Investigating Young Children’s and Teachers’ Climate Justice Literacies

Abstract

While teaching about climate change is typically considered to be in the purview of science education, the nature of climate change as a transdisciplinary, socioscientific problem of injustice means that it must be a priority for all disciplines. One significantly untapped area for studying climate change is elementary literacy education, where a strong focus is placed on the development of young children’s oral and written narratives that allow them to make sense of their world and future actions. In this study, we will examine how children and teachers create classroom narratives of climate justice literacies. We aim to study how the narratives students and teachers create evolve through their engagements with children’s books about climate change and environmental activism. Climate justice literacies involve transdisciplinary engagements that focus on children’s awareness of climate justice through reading and writing to prepare them to engage in individual, social and environmental change. Discussions of climate justice literacies provide space to consider impacts of climate change, to analyze the climate discourses in society, and to create new narratives. Through this project, we aim to provide children and teachers with the pedagogical support and resources to analyze and question dominant discourses about the environment that are destructive to the climate. In so doing, we seek to nurture students’ and teachers’ creation of narratives that challenge these dominant discourses and advocate for climate justice.