Learning about climate change in, with and through art
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Learning about climate change in, with and through art Julia Bentz 1,2 Received: 6 March 2020 / Accepted: 19 July 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
Effective strategies to learn about and engage with climate change play an important role in addressing this challenge. There is a growing recognition that education needs to change in order to address climate change, yet the question remains “how?” How does one engage young people with a topic that is perceived as abstract, distant, and complex, and which at the same time is contributing to growing feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and anxiety among them? In this paper, I argue that although the important contributions that the arts and humanities can make to this challenge are widely discussed, they remain an untapped or underutilized potential. I then present a novel framework and demonstrate its use in schools. Findings from a high school in Portugal point to the central place that art can play in climate change education and engagement more general, with avenues for greater depth of learning and transformative potential. The paper provides guidance for involvement in, with, and through art and makes suggestions to create links between disciplines to support meaningmaking, create new images, and metaphors and bring in a wider solution space for climate change. Going beyond the stereotypes of art as communication and mainstream climate change education, it offers teachers, facilitators, and researchers a wider portfolio for climate change engagement that makes use of the multiple potentials of the arts. Keywords Sustainability education . Transformation . Arts-based methods . Youth
* Julia Bentz [email protected]
1
Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (ce3c), Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Campo Grande, Building C1, 4th floor, room 38, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal
2
CICS.NOVA Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, University Nova Lisboa, Colégio Almada Negreiros | Campus de Campolide, 1070-312 Lisbon, Portugal
Climatic Change
1 Introduction There is little doubt that today’s children will inherit a world with complex socialenvironmental challenges. Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels is a major task that involves rapid and profound changes in how societies function. Education plays a vital role in addressing this challenge and many have argued that it needs to be revised and restructured in order to provide conditions for transformative learning and meaningful climate action (Monroe et al. 2017; O’Brien et al. 2013; Sterling and Orr 2001). At school, teaching about climate change usually takes place in the natural science disciplines and is often limited to explaining the greenhouse effect and discussing the potential consequences of rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and increasing sea levels (Monroe et al. 2017; Stevenson et al. 2017). Communicating mainly messages of fear rather than showcasing real examples for active engagement, this approach has been criticized for contri
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