Climate changed geographies and education for a better tomorrow?: Possibilities, politics and perspectives

Exact timing to be confirmed

Convenors: Dr Lauren Hammond, Lecturer in Teacher education (University of Edinburgh) Nicola Walshe, Professor of Education and Pro-Director (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society) Grace Healy, Honorary Research Fellow (University of Oxford) and Education Director (Secondary) (David Ross Education Trust), Dr Victor Salinas-Silva (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile)

This session seeks to invite discussion about the role, responsibilities and realities of education in a climate-changed world. The session aims to facilitate research sharing and knowledge exchange between colleagues interested in actively considering the possibilities and practicalities of education for a better tomorrow in, and through, schools, universities or other education spaces. From the decisions educators make in the classroom or out in the field, to what policy makers choose to include (or not) in national curricula and guidelines, education is inherently political and often contested. The multi-scalar and intersecting decisions made shape the spaces that children and (young) people and those who work with, and for, them occupy, and their experiences of education. Decisions can lead to the (re)production of systems of ‘unjust hierarchy and dominator culture’ (hooks, 2003: p. 86), or the active challenging of them through relationships, curriculum and pedagogy. Young people are currently navigating complex narratives about, and experiences of, environmental in/justices and futures in their everyday lives (Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2022; Walshe and Sund, 2022). The ‘gap’ between school and university geography and the politics that surrounds education, influences educators’ agency and the construction and representation of geography in curricula and educational resources. Here, the context of a climate-changed world makes conversations about the possibilities, politics and perceptions of education and education spaces more urgent. This session offers the opportunity to consider geography both as lens through which to examine educational spaces, processes and institutions in a climate-changed world, and a subject and academic discipline (young) people engage with through education to explore the world in all of its complexity.

Please email paper abstracts of 250 words to lauren.e.hammond@ed.ac.uk by the 10th March for consideration for this session.