Towards Climate Justice Education: Views from Activists and Educators in Scotland

Abstract

This article focuses on the findings from an exploratory research project on climate justice education (CJE) in Scotland. The results from the focus groups and interviews with activists, advocacy workers and educators, demonstrate three broad aims: (1) to consider the ways in which different stakeholders conceptualise climate justice; (2) to examine how teachers and activists perceive challenges to, and opportunities for, developing climate justice education; (3) to explore the potential for recognising activism and civic engagement as an educational process, considering both activists’ views on education and educators’ views on activism in this context. Teachers express concerns about institutional constraints, emotional resilience of students, and ideological bias, while activists emphasize the importance of agency, participatory democracy, and epistemic justice. Teachers were less well-informed about climate justice as a concept and were more ambivalent about the prospect of learning through and from activism.