Addressing the Challenges of Preparing Teachers to Teach about the Climate Crisis

Abstract

Teachers often lack adequate teacher preparation in knowledge and practices for engaging their students to address the climate crisis, suggesting the need for an increased focus on climate change in teacher education programs. This review of theory and research on preparing preservice teachers for addressing the climate crisis examines seven challenges facing teacher educators: (1) coping with the variation in state standards and requirements related to teaching climate change in schools, (2) providing valid knowledge and beliefs about climate change, (3) acquiring positive attitudes and self-efficacy about teaching climate change, (4) providing transdisciplinary curriculum teacher preparation, (5) addressing environmental justice issues, (6) adopting systems thinking for addressing climate change, and (7) using case-study methods for teaching about for organizing instruction around specific, local instances of climate change effects. Climate change represents a challenging predicament that requires transforming societies’ systemic, status-quo practices to generate adaptation and mitigation solutions to address the climate crisis (Stibbe, 2021). Four out of five students, ages 13–17, perceive climate change (CC) as a “crisis” or “major problem,” and 6 out of 7 posit the need for change given that “human activity is causing climate change” (Males, 2019). Fostering these transformations implies the need for teachers to engage students in activities to address the need for change to address the CC.