Beyond their carbon footprints: Secondary school students’ hope and action in face of climate change

Beschreibung

To address negative emotions and overcome a lack of efficacy in combatting climate change, fostering students’ hope that a climate just transition can be achieved is pivotal. Hereby, learning environments are needed which integrate an affective dimension and focus on efficient, collaborative ways to reduce carbon emissions. To provide the ground for designing such interventions, this cross-sectional study investigates the connections between secondary school students’ climate change hope and action both on the individual and collective sphere, considering low-impact as well as high-impact actions. Further, students’ reasons for hope (or the lack of it) were examined. In a mixed methods approach, data of 437 students (grades 8-11) were collected. Results reveal that much of students’ hope is placed on the individual, in contrast to the collective ability of society to respond to the climate crisis. However, they at the same time scored low on their current climate action, especially for multiplicative and political climate action. To confront former individualistic, disempowering frameworks, our results imply that climate change instruction should increasingly focus on providing positive narratives of how to combat climate change, theories of societal change and a holistic approach towards solutions including both actions at the individual and collective sphere.

Zeitraum	23 März 2025 → 26 März 2025
Ereignistitel	NARST’s 98th Annual International Conference
Veranstaltungstyp	Konferenz
Ort	National Harbor, Maryland, USA / Vereinigte StaatenAuf Karte anzeigen
Bekanntheitsgrad	International