Shifting the desired outcome from climate literacy to climate agency: Education that empowers civic leaders

Abstract

Despite improvement to the public’s awareness of climate change, we have yet to achieve the necessary transformations to our planet’s future–we believe that educators can and should be an influential catalyst in the shift. Educators around the world foster people with a deep understanding of climate change and the capacity to address it. In this paper, we synthesize the existing climate education literature to put forward a clear definition of the concept of climate literacy. We then draw attention to a significant problem with climate literacy, agency, which is often un or ill-defined in climate change education scholarship, resulting in substantial impacts on climate educators’ efforts. We conclude this paper by offering a reimagined vision of climate education that shifts away from acceptance of climate change to empowerment for meaningful climate action.