Students as Partners. Implementation of Climate Change Education Within the Harvard Graduate School of Education
This chapter notes the efforts of implementing a climate change curriculum within the Harvard Graduate School of Education that helps to build competencies for potential leaders in different education sectors so that they can collaboratively combat climat
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Students as Partners. Implementation of Climate Change Education Within the Harvard Graduate School of Education Annie Hyokyong Nam and Sueyoon Lee
6.1 B eyond the Bottom-Up and Top-Down Debate on Climate Change Education Climate is a dynamic interplay of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere (Aspen Global Change Institute 2019). Whereas weather is defined by fickle fluctuations from day to day, climate change is a long term, sustained trend of change in climate. As rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue to trap heat in the form of infrared radiation (Fahey 2012), global warming has been occurring at rates much faster than anticipated and its effects being clearly felt worldwide. Despite alarming amount of evidence from the scientific community, global warming remains an issue of political debate in the United States, accentuating the ideological phenomenon categorized as ‘climate change denial (Hess and Collins 2018).’ The withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement Treaties (Pompeo 2019) and the reversal of numerous environmental rules and regulations (Clements et al. 2020) indicate that American politics may stand in the way of achieving an environmentally sustainable future. Consequently, local and regional actors in the US are increasingly stepping forward to fill the policy void created by federal inaction (Reeves et al. 2014). Inciting and mobilizing citizen action could be central in mitigating the effects of climate change (Wi 2019). If students are educated to understand and act upon changes in climate, they can create a grassroots movement that produces systemic changes. A grassroots movement refers to an initiative to help individuals engage in community interventions and activities with the mission of instrumenting local and societal change for the collective interest of the community (de Souza 2007; Fisher 1998; Rothman 1996). A. H. Nam · S. Lee (*) Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), Cambridge, MA, USA © The Author(s) 2021 F. M. Reimers (ed.), Education and Climate Change, International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57927-2_6
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Grassroots organizations have shown promising results in raising awareness and encouraging community involvement (Christens 2010; People’s Association [PA] 2011; Paul and Tan 2003; Smith 2000), but the debate over top-down versus bottomup approaches in climate change education (CCE) has long persisted (Fadeeva et al. 2014). In essence, the main aim of climate change education (CCE), which is rooted in education for sustainable development (ESD) (UNESCO 2015), is to engage different stakeholders in promoting lifelong education for global citizenship and help build a knowledge society in which local communities act upon recommendations. Educating for this type of change is a challenge in traditional western education because education is no longer considered a top-down transmission of knowledge, information, and
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