The hybrid seminar should allow all participants to communicate with each other, opening up a multi-directional flow of ideas and information. The exchange with European colleagues helped to reflect teaching-practise and to analyse pupils’ activity.

Addressing the Problem of Climate Change

We worked on the characteristics of the Climate Change problem, which cannot be limited to the scientific knowledge: it is a socially acute issue that involves ethical, political, and social decisions. This type of wicked problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973) or super-pernicious problems (Fabre, 2021) need to be treated didactically also in their 5 superimposed dimensions: polysemy, potential conflictuality, complexity, critical temporality and absence of direct solution. 

Explore the Possibility of Didactization

• How can we adopt an educational approach based on cross-disciplinary and uncertain knowledge, which is the subject of socio-scientific debate?

• How can we defend the position of these emancipatory educations and social acute questions when the adults in the school must adopt a neutral position?

• How can we (re)define the place and role of teachers and educators, recruited on the basis of their university degree in a particular discipline, when they are being asked to adopt an interdisciplinary approach, develop a critical mind and act to transform behaviours?

Let's Get to Work!

Throughout the online training in October, we discovered an existing teaching tool (designed for upper secondary grades) for tackling the problem of climate change and we reflected on its possible use in classrooms together. During the winter months, participants tested this tool in their own classes (various levels, various contexts) or made an experience with another teaching tool on the basis of our common reflections. Material and testimonials of the different teaching and learning experiences were collected (i.e. written productions of students, short videos of students presenting their group work results, pictures from the group phases).

Discussing our Experiences

In march, we had two days to exchange and analyse these materials. Supported by analysis tools, we reflected on everyone's teaching experience and learnings. Our discussions focused on several key themes: the mental and emotional engagement of learners, the role of critical thinking: whether facilitated by the tools or not, and the potential connections to students’ everyday lives. We also considered the opportunity to open up to interdisciplinary approaches and the potential of social interaction and debates in the classroom. Our reflections included thinking with students’ personal ideas and how to account for differing opinions, especially when they lead to controversy. We explored the process of deconstructing and reconstructing fossilised knowledge that is often considered stable, and how to create space for envisioning different future scenarios. The role of the teacher also came into question: should they share their own opinion? As well as the danger of narrowing the conversation to simple eco-gestures. Finally, we addressed the emotional responses teachers must navigate, such as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Questioning the Political Dimension

The last day, we have completed our seminar with a look at the necessary education to politics. 

• How can we define what an education to politics can be?

• How can we incorporate political education into our teaching?  

A behaviorist-based sustainable development education needs to be replaced by an Anthropocene education that offers more potential for political socialization. Teaching climate change means to help students to decode a politically situated knowledge, the complexity of social relations, power and injustice relations (Barthes, 2022). A scientific education on climate change which should allow our students to take in charge the double political and scientific dimension of environmental questions.