The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that the pace and scale of current action to limit global warming is inadequate – but that urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all (IPCC, 2023). Climate protest movements have emerged out of frustration with government inaction on climate change and the knowledge that acting now has the greatest potential to prevent climate breakdowns. Education – formal and non-formal, across the life course – has a key role to play in preparing societies to decide which paths to take, and for enabling the conditions for full participation in these decisions, which raises questions about the relationships between education, action and activism.
Despite research indicating that teachers and students support an action-based curriculum on climate change (Howard-Jones et al., 2020; Dunlop et al., 2022; UNESCO, 2022), environmental and climate change education occupies the margins in England (Greer, et al., 2023) with a focus on learning about the environment, rather than addressing environmental justice, advocacy or action (Glackin & King, 2020). In contrast, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change calls for action for climate empowerment (ACE), to empower all members of society to engage in climate action through education, training and public participation.
This requires an understanding of educational settings as political spaces in the sense of Hay (2007, p. 77), as places where there is ‘the capacity for agency and deliberation in situations of genuine collective or social choice’. Yet politics occupies an uncomfortable place in schools in England, with guidance on political impartiality in schools (DfE, 2022) contributing to a confusing and potentially troubling atmosphere around environment issues, politics and education. Responding to climate change requires ‘rapid and far-reaching transitions across all sectors and systems’ (IPCC, 2023), yet government guidance states that the principles which underpin society ‘should be reinforced by schools’, setting limits on what is deemed acceptable to discuss in a classroom context.
