Pathways for Embedding Social Emotional Learning Into Climate Justice Education and Education for Sustainable Development
In this blogpost, Camilla Hadi Chaudhary and Radhika Iyengar, with inputs from Baela Jamil, from the Dil se Dharti Group (Hindi/Urdu: “Earth from the Heart”), highlight ideas emanating from a series of discussions amongst a group of academics, researchers, practitioners and activists in the fields of education and climate from South Asia on how climate justice education (CJE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) can be conceptualised to incorporate deeper engagement with social emotional learning (SEL). The blog launches a new blog series on “Social Emotional Learning and Pro-Environmental Behavior”. The blog and the series represent a call to the global education community that simply downloading cognitive knowledge and exclusively science-driven content in the curriculum will not lead to pro-environmental behavior. Curriculum designers and teachers for lifelong learners need to incorporate the social-emotional aspect in all subjects as they infuse climate education in their wider curricula. SEL connects all living beings on the planet and thus invokes empathy and compassion towards one another. In current times, mainly negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, helplessness, or apathy) are associated with the environment. These negative emotions adversely affect any pro-environmental behavior. Therefore, curricula and teaching of all forms, non-formal, informal, and formal, need to integrate positive emotions which are linked to concepts of justice and collective well-being. If people feel for each other and all things around the planet, they will protect, value and nurture them for everyone’s well-being. Therefore, this blog post is a plea to all educators to develop SEL frameworks into their teaching and learning that speak to the environment.
This blog highlights ideas emanating from a series of discussions amongst a group of academics, researchers, practitioners and activists in the fields of education and climate from South Asia. Instigated by a young student in Pakistan and timely response by the Center for Sustainable Development at the Climate School, Columbia, calling on activists, the group has grown organically generously creating a repository of open source materials. The discussions reflected on how climate justice education (CJE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) can be conceptualised to incorporate deeper engagement with social emotional learning (SEL). Two overarching concerns of climate and sustainability education informed the discussions of the group: the first was the over-reliance on scientific epistemology informing ESD and CJE. It was argued that while science explains the facts as they are, it does not impart a notion of care and call to action to students who will determine the future of these disciplines, and indeed the state of the environment. The second concern was that discourses in both disciplines are dominated by issues and concerns facing lived experiences in the Global North, many of which are far removed from those affecting the global majority. Furthermore, there is diversity of experiences across social contexts in the Global North and South that climate justice education needs to incorporate.
These issues debated extensively and informally over the course of several months and through more formal engagement through a public webinar, resulted in the following categories of identified issues and proposed solutions:
Framing SEL in the fields of CJE and ESD
This question fundamentally under-wrote the discussions. While dominant conceptualisations of SEL engage with lived environments, there was a consensus that this was inadequate to address the multifarious concerns emanating from lived climate injustices in global south contexts, and indeed broader issues impeaching students’ ability to live in positive peace i.e. one that not only includes an absence of violence but embodies structures for the removal of all inequities. Thus, embedding SEL into ESD, grounded in respect for land and habitat, must include learning for positive peace, drawing upon the notion of fundamental empathy for the natural and living world. Empathy conceptually requires viewing another through their eyes to understand their lived realities. For the purposes of ESD this can take different approaches across the spectrum of passive (that processes emotional responses) to active empathy (that takes action to create a change), grounded in a typography of cognitive (learned) and emotional empathy. Building on these thoughts, the first output was that education for sustainable development must integrate empathy as a foundation for SEL in CJE and ESD.
How to integrate empathy-driven SEL into CJE and ESD
The next question that the group debated was the practicality of embedding such thinking into learning processes, given contextual diversity and time and resource constraints faced by educators globally. Solutions to achieve this were viewed both through formal teaching pathways and more holistically.
The fundamental question that the group grappled with concerning embedding SEL into CJE and ESD was how to create content that was relevant across contexts. Two related avenues were highlighted both grounded in imaginings of creative pedagogies: the first was to make the content experience-based so that learning projects for ESD would include interactions with the natural environment, animals, local food chains, and promoting peace, incorporating ideas of SEL (underwritten by empathy). Such learning design imagined the creative use of surrounding natural habitats and socio-human contexts rather than overarching global issues that may not hold contextual relevance to students. Thus for example for those living in arid regions, water conservation topics may take precedence while for those living in urban centres learning about mitigating pollution and extreme heat would be topics of learning. Such pedagogical design is informed by global citizenship education that highlights contextual learning and action as fundamental precepts of learning.
Building on such a design, the second (related) idea was the use of AI in creating content. Acknowledging that AI use comes with its own environmental impacts, and embedded positional biases of its developers, its potential for generating equity in access to content and support was highlighted as critical to imagining justice within climate discourses. A skeletal climate curricula, scaffolded by key SEL values (empathy and compassion) and goals (equity and sustainability) was proposed upon which curricula designers and practitioners could add context-driven material using AI. This curricula would function as a starter-kit that could then be built on. The nomenclature ‘AI for good learning’ was proposed. We recognize the dichotomy of using AI for Climate education. However we want to change the current use of AI for the elite universities primarily in the Global North.
Based on these various deliberative discussions, the group has proposed the following framework.
While creative imaginings of SEL for CJE and ESD through curricular inclusion and experiential pedagogy foundation all practical efforts in this project, there was a deep understanding that empathy cannot just be learned through formal processes. It needs to embed every aspect of learning as a fundamental value informing learning content and pedagogical practices. Here, borrowing again from citizenship education, the notion of creating students who imbibe and are driven by empathy through such SEL design was forwarded. Such a drive would power peace and justice towards all as an educational philosophy as ‘it is hard to hate someone with whom you empathise’. Thus, educational policymaking, curricular design, learning content and pedagogies should be underwritten by empathetic foci and values. Moreover, pedagogical training and support for teachers, school leadership and caregivers, should foreground the same, borrowing from peace education approaches such as non-violent communication.
In the coming months, we will begin our work on the various aspects of the framework, practically applying it in various settings, sharing regular feedback in various public sessions organized by the Center for Sustainable Development at the Climate School, Columbia, and Mission 4.7. and counterpart institutions in South Asia. These ideas reflect preliminary and ongoing thinking on these issues characterised by the varied perspectives shared by the group members, for which a pilot is planned for testing in the near future. This variety brings shared experiences and values, theoretical framing tempered by practical feasibility of solutions. What remains fixed is the commitment to imagining more equitable education with care for climate and environmental sustainability in the hope of more climate just futures for all.
Our call for this writeup is to join this group of members in our following meetings by email to: Camilla Hadi Chaudhary chc73@cam.ac.uk. We are looking for experts who are working in this area of research/project implementation who can share their resources and ideas across our members.
Participating organizations
Climate School, Columbia University
University of Cambridge
South Asia- Special Interest Group at CIES
Teachers’ Resource Centre, Pakistan
Pratham India Education Initiative
University of Karachi, Pakistan
Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Pakistan
Indiana University
Innovate Educate & Inspire, Pakistan
Aga Khan University, Pakistan
UNESCO Regional Office, Bangkok
Tribhuvan University, Nepal
Bard College Beijing Office for Asia-Pacific
University of Nottingham Malaysia
U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network
South Asian Approaches to Researching Education (SAARE) Network
Development in South Asia, (DISHA), Teachers College, Columbia University.
The Authors:
Dr. Camilla H. Chaudhary’s work centres on issues of social justice and inequality in the areas of social and educational inclusion, educational policy and leadership, and climate justice. Her academic practice is shaped by a longstanding engagement with ethical and participatory methodologies, and contextually grounded learning. She is currently working on multiple projects focusing on climate education, school leadership, and equitable research collaboration. She is co-founder of the South Asian Approaches to Researching Education (SAARE) Network, Executive Committee Member of the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE), and Member of the Working Group for Inclusive Education in Pakistan.
Dr Radhika Iyengar has been working in the field of environmental education for more than decade with NGOs and governments and has published in peer reviewed journals. Dr Iyengar has extensive experience in designing and managing international education research projects in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. She received the prestigious Early Career Award from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2020. She serves as a board member for numerous environmental NGOs, including CivicsStory, based in New Jersey.