Climate Change Curriculum
Curriculum resources for faculty in different disciplines
Affective resources
Engaging with climate change on any level takes an emotional toll on students and instructors alike. See below a list of curriculum resources that address the affective aspects of teaching climate change.
See also these pages on PCC Library guides:
- Climate anxiety (student guide)
- Climate grief and anxiety (page on student Climate Change guide)
- Climate grief (faculty guide)
- Climate change and the brain (faculty guide)
Curriculum resources for self care and emotional resilience
- Activities ResourcesActivities and curriculum compiled in the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators
- All We Can Save Project"The All We Can Save Project is on a mission to embed climate truth, courage, and just solutions in education — and to make it exceedingly easy to use the anthology within classrooms and beyond "
- Climate Doom to Messy Hope: Climate Healing & Resilience -- A Practical Handbook for Climate Educators and CommunityCreated by Meghan Wise for UBC Climate Hub's Climate Wellbeing Engagement Network. See discussion prompts and activities on pp. 23 - 27.
- Climate Emotions Wheel and WorksheetFrom the Climate Mental Health Network
- Emotional ResilienceToolkit for Climate WorkFrom the Climate Therapy Alliance, Pacific Northwest Chapter. Includes a toolkit of exercises and activities to promote resilience and address eco-anxiety.
- Emotion Focused Resources for Navigating the Climate CrisisLinks to podcasts, TED Talks, exercises and other resources, from the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators
- Lesson Plan: Writing about Eco/Climate Emotions and ConcernsFrom the Climate Mental Health Network, designed for the high school level.
- Recommended podcast episodesPodcast episodes assigned in the University of Michigan class “Leadership for Turning Climate Anxiety into Action, Fall 2023
- Resources for Mindfulness in the Climate CrisisLinks to resources and activities around mindfulness, part of the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.
- Resources for Self Care in the Climate CrisisLinks to self care resources, part of the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.
- Resources for the More Than Human WorldLinks to activities and resources for connecting with the natural world, from the Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators.
- Taking Action and Self Care WorksheetsFrom the Climate Mental Health Network
Recommended research about climate anxiety in the classroom
Image credit: Panu Pihkala & Anne Palm
Dr. Panu Pihkala provides a model of the broad process of encountering eco-anxiety and ecological grief in his article The Process of Eco-Anxiety and Ecological Grief: A Narrative Review and a New Proposal " Eco-anxiety and grief are here seen as fundamentally healthy reactions to threats and loss, and only the strongest forms of them are seen as problems. The aim is to help researchers, various professionals and the general public by providing a model which is (a) simple enough but (b) more nuanced than stage models which may give a false impression of linearity."
Additional resources:
- Affective Pedagogies: Foregrounding Emotion in Climate Change EducationArticle by Audrey Bryan, published in Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 2020. Provides "a conceptual toolkit to inform the psycho-affective aspects of CCE [climate change education], with a particular emphasis on the pedagogical complexities of engaging learners located in emissions-intensive societies with their role as ‘implicated subjects’ in the climate crisis."
- Beyond Gloom and Doom: How to Teach Climate Change Towards EmpowermentFrom CLEAN: " a brief review of strategies and resources for processing climate change-related emotions inspiring action together and hope for the future. The teaching resources associated with each strategy include a thoughtfully curated collection of lesson plans, websites, and videos that support climate mental health."
- Coming of Age at the End of the World: The affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies CurriculaArticle by Environmental Studies professor Sarah Jaquette Ray, published in anthology "Affective Ecocriticism : Emotion, Embodiment, Environment"
- Eco-Anxiety and Environmental EducationArticle by Dr. Panu Pihkala about the complexities of eco-anxiety for environmental education. Includes a discussion of potential practical activities related to eco-anxiety, drawing from various fields of education.