
change and how it's affecting people at
that level but i think education and
providing access to quality education
material becomes one very sort of
important tool
i hope in the future there's a lot more
collaboration a lot more open source
material uh sharing and i hope uh
whatever forms get us there we would use
as educators including tech or so so
i'll kind you keep it at that
i'm great um james any any final
thoughts from you
yeah
thanks i really enjoyed this discussion
um it's been really interesting and i
think a final thought is is building off
steve's point that teachers sit at the
heart of this system
um and we need to
you know acknowledge that and empower
them to um to be involved in it but at
risk of um
sounding controversial uh building on on
my previous points about the future of
work and
the world of skills development
i think teachers don't talk enough about
work they don't talk enough about jobs
there's often too much of a focus on the
intrinsic value of education and i think
that's really important
um but we must also acknowledge that
what bista calls his is his
qualifications the credentialism of
education as well and the ways in which
education and training can and does
prepare young people for the workplace
and so
actually
helping teachers to talk about work in a
in a more
open way but also a way that is capable
of helping young people ask questions of
power is i think absolutely critical
great um kim any final final thoughts
sure yes i mean picking up on what uh
james is saying about the careers i i've
for a while thought this is this is a
really powerful approach um both are
addressing students drive for learning
and their own sort of seeking out that
connections between subjects
um and addressing their anxiety about
what's happening with climate and
biodiversity of loss and things i think
the sort of green careers the kind of
the idea that you could have a fantastic
career working to solve some of these
these things is is very enticing um i
think
careers advisors in schools and in
universities got a huge role to play
here if we can empower them and green
entrepreneurs and business people can
bring excitement and inspiration into
schools creating sort of demand amongst
the students
for for more knowledge relevant
knowledge critical skills thinking um
and we need to show them that it isn't
just you know being in a you know
climate consultancy or whatever it is
it's like whether you're going to be a
plumber an engineer a designer a lawyer
an artist whatever you're going to be
you've got a massive role to play and in
fact whatever job you're going to do in
the future it's going to be affected by
climate change so having that knowledge
now is really going to set you
put you in a really good position to get
the jobs that you want and the careers
that you want to take forward
great and amanda i'll leave it to you to
close this out for the session
sure well i mean i think that most of
what i would have said is a sort of
brand closing remark has just been being
said by by others and i'm really i
really enjoyed this panel and i found it
incredibly um helpful to hear so much
expert thinking um on these really
crucial issues and i suppose the the
i mean what lots of people are trying to
do in lots of different places and
sometimes it's frustrating to feel as if
the wheels being reinvented all over the
place um but on the other hand it's also
inspiring to see so many people in so
many you know different regions as well
as different parts of the education
system and and beyond um thinking about
all these different issues um i mean i
suppose the the
what's really needed is to to
make this a a potent um way that
education policy makers and those who
who
design and settle the curricula and
politicians who have some sway over this
um
are supposed to sort of create a
conceptual package that does place crime
at the climate or climate crisis in its
broadest possible sense along with
biodiversity collapse and all the the
you know the many many consequences and
complicated ongoing sort of feedback
loops if we if we see these as the
planetary conditions in which humans are
living and then we design our education
system with all that in mind um
and seeing it as a process right through
you know as james says into the into the
world of workers into the world of
people's adult lives um and also you
know that there's there's already a huge
sort of mental health crisis in our in
in societies around the world and it's
only going to get worse if it's not
tackled directly so empowering future
generations and hopefully sort of
through them parents and other adults
with new ways of and and ways that build
out of all this you know older older
ways of thinking as well um
i i guess to try and create a um a kind
of feeding in and out of education that
really makes sense for
now and the coming decades i think that
it would be that would be what i'd like
to see
um so thank you thank you
very much um to bill for sharing and
thank you to everyone for coming along
and i really um i'm really glad that
we've had this conversation i hope that
we can keep going with it
thanks amanda thank you all together and
yeah starting this conversation i'll
continue this conversation
you