Introduction - Climate Education and the need for it
“Education is a critical agent in addressing the issue of climate change.” says the UN in an article on Climate Education. When it comes to climate change, education is critical in not only changing young people’s attitudes towards this crisis but it can also be a motivating factor on instigating relatable climate solutions for their communities.
The current state of climate education generally
Currently climate education is not legally administered as a subject in most school curriculums. A case in point is Uganda where, to engage learners in climate education, an educator has to either turn this education session into an extracurricular activity or embed it in an already existing subject. Furthermore, the educational resources on climate education are too scientific and too whitewashed making them un-relatable to many communities - particularly those in the global south.
The state of climate education for educators and learners.
As we are currently facing the impacts of climate change, it is on us as learners and educators to seek out relatable climate resources that spur us into climate action. The climate crisis however is not a one-size fits all kind of issue. It is incredibly intersectional touching on issues of gender, young people, race, policy and so much more. Therefore for one to really effectively play their part in climate action, they have to find what speaks to them and then play to their strengths to implement action. Unfortunately due to the mass amount of resources out there, on different platforms and in different media types, it often becomes difficult for one to know where to start.
What we have introduced
This is where we come in. Having gone through this problem ourselves, we have created a Climate Education Online Directory. In this directory both educators and learners can engage with a curated list of well researched climate resources and it is from this that they can choose how best to utilise their strengths for climate action.
Who is it for?
- Educators.
As said above, it’s upon us as educators to equip ourselves with the knowledge and materials to better educate our communities and learners about the climate crisis and how interlinked it is with other social issues.
For educators, we have divided the directory into 3 media types that is; podcasts, curriculums and educator packs. The podcasts are specifically a means of relatability for educators to hear more about what has worked for other educators in the space and what has not. The curriculums and educator packs are geared towards providing a head start for educators when creating lesson plans for their students.
With this portion of the directory, we hope to ease an educators journey as well set them up for success when it comes to educating their audience about climate change.
- Learners.
For learners we really thought about the challenges an average person would have when it comes to learning about climate change. One of the problems was time and that not everyone likes to read.
So for the learners portion of the guide, we have not only covered a vast amount of climate change themes but also separated them according to books, podcasts, documentaries/ videos as well as a few visualisations.
Our main aim with the learners portion of the directory is to ensure that regardless of one's educational background, they can comfortably educate themselves on the different themes that come with climate change and hopefully start to think of possible ways they can contribute to climate action.
How to use it
The goal of this directory is to make one's climate education journey much simpler. We have embedded links into each resource so that you don’t have to spend additional time googling it! So everything that is underlined has a link embedded into it.
In the table of contents, we have also linked the pages ensuring that one doesn’t have to scroll through the entire directory to reach what they are interested in.
Disclaimer: AS THIS IS JUST A COMPILATION OF RESOURCES WE FOUND ON THE INTERNET, WE TAKE NO AUTHORSHIP OF ANY OF THE PUBLICATIONS AND OR MATERIALS IN THIS DIRECTORY.
What's next for this directory?
This is just version one and to ensure that we are as transparent as possible with its development, we have linked a feedback form for all our users to offer us feedback on how best to improve it.
If you would prefer a community on Slack/Discord 🤩 to be created specifically for this let us know by sending us an email or reaching out on all our platforms and we can set one up!
We hope you enjoy this using this resource as much as we enjoyed creating it!
Heizal and Kalani from Climate Operation 💚
