Helen Fitzmaurice and Jake Barton will be sharing some of her most recent work with the Oakland Teachers Advocating for Climate Action project at the Annual International Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching to be held in Denver, CO.
Fitzmaurice, H. & Barton, J. C. (Forthcoming 2024). Community Organizing for Climate Change and Environmental Justice Instruction at the School District Level, submitted to Strand 14: Environmental Education and Sustainability.
Climate change and environmental justice education (CCEJE) is perhaps the most urgent example of “science for the rest of us” to face our world this century. Despite the urgent need for CCEJE, the fact that 78% of U.S. parents say that it should be taught in schools (Chekis et. al, 2018), and despite increasing inclusion of CCEJE in science standards (e.g. NGSS, 2014) and across content areas (e.g., New Jersey, CA EP&Cs), the implementation of CCEJE in the classroom is ad hoc even in secondary science classrooms (Plutzer et. al, 2016). In response to this gap, ecosystems of actors: teachers, students, parents, and other community members in districts across the country are organizing to bring climate change and environmental justice into classrooms at scale across their school districts. In this paper, we examine how these various actors work together to push for the systematic (rather than ad hoc) implementation of climate change pedagogy across their schools or districts through a multiple case study approach of four districts on the West Coast of the United States.
