“It should not only be technical education.” Students’ climate anxiety experiences and expectations toward university education in three European universities

Abstract

Climate anxiety is increasing among students in higher education. In this mixed-method study, we map attitudes toward climate anxiety of students from sustainability related study fields. We analyze case study results from three universities in Europe (Helsinki, Warsaw, and Uppsala), querying: students’ needs in coping with climate anxiety in academia and ways university operations can be improved to meet those needs. Results from a cross sectional survey (N = 157) place climate anxiety within a range of emotions, from sadness to hope. The majority of respondents reported a mixture of empowering and paralyzing emotional states. Respondents to semi-structured interviews advise academia to rethink its time economies, prioritize transformative climate action, acknowledge students’ emotion work around sustainability issues, make climate education more humanistic, and include more-than-human-nature in educational spaces. Educators could employ transformative learning approaches to redefine climate anxiety from paralyzing emotion into constructive learning experience.