‘The existential tendency’ in climate change education: an empirically informed typology

Abstract

Climate change education (CCE) brings about existential concerns of students. Teachers in turn are confronted with didactic demands to take into account the existential challenge climate change elicits. However, conceptual haziness about how to understand ‘the existential’ in CCE complicates didactic research on the topic, impedes researchers to get a nuanced understanding of ‘the existential’ in CCE, and, thus, hinders the development of empirically grounded knowledge that can offer guidance for teachers. Therefore, this article presents an empirically informed typology that categorises and illustrates diverse expressions of the existential dimension of CC in concrete educational practice. It employs a methodology inspired by Wittgenstein’s user perspective on language, focusing on ordinary and basic traits in our use of language to identify and classify diverse recognisable ways in which the existential is expressed in educational practices. The empirical material comes from case studies of 15 CCE courses in higher education in Belgium. The results distinguish Existential moment, Life quake, Existential dilemma, Existential deliberation, Existential reflection on existential questions, Existential reflection on existential experiences and Existential norm. This typology can be seen as an analytical tool for didactic research on how to recognise and handle expressions of the existential tendency in practice.