Political Discourses as A Resource for Climate Change Education: Promoting Critical Thinking by Closing the Gap between Science Education and Political Education

Abstract

This paper discusses political discourses as a resource for climate change education and the extent to which they can be used to promote critical thinking. To illustrate this, we present here an activity developed in the online course, Freirean Communicative Educational Situations for Climate Change Education, designed and developed as part of postdoctoral research at the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Brazil. The activity aimed to analyze the speeches of the Presidents of Colombia and Chile at the United Nations Climate Action Summit (2019) in a way which approached climate change as a socio-scientific issue. We argue that climate change education should not only involve learning about risk, adaptation, resilience, and basic scientific concepts, but also critical reflection on public policy and discourses and transformative content. This includes consideration of non-formal and informal communications and analysis of how power relations can restrict, motivate, or boost the impetus towards climate change education. These kinds of classroom activities enable teachers to work with a combination of core critical thinking skills, attitudes, and abilities, as well as discussing the details of science and scientific knowledge. This in turn enables the gap between the scientific and political aspects of climate change education to be bridged.