Höhle, J. V., & Bengtsson, S. L. (2023). A Didactic Toolkit for Climate Change Educators: Lessons from Constructive Journalism for an Emotionally Sensitive and Democratic Content Design. Environmental Education Research.
This has been several years in the making so I am excited to be able to share this with you. The basis for this paper was my masters thesis for my degree in Sustainable Development I started writing in 2019. We started the paper shortly after I graduated and it has been through many different phases since then.
Ever since I worked for a news site engaged in constructive journalism, I have been intrigued by the concept. I saw how it impacted my emotional reactions toward the world and especially my work in sustainability. I found that I wanted to learn more about climate change and sustainability challenges but became despaired and overwhelmed and apathetic when trying to. Constructive journalism provided one way of reconnecting with hope and with the possibility of things being different. I wanted to bring these insights into climate change education and specifically the design of content. Thus, we developed a theoretical framework with three practical tools which climate change educators can use in the preparation of their lessons.
In the paper, we describe how solutions orientation, future orientation, and community orientation in the design of content can help counteract the trend of individualising the concern for climate change; counteract denial, apathy, and fatalism; and work against seeing climate change education in an overly undemocratic and instrumental way.
For more details, please have a look at my graphic summary of the paper or give it a read on the journal’s website. Here’s the link which will guide you to the publication in Environmental Education Research:
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2023.2182746
The paper is unfortunately not open access but please feel free to email me if you would like to read it.
Juliane Verena Höhle 