Special Issue on Climate Justice Education

The Cairns Institute researchers Associate Professor Hilary Whitehouse and Adjunct Professor Bob Stevenson were invited to edit a special issue of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning (AJAL) on climate justice education. The special issue was published In November 2022.

Adult climate education generally receives less scholarly and practical attention in comparison to the global efforts placed on the role of formal schooling to address the climate crisis. The aim of the special issue is to promote further discussion of the role of adult education and learning to showcase emerging theory and practice.

Australian and international scholars working within the field of adult education contributed to creating an issue brimming with ideas and seasoned analysis that reveal many complexities within adult climate justice education.

The research papers and stories from practice illuminate diverse approaches that adult educators are adopting in response to the climate crisis. Some papers focus on work within the formal tertiary education sector, others focus on community-initiated and based learning strategies.

To give some examples: The Cairns Institute Fellow Dr Larraine Larri publishes work from her PhD thesis on an original facet of adult social movement learning. In exploring climate justice education in action, her paper describes and analyses the peer learning pedagogy and the networked, informal education strategies employed by the Australian Knitting Nannas against Gas and Greed (KNAGs) termed ‘Nannagogy’. Dr Larri makes visible the learning that underpins the successful, national activism of the Nannas in their fight for a more climate stable future.

Professor Chunlin Yao showcases his pedagogical response to climate change using compulsory English language classes at his university as a site in which to develop undergraduate students’ climate literacy. This tactical pedagogy helps students to improve their foreign language knowledge and skills as well as develop their critical wholistic climate thinking. Professor Yao shows how educators can innovate alternative curricular as means for expressing their social and ecological values.

In separate papers, Whitehouse (with RMIT colleague Annette Gough) and Stevenson address climate justice education with a policy or political focus. Whitehouse and Gough conducted a content analysis of selected frameworks and policies developed under the auspices of the United Nations that revealed increasingly detailed frameworks to support climate justice education. In the absence of national policy, they argue it is time for Australia to cease gesturing and start acting to develop coherent national and state policy for climate justice education for citizens of all ages in line with climate education responsive United Nations settings.

Stevenson describes the significant contribution of youth, women and the environmental climate movement to the May 2022 federal election results in finally bringing hope for national climate action. Despite these gains, he argues, much more remains to be urgently accomplished, namely specific plans to rapidly phase out and replace the use of fossil fuels, curb methane emissions and forest clearing, and broadly increase climate mitigation and adaptation. Learning and negotiation within climate movements and their subsequent actions to shape government policy development are portrayed as critical to the successful enactment of more ambitious and effective climate policies.

There are several examples of innovations for adult learning in the special issue relevant to educators and the community. Climate justice learning can work effectively within the varying traditions of adult education and lifelong learning to fully address the multiple injustices associated with climate breakdown.

The work published in the special issue shows that the desire for global transformation drives innovation in adult education both nationally and internationally across the formal, informal and community sectors.

Email hilary.whitehouse@jcu.edu.au to receive an e-copy of the special issue.

Image credits Hilary Whitehouse and Bob Stevenson.