Pedagogical approaches for climate justice orientations to teaching history and social studies

Defining climate justice education

Conceptualisations of climate justice emerge from literatures on environmental justice (Nixon, 2013), ecofeminisms (Walters, 2022), intersectional environmentalism (Connors and Trites, 2021), discourses of Indigenous sovereignty and land/water rights (Whyte, 2020), critiques of broad-based inequities between the Global North and the Global South including climate coloniality (Sultana, 2022), as well as the perpetuation of gender injustices, racisms and multi-species injustices – the role of humans in stripping other species of their right to life (see also Mayes and Center, 2023). The movement calls out and calls on ‘those who gain the most from the status quo [and] do little to change it’ (Walters et al., 2022, p. 304). To pursue climate justice is to intervene with, and reduce, the greater climate-related risks and burdens borne by particular communities who are also subjected to socio-political and economic marginalisation, including women, Indigenous peoples, racialised peoples, residents of the Global South, disabled peoples and more-than-human species. The actions and goals of such interventions must respond to local as well as global climate-related problems. Such interventions aim to compensate those who are suffering the worst climate effects, increasing their participation in decision-making and distributing natural resources fairly (Kluttz and Walter, 2018).

Climate justice education is related to wide-ranging educational discourses in the areas of ecojustice education (Bowers, 2001), critical pedagogy of place (Greenwood, 2019; Gruenewald, 2003), land education (Tuck et al., 2014), critical environmental education (Stapleton, 2020), justice-based environmental sustainability (Misiaszek and Rodrigues, 2023), transformative learning and sustainability education (Walsh et al., 2020), anti-anthropocentric pedagogy (Lin et al., 2023), critical global citizenship education (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023), and climate education otherwise (Stein et al., 2022, 2023). Many of these theoretical conversations are premised on the understanding that shaping a liveable future is absolutely not about sustaining the problematic human ways of knowing, being and doing that have gotten us into this mess and resulted in ‘multi-layered injustices’ (Stein et al., 2023, p. 990). We are influenced by Stein et al. (2023), who point out:

Whether one’s approach is more mainstream or critical, any climate education is likely to reproduce colonial patterns if it relies on the same intellectual, affective, and relational infrastructures of our current (modern/colonial) system, and if we remain (consciously and unconsciously) invested in the promises this system has offered to those it was designed to benefit. (p. 992)

Among the prominent theorisations of climate justice education are those with Freirean roots, such as the work of Misiaszek (2023). He theorises ecopedagogy that ‘counters oppressive education (formal, informal, and non-formal models) that justifies socio-environmental oppressions, as well as planetary unsustainability and anthropocentric dominance over the rest of Nature’ (p. 1253). According to Misiaszek (2023), there are four learned ideologies that must be disrupted through ecopedagogical approaches:

(1) false commonsense that separates environmental and social violence (i.e., socio-environmental violence) and instills anthropocentrism that separates humans from the rest of Nature (i.e., world-Earth distancing); (2) fatalism that extinguishes hope of ending humans’ acts of unsustainable environmental violence; (3) ‘development’ for sustaining hegemony and planetary unsustainability (i.e., Development rather than development); and (4) epistemological dominance that legitimizes the first three ideologies given (for example, epistemologies of the North). (p. 1254)

Ecopedagogies and ecojustice education in this Freirean vein counter the banking approach to environmental and sustainability issues (focused exclusively on knowledge transmission) by teaching students to ‘critically read the inseparable connections between environmental violence and social violence’ and to ‘act towards ending unsustainable environmental violent actions’ (Misiaszek, 2023, p. 1255). A central belief on which this approach to teaching rests is the idea that ‘the world is unfinished’ (Misiaszek, 2023, p. 1264) and therefore teachers may hold the world open to hope, thick reflexive praxis, a collective action orientation and deep change (see also Cachelin and Nicolosi, 2022; Lin et al., 2023; Misiaszek, 2022).

Karsgaard and Davidson (2023) add to this by bringing to our attention the role of intergenerational responsibilities when it comes to climate justice, arguing:

Considering the global nature of the climate crisis, including issues of intra- and intergenerational justice, it is critical to explore educational strategies that enhance understanding of the differential contributions to, effects of, and responsibilities for responding to climate change across diverse yet interconnected contexts. (p. 78)

They go on to define a critical global citizenship education approach that is decolonial in its orientation, serving to question taken-for-granted understandings of development that uphold status quo power relations and encouraging collective action (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023, p. 78). Tracing the causes and outcomes of collective political action movements such as youth climate strikes is offered by the authors as an example of how historical study might contribute to questioning and confronting the unjust status quo (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023, p. 88).

Climate justice education commonly attends to the affective dimensions of unlearning ways of life that are causing and perpetuating harm, seeking hopefulness in the face of ecological collapse and uncertain futures, and channelling practical anxiety into effective socio-political collective action (Mayes and Center, 2023). This focus extends beyond addressing the contemporary youth mental health crisis that is worsened by confronting seemingly irreparable planetary changes (Chawla, 2020). In some conceptualisations, climate justice education addresses gender- and race-based inequities by nurturing ‘green life skills’ that support pro-environmental behaviours and resilience in pursuit of a just transition, such as ‘empathy, reasoning, evidence-based decision-making and the ability to communicate a position’ (Kwauk and Casey, 2022, p. 9).

These samples of temporal, emotional and skill-based content in climate justice education are areas in which decolonial and justice-oriented perspectives are required in order to unsettle our modern/colonial entanglements. One international, interdisciplinary educational research group called the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective prescribes a process of lifelong learning and the pursuit of ‘expanding our capacity to face and process difficult intellectual, affective, and relational challenges in the imperfect present’ (Stein et al., 2023, p. 993; see also https://decolonialfutures.net/). This learning is predicated on making visible four denials: (1) denial of complicity with systemic colonial violence, (2) denial of the unsustainability of growth, (3) denial of entanglement with each other and the land, and (4) denial of the complexity of the challenges being faced (Stein et al., 2022, 2023). The warranted response to these denials is healing work that attends to five layers: ‘thinking; feeling; relationships; Mother Earth/cycles of life; and exchanges’ (Stein et al., 2023, p. 995). We admire this orientation to education, one that provides learners with the stamina for living now, and in an uncertain future, with more attention and love focused on the quality of our relationships to others, responsibility to future generations and interdependence with all species. We bring these ideas with us as we turn to the particular demands of history and social studies teaching and learning.

Climate education in history education literature

Environmental history’s place as a global and interdisciplinary academic field has grown increasingly solid and expansive through the establishment of associations, networks, dedicated journals and edited collections over the past 50 years (McNeill, 2010; Ruuskanen and Väyrynen, 2017). Within the field of environmental history, climate history (Chakrabarty, 2009; Singer, 2022) and the history of the Anthropocene (Bonneuil and Frezzos, 2016; Chakrabarty, 2018; Retz, 2021; Tamm and Simon, 2020) have more recently emerged as sub-specialisations. Yet only recently have environmental history and climate history become a central focus of history education scholarship, as others in the field have observed (Gripe and Sandahl, 2024; Miles and Keynes, 2023). Notable and recent contributions to scholarship in history education will be reviewed here (Adorno, 2020; Gripe and Sandahl, 2024; Hawkey, 2023; Miles and Keynes, 2023; Nordgren, 2023; Retz, 2022; Riede, 2022; Singer, 2022; Wakild and Berry, 2018; Waldron, 2021). The purpose of this review is to demonstrate that while teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers can and should look to discipline- or curricular subject-specific conversations (such as the one outlined here) about what a history and social studies education for climate justice may entail, they must also look farther. This is not only because the issue is broadly complex and interdisciplinary, but also expressly because of the limitations of disciplinary thinking outlined by scholars and researchers embedded within the field.

Focused on course design, student engagement, historical inquiry and classroom-ready examples, Wakild and Berry’s (2018) A primer for teaching environmental history offers concrete supports and transferrable ideas to teachers. Wakild and Berry (2018) briefly identify the topic of climate change as a particularly fruitful opportunity to, for example, disrupt progressive narratives and introduce complexity and uncertainty to periodisation (pp. 41–4). Their book is certainly an accessible place to start for guidance on environmental history situated within a typical classroom environment. Similarly, Adorno (2020) advocates for the broad and multi-faceted utility of environmental history in the cause of learning, formation of identity and active shaping of the future by youth, which requires ‘the ability to understand the interdependences, the complexity, the unexpected and uncertain; in this, history is a tool for young people to face life’ (p. 469). Environmental history has always been interdisciplinary, and these sources exemplify that commitment, one that cannot be overestimated when it comes to climate history.

Several recent works address the curricular decisions of history teachers vis-à-vis climate history specifically, albeit without extending towards tackling a new pedagogy for climate justice education in the history classroom. Alan J. Singer’s (2022) Teaching Climate History offers a textbook-like content summary of climate matters to be covered in a high school or undergraduate university history course, supported by discussion questions, sources and documents. Kenneth Nordgren’s (2023) chapter unpacks disciplinary approaches to teaching climate history, such as the selection, interpretation and interrogation of narratives, as he asks, ‘how should we tell the story?’ of the Anthropocene. Kate Hawkey’s (2023) book History and the Climate Crisis offers teachers a primer on content related to teaching climate history, predominantly insofar as it fits with the curriculum in the UK. Chapter 8 of her book briefly outlines considerations for classroom teachers, such as preparing for the element of controversy, responding to students’ prior knowledge or preconceptions, being perceived as taking risks rather than avoiding a difficult topic, and the limits of using history as a source of lessons for the present (Hawkey, 2023). These challenges are both general to all teachers and specific to history teachers, especially the matter of looking to the past as a source of lessons for the present or future. Further supporting Hawkey’s call to confront and engage with climate, the Historical Association of the United Kingdom has produced two climate-focused issues of history teachers’ magazines with subject-specific practical suggestions, resources and guidance (Historical Association, 2024a, 2024b). However, this scholarly landscape does not necessarily account for what environmental or climate educators know and practise when it comes to doing climate education well, or climate justice education specifically – which is our focus here.

Other scholarship takes up the problematics of history education as climate education. Retz (2022) outlines ethical challenges to history education that become visible from the vantage point of the intersection between historiography and the Anthropocene: how to locate the human on a time scale that is radically altered relative to the typical focus of historical narratives; how to attribute agency to the human in the scheme of change that exceeds our understanding of that very concept; and how to steer around apathy and determinism in the present, as future possibilities and pathways for agency appear foreclosed by past actions (Retz, 2022). Referring to the limits of the second-order thinking concepts prevalent in current curricula and textbooks, we may ‘lack the mental furniture to deal with our Anthropocene predicament’, which is demanding ‘the advent of a new knowledge regime’ (Retz, 2022, p. 14). This important tracing of challenges is not intended to provide teachers with pathways forward, but it does illuminate why we need them. Similarly, Miles and Keynes (2023) show what climate educators who are interested in intervening in the field of history education are up against, but with reference to sample curricula and textbooks. For example, whereas environmental histories frequently feature declensionist narratives, ‘the meaning of history conveyed by curriculum and textbooks remains progress-oriented, processual, and teleological, domesticating novelty and privileging historical continuity’ (Miles and Keynes, 2023, p. 489). They outline steps forward by drawing on the historiographic work of Tamm and Simon (2020), suggesting that educators could explore and experiment with multi-species, multi-scalar and non-continuous histories, asking ‘What would it mean to invite students to both envision radically different pasts and futures that seem both impossible and unrecognizable to us today?’ (Miles and Keynes, 2023, p. 505). Along a similar line of thinking, Riede (2022), commenting predominantly on the Danish history curriculum, criticises the siloes of subject areas and disciplines in the curriculum, referring to it as ‘pre-Anthropocene design’ (p. 180). Suggesting the pursuit of ‘shadow places’ and ‘dark pedagogies that embrace the complexities and entanglements of our time head on’, Riede (2022, p. 180) demonstrates why more pedagogical guidance, such as the question we pursue here, is crucial to curricular transformation. Extending insight into the limits of common discipline-focused approaches to teaching history and the pedagogical implications of this status quo, Gripe and Sandahl (2024) empirically demonstrate that history students’ capacities to interpret environmental history narratives must be actively scaffolded by teachers, drawing from and building on their second-order skills developed through other topics of historical study. They argue that without training in history students will be ill-equipped to engage critically with environmental issues, but also that facility with historical study does not inevitably transfer to the demands of engaging with environmental scenario building or decision-making (Gripe and Sandahl, 2024). Thus, the professional learning needed by history and social studies must be situated within the field, while also constantly extending outside of it.

Waldron (2021), writing at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, makes specific reference to the citizenship education purposes of history education and the critical orientations demanded by present conditions. In this sense, her approach is to examine what young people are up against in terms of intersecting crises and to frame history education around it, rather than deferring primarily to disciplinary habits of the past (Waldron, 2021) – similar to our own approach. Demonstrating this balance in practice, Siegner and Stapert (2020) show the promise of a humanities-focused climate change unit that incorporates both social studies and language arts, leading to climate literacy, gains in reading comprehension, passion for the topic of climate and local climate action projects.

This scholarly growth in the new field of climate history/social studies education is exciting and essential to the relevance of public education broadly speaking, the fields of history, humanities and social science disciplines themselves, and, no less, to the shaping of ethical futures. Our own prior work with Reed examines the intersection of youth climate action with citizenship education (Evans et al., 2024), and with other co-authors we piloted critical and historical thinking lessons focused on climate topics (McGregor et al., 2022). McGregor’s prior scholarly contributions with other co-authors offer frameworks for rethinking the premise and purpose of history education in the Anthropocene (McGregor et al., 2021); centring Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in climate-oriented history and social studies (McGregor et al., 2024); and experiential learning in environmental-focused history and social studies (McGregor and Karn, 2025). Departing from the scholarship to date, what motivated the literature review outlined below is twofold: (1) for the most part these sources are not framed by climate justice education aspirations, but rather by climate content (truths, realities and stories of a changing climate as predominantly caused by the human species); and (2) for the most part these sources are not expressly focused on pedagogical innovations that take into account the promising practices emerging from environmental education and climate education. As noted above, what we are curious about is the contours of a history or social studies classroom that has this explicit goal, one that may expand ‘our capacity to face and process difficult intellectual, affective, and relational challenges in the imperfect present’ (Stein et al., 2023, p. 993).

Method for literature review on climate justice education in social studies

To grasp the fast-growing field of climate justice education, our literature review asked: what does the literature say about teaching climate justice (in social studies)? Limiting our literature search to international works published between 2017 and 2023, we first collected literature with a specific focus on the subject area of social studies and then opened the search to climate justice in educational contexts more broadly. We conducted an electronic search of published, peer-reviewed articles using Education Source and OMNI (a local academic search platform). To focus our search, we used combinations of the following words: climate justice, climate change, social justice, social studies and history. Our initial search identified 227 articles. To select the most relevant articles, we developed inclusion and exclusion criteria and conducted 20 individual article reviews to calibrate our inclusion criteria in making selections. Articles that centred climate or environmental justice (for example, racism, social equity, justice) in students aged 5–18 years, teacher education or community learning contexts were included. Articles outside of these learning contexts (for example, younger learners from birth to four years old) or in adjacent fields (for example, social work) were excluded. This process resulted in the selection of 29 articles for analysis. We deliberately searched for articles that featured Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in relation to climate crisis, opening up our search terms to include decolonisation and relationality, and backward snowballing (Wohlin, 2014), on the five most applicable articles relating to centring Indigenous perspectives and decolonising (for example, Whyte, 2020).

To generate pedagogical approaches from the literature, we (H.E.M. and R.S.E.) first identified the key pedagogical themes outlined in each article, placing them in a synthesis table and positioning them as the focal data for review. R.S.E. conducted two rounds of inductive coding, using Saldana’s (2013) definition of coding as the act of assigning meaning by essence-capturing aspects of the themes. The codes were primarily drawn from words found in the focal data (for example, affective dimension, connect to community) (Saldana, 2013). H.E.M. reviewed the inductive coding and expanded where required. After the coding cycles, R.S.E. grouped the codes into clusters based on similarities (for example, the code ‘place-based’ was grouped with the code ‘local’) (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016). R.S.E. stepped back from the groupings to consider the data as a whole and generate themes, developing theme statements around their central organising concept, without concern for the number of themes (Braun and Clarke, 2013). From these themes, we derived pedagogical approaches by turning the themes into actionable statements. Overall, we generated 11 pedagogical approaches for teaching climate justice that are most relevant to teaching history and social studies in schools (for students aged 5–18 years) or teacher education settings but may also be applicable to other subjects or transdisciplinary learning contexts. We summarised each theme and determined the sequence of the themes. The term pedagogical approach highlights our focus in this study on active teaching approaches for climate justice (as opposed to listing prospective content topics).

Pedagogical approaches in teaching for climate justice

• Invite reflection on positionality as a starting point for self-awareness relating to environmental identities and privileges

Climate justice work begins with teachers acknowledging their own positionalities and encouraging students to do the same (Stapleton, 2020). Holding an understanding of where one stands in terms of privilege in relationship to the intersecting systems that are most powerful in producing climate change and associated consequences is important, and continuous and rigorous self-questioning (Misiaszek and Rodrigues, 2023) should be encouraged. To facilitate this reflection, create an environment that is safe (enough) where students feel open to challenging their existing paradigms, which helps students foster a sense of personal responsibility (Kwauk and Casey, 2022). The history and social studies classroom is a fitting space to guide students away from thinking that positionality results exclusively from merit, choice and individual accomplishment, or even individual moral superiority or culpability, but is rather tied to intergenerational social, economic and political patterns within which people are differently made vulnerable and agential.

• Recognise the continual, adaptive and relational climate action undertaken by Indigenous peoples

Indigenous knowledges are rooted in long-term, close relationships with the land, water and more-than-human world (Gram-Hanssen et al., 2021; Nxumalo et al., 2022; Whyte, 2020). Whyte (2020) emphasises the importance of recognising that Indigenous peoples continue to take local actions and strengthen solidarity globally, as they have previously done, to respond to the disrupted relationships with species. While perspectives (or knowledges) rooted in Indigenous epistemologies cut across many pedagogical themes for teaching climate justice, explicitly centring Indigenous contributions to climate crisis mitigation (Wilson et al., 2018; Zentner et al., 2019) is a necessary starting point in many teaching contexts, especially (but not only) those where treaties, settlement agreements or co-management plans are in place. This is not to suggest that all Indigenous environmental practices should be adopted uncritically, or that they can even be adopted by anyone. It is to highlight the potential of broader public attention on local Indigenous languages, knowledges, practices and aspirations for the future, which will be educative for young people as they participate in climate decision-making, planning and action. Teachers are encouraged to talk about recognised contributions of Indigenous knowledges to climate science (for example, in relation to migration strategies) as well as adaptation planning (Zentner et al., 2019). Relationality is at the core of the crisis, and work towards repairing relationships should be upheld over fast action, which can cause further damage (Gram-Hanssen et al., 2021; Whyte, 2020). Nxumalo et al. (2022) similarly emphasise relationality, reciprocity and responsibility as key values of Indigenous teachings in relation to climate justice.

• Deliberately engage with experiences, perspectives and efforts of Black and racialised peoples

Recognise the significant environmental work Black people and communities are engaging in, and centre Black or otherwise racialised role models doing environmental work to dispel the myth that environmentalism is an exclusively white space (Stapleton, 2020, p. 166). Illuminate how Black resistance also draws attention to other ecologies and beings (Nxumalo et al., 2022) and revise the environmental canon to ensure multiple standpoints are included (Stapleton, 2020). For example, include works (for example, films, artworks, historical work) of Black climate activists, such as Wangari Maathai from Kenya, who drew attention to intersecting issues of climate justice, gender and food precarity when engaging in activism. When doing so, include diverse knowledge representations and multiple landscapes and geographies (Stapleton, 2020). This inclusion can be done by examining a specific issue that affects Black and racialised peoples in a disproportionate way, such as racism within the food system, and considering how this racism cuts across multiple landscapes and geographies. Across all teaching, deliberately incorporate discussions on race, racialisation and inequality and, when possible, make authentic connections with anti-racist organising already under way in the community (Arias and Drossman, 2022). Given that race, racialisation and racial inequalities are historically and geographically constructed social dynamics, with intersecting implications that play out economically, politically, socially and in terms of environmental resources (for example, access to wealth, proximity to pollution), these topics and the associated commitment to extending historical perspectives featured in learning fit well within a history and social studies classroom.

• Attend to the spectrum of emotions and uncertainties that emerge to support holistic wellbeing

Cultivating an environment of wellbeing to help students develop a sense of belonging can set the conditions for students to embody hope in the face of crisis (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023). Teachers can invite examination of affective dimensions and critical affective literacies regularly, such as by posting an emotions wheel poster in their classroom, offering social licence to identify and talk about emotions. Teachers can model a range of differentiated coping strategies for emotions, including exposure to nature, to help students become emotionally attuned (Alvey, 2020). These invitations set the necessary conditions for teachers to teach through the grief that emerges when difficult knowledge, such as climate justice, is discussed (Mayes and Center, 2023). To go further, teachers may adopt a crisis pedagogy that acknowledges that both teachers and students require new knowledges, capacities and resources to deal with trauma associated with climate crisis (Whitehouse and Stevenson, 2022). This teaching approach can be viewed as a logical extension of the capacities that history and social studies teachers already hold when it comes to teaching difficult knowledge, such as in the case of Holocaust education or other extreme examples of injustice familiar to a history classroom.

• Disrupt hegemonic narratives of anthropocentricism that uphold unsustainable progress and consumption, coloniality and domination

A core aspect of teaching climate justice involves adopting decolonial approaches (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023) to interrupt epistemological dominance (Misiaszek, 2022) and violent colonial separation of humans from the land (Nxumalo et al., 2022). Specific to social studies, this approach can be put into practice by drawing on critical historical study to highlight power relations between people groups (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023), decentring historically canonical authors and content to include prominent works from diverse perspectives (Arias and Drossman, 2022), using various artforms to help students see the world from different perspectives that decentre competition (Formato, 2020) and examining literature for power relationships between humans and the natural environment (Connors and Trites, 2021). This approach invites multiple ways of knowing into history or social studies classrooms, ensuring that distinct stories of oppression, resistance and overcoming by diverse historical actors and people groups are fully integrated – thereby disrupting the many singular narratives associated with anthropocentricism.

• Invite openness to the spiritual dimensions connected to the environment

Teachers may identify ways to acknowledge and embrace the whole being, including the higher self, or spirit, in the learners they teach (Lin et al., 2023). This can be incorporated through practices that invite contemplation and enable students to connect their inner and outer worlds (for example, meditation, mindful listening) (Lin et al., 2023). Additionally, to foster spiritual connections, focus and reflect on a particular element, such as water, and consider its various meanings (for example, direct and symbolic) (Whitehouse and Stevenson, 2022). For example, history or social studies students could study the changing cultural and spiritual meanings of places, natural elements, species (plant or animal) or environmental practices over time and in different places. Teachers may adopt transdisciplinary approaches, which can evoke a sense of openness to developing spiritual connections towards other humans and more-than-human beings and places. Transdisciplinary approaches can help set the conditions for ethical commitments towards relationship building with humans and other species (Nxumalo et al., 2022), which may entail a spiritual dimension.

• Situate learning in a sense of place to foster authentic learning with and from the local environment

Embrace the place where the learning is situated (Cachelin and Nicolosi, 2022; Jorritsma, 2022) and foster awareness of multiple understandings of place and its histories, especially when discussing land and waterway decision-making or contestation (Macfarlane et al., 2019). Engaging in place-based stewardship can also help students understand the local community as a place they can draw on and where they can contribute knowledge (Flanagan et al., 2022). Helping students familiarise themselves with localised knowledge systems can enhance their learning connections between knowledge and the environment (Toit et al., 2022). Even if a history or social studies unit is focused on a topic that is distant geographically or historically, teachers can look for ways to find traces and legacies of that topic in the present and proximate reality experienced by students, who may be challenged to discover how those traces and legacies moved through time and space. Encouraging local environmental literacy inherently raises historical questions, and this jumping-off point is one through which students can design historically informed climate decision-making and action.

• Help students attune to and examine the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world

Invite students to reimagine their relationships with other living things (Lin et al., 2023), helping them attune to human interconnectedness with nature (Finn and Phillips, 2023). Doing so can help problematise ideological relationships with nature (Formato, 2020; Misiaszek, 2022) that frame the two as separate. Conversely, Stapleton (2020) proposes to honour multiple realities and conceptions of the environment without needing to provide a singular understanding. Teachers can invite students to question what they know and what they do not know about the Earth (Misiaszek, 2022). Finally, Formato (2020) suggests engaging in systems thinking when teaching to help students better understand the interrelatedness of ecological, social, cultural and political issues.

• Invite relational storytelling to create or encourage connections to environmentalism and affirm relationships to the land/water

Storytelling and story-listening can engage students in first-hand experiences and perspectives related to climate justice (Lin et al., 2023) that can deepen emotional and relational connections needed for thoughtful action. Nxumalo et al. (2022) emphasise that storytelling pedagogies can be decolonial and have manifested in testifying-witnessing relational stories of Black peoples’ connections with the land they are situated on, including kinship with the more-than-human world (Nxumalo et al., 2022). Relational storytelling can be integrated into history and social studies classrooms to encourage perspective taking and emphasise how historical events are captured in stories by actors of different positionalities.

• Enable students to authentically work in community, moving beyond individual actions

Establish a learning atmosphere where collective intelligence is valued (Whitehouse and Stevenson, 2022). Students benefit from working alongside community members and in hands-on, experiential ways (Arias and Drossman, 2022), which helps deconstruct intergenerational power asymmetries and allows each to view the other as fellow citizens (Flanagan et al., 2022). This can also occur by linking learning directly to community issues to encourage action that responds to a community need (Arias and Drossman, 2022). When working under authentic community conditions, invite students to contribute back to their communities in ways that further foster collective agency (for example, offering presentations to the public on their learning) (Flanagan et al., 2022). Mobilising student-led history or social studies questions and inquiries through community sources and activities can enliven the history classroom and set the stage for civic engagement, which is often an associated learning outcome in history or social studies curricula.

• Centre student agency and help identify opportunities for action

Create a democratic learning environment where students and teachers work together to create meaning related to climate crisis (Brissett, 2018). Support students’ agency and guide them in developing the capacity to create avenues for action (Cachelin and Nicolosi, 2022). Build on their activist orientations, using them as a starting point for learning (McGimpsey et al., 2023). When possible, channel their agency towards working alongside vulnerable beings, both human and non-human (Karsgaard and Davidson, 2023). Invite students to examine climate mitigation options themselves (for example, emissions cuts) and contextualise options within specific nation states so they can imagine alternative mitigation strategies that uphold climate justice (Svarstad, 2021). All of this inquiry, activism and community-engaged work will be stronger if it is informed by awareness of past systems, patterns, events and relationships that have led to the contemporary conditions, thus making the resonance between history education and citizenship education crucial to this pedagogical approach.

Table 1 summarises the 11 approaches listed above in a condensed form. Rephrased as questions, they may help teachers consider the presence or absence of the 11 pedagogical approaches for teaching climate justice in their own teaching practice. The question formulation also signifies that not every approach will be relevant or central to each teacher’s work at any given time but is something to consider. Each question is presented alongside the corresponding citations for further reading.

Teachers selecting approaches for climate justice education in social studies

We wondered what tools would be most useful to history and social studies teachers as they take new steps in engaging with climate justice education. Table 1 offers questions that teachers or curriculum developers may ask themselves as they figure out how they will take up climate crisis in their own teaching contexts and communities, as pedagogical approaches found from the climate education literature review. The questions may be used proactively when designing a course or planning a lesson, or retrospectively to evaluate courses or programmes.

A climate justice approach to teaching history and social studies will look different for every teacher given jurisdictional curriculum or assessment expectations, geographic and climate conditions, and student needs. Arguably there is more work to do to express the 11 pedagogical approaches in terms that are even more familiar and closely matched to the history teaching practices that prevail in the subject area while still expressing an openness to extend outside the discipline. As we have designed this article with an international audience in mind, it is unrealistic to delve much more deeply into the implications for history teachers here in a way that will be at all transferrable, although that work would be worthwhile in future scholarship and empirical study.

Nevertheless, to supplement the examples provided above in the description of each pedagogical approach, we offer a few more brief ideas regarding how climate justice-informed history and social studies might look in practice. The first is to facilitate a student-driven inquiry beginning with a draw-a-place activity. The activity is designed to personalise historical inquiry, situate it geographically and environmentally, and incorporate emotions across the inquiry process. In this activity, the teacher invites students to draw a place they have been that evokes peaceful and calming emotions in them. The teacher offers a diagram of emotions and asks students to write down the ones they associate with the place on the back of their drawing. Students are then prompted to think about the histories of their chosen place in relation to both human and more-than-human inhabitants and activities, through prompts such as: who might value this place along with me (including humans and more-than-humans)? What/who might have stood in this place 100 years ago? What has stayed the same in this place over time and what has changed? Who decides what changes and what stays the same? What might this place look like 100 years from now (based on the evidence available today)? How do I expect to feel if I stand in this place in 50 years? The inquiry activity can be adapted to focus attention on a specific resource, such as wood; a specific species, such as the beaver; or a specific human activity, such as fishing. Through the examination of a personally meaningful place, students can think about the interconnectedness of human and more-than-human activities in one place. The draw-a-place activity and following inquiry can be adapted or extended to map onto several climate justice pedagogical approaches, depending on the level of the students and the guidance of the teacher. It especially fits with pedagogical approaches four (attend to the spectrum of emotions) and seven (situate learning in a sense of place).

Another concrete example is a history lesson plan entitled Angry Inuk: Thinking critically about historical perspectives, available on our research website (https://sshean.ca/resources/), that examines a case of international environmental policy-making, the consequences of which are borne by an Indigenous people in Canada and exacerbated by climate-related inequities – both environmental and economic. This lesson invites students to learn about, and empathise with, the perspectives of the Indigenous communities affected through a historical documentary. While watching the documentary they learn about the integrated nature of environmental policy and economic stability in rural contexts. They are exposed to how misplaced, self-interested and commercialised global animal rights activism has disproportionately drowned out the voices of local Indigenous peoples, and by extension their right to exercise ethical harvesting and economic development. One learning outcome of this lesson is ‘to consider the role of emotion, alongside evidence, in learning about and from the past’, as emotion is used as a tool both by historical actors in the events, and by the documentary filmmakers telling the story about the historical events. Furthermore, students are invited to consider how cultural differences, such as those related to hunting animals and practising collective harvesting rights, will significantly shape their own responses to the documentary and the issue it takes up but may be completely disconnected from the environmental realities and decisions to be made. This example provides an opportunity to take up pedagogical approach one (invite reflection on positionality as a starting point for self-awareness relating to environmental identities and privileges), two (recognise the continual, adaptive and relational climate action undertaken by Indigenous peoples), four (attend to the spectrum of emotions and uncertainties that emerge to support holistic wellbeing) and nine (invite relational storytelling to create or encourage connections to environmentalism and affirm relationships to the land/water).

Teachers may select from the pedagogical approaches, depending on their own situatedness in climate crisis, their students’ needs and their contextual demands. Regardless of the pedagogical approaches teachers choose to adopt, it is our hope that they continue to try new ones that fit with their courses, students and environments, with an understanding that there is no single best practice for teaching climate justice in the history and social studies classroom. We also caution that in making choices about what pedagogies to employ, teachers must also consider how those pedagogies and the way they integrate them may uphold coloniality, reproduce dominance, or be, as Stein et al. (2023) warn, ‘invested in the promises this system has offered to those it was designed to benefit’ (p. 992). As individuals situated in communities, we are accountable for our choices and their outcomes, and while for some this may lead to feelings of overwhelm, a climate justice-focused response demands that we try new things, accepting that we may not get the approach right the first time. With a willingness to try new approaches, social studies and history teachers open new pathways forward towards climate justice. We hope these pedagogical approaches for climate justice education in social studies and history education will expand the choices and processes of learning – in ways that uphold complexity and recognise the need to do things differently. We hope these offerings can support teachers in honouring and celebrating the contextual differences that define teaching, and that teachers will take what they need to support them in climate justice education. And if the first pedagogical offering they try does not fit, we hope that they look for another, and then another, until they become the educator they hope to be – one that seeks ways to disrupt the current anthropocentric approaches to history and social studies education and centres climate justice.

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Conflicts of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work. All efforts to sufficiently anonymise the authors during peer review of this article have been made. The authors declare no further conflicts with this article.