Review of Education and climate change: The role of universities Lima, N. W. (2022, December 1). Review of Education and climate change: The role of universities by F. M. Reimers (Ed.). Education Review, 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/er.v29.3397 December 1, 2022 ISSN 1094-5296 Reimers, F. M. (Ed.). (2020). Education and climate change: The role of universities. Springer Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57927-2 Pp. 201 ISBN: 978-3-030-57926-5/ 978-3-030-57929-6/ 978-3-030-57927-2 Reviewed by Nathan Willig Lima Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) Brazil Despite scientific consensus around the concept of global warming (Junges & Massoni, 2018; Weart, 2008) and the anthropogenic nature of climate change (Fleming, 1998; International Panel of Climate Change [IPCC], 2001; Nobel Prize Organization, 2021), the same level of agreement or concern about this topic does not exist among the general population. Environmental issues have not sufficiently entered the public agenda nor been as carefully addressed by political leaders as they deserve. Political decisions have not followed from scientific recommendations. In spite of the results of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, no consensus on how to act has emerged. This lack of action is not specific to the topic of climate change: some governments made decisions concerning the COVID-19 pandemic that did not align with World Health Organization guidelines (Mourae et al., 2021). The issue goes beyond helping people understand about contemporary socio-scientific issues; it is imperative to alert, affect, and mobilize them for action (Latour, 2020). In other words, it is not enough to contemplate the problems of pandemics or climate change; people must engage in activities that contribute to solutions for contemporary challenges. Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 2 But how to do that? How can it be possible to transform society in such a way that its citizens are aware of and engaged with matters such as climate change? Possible answers to these questions are provided by Fernando Reimers’s book, Education and Climate Change. Education is one of the most fundamental and powerful paths to organize society and shape its shared values and practices. Thus, recognizing the transformative and proactive role of schools in society, a wide and well- organized strategy for climate change education is essential to attain a more sustainable environment. Education and Climate Change contains theoretical discussions and practical examples about curriculum development in formal and informal contexts, prompting readers to think about how to set up action-oriented curriculum in their own setting. In this sense, the book’s audience is college professors, students, and high school teachers who intend to engender focused discussions about climate change, as well as the decision-making processes that they demand. Reimers, the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education, Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative and of the International Education Policy Master’s Program at Harvard University, and a member of UNESCO’s high-level commission on the Futures of Education, structured this volume in seven chapters. He opens and closes the volume with important discussions about climate change, and in between readers will find specific and contextualized discussions of climate change curriculum written by researchers from all over the world who attended Reimers’s graduate course on education policy analysis at Harvard Graduate School of Education. These chapters cover climate change curriculum in schools in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan (Chapter 2), Guatemala (Chapter 3), Haiti (Chapter 4), Sindh (Chapter 5), and the United States (Chapter 6). This international dimension sets the tone of the book. Reimers proposes that climate change curriculum be built up contextually and adapted to already existing courses. This approach, according to the author, complements proposals of specific courses on the subject, with an important advantage: it does not demand extra staff and resources, making the adaptations more attractive, feasible, and effective. Further, Reimers acknowledges that each context has its own specificities and needs. Thus, instead of advocating a pre-established general curriculum based on international guidelines and reports, Reimers offers discussions and examples of diverse curricula proposals that fulfill different concrete necessities. Four major features make Education and Climate Change an important read. First, it presents a context-specific approach to curriculum development. While global warming is a planetary challenge, the ways it affects and is affected by different countries and regions vary. The problems that one faces while dealing with climate change are not only technical, but valuative. For instance, these problems involve dilemmas Review of Education and Climate Change 3 about whether we should take actions that prevent climate change, which would result in loss of jobs, or should we safeguard the jobs that hinder climate change progress. These matters are axiological and differ according to place, dependent on the values and cultural aspects of a region. Recognizing such complexity, the curricula proposed by Reimers et al. (2020, p. 38) aim to answer questions in five areas: • What are the specific impacts of climate change in this jurisdiction? How do they impact various human populations? How do human activities contribute to climate change? • What knowledge, dispositions and behaviors could mitigate the impact of climate change, and are there ways in which changes in the behaviors of populations in this jurisdiction could slow down climate change? What kind of collective action could influence systems that contribute to climate change? • What are the means of delivery to reach each of the specific populations in this jurisdiction who need to be educated on climate change? • What curriculum can help educate each population? • What role can the institution we are collaborating with play in advancing climate change education in that jurisdiction? While the book affords possible answers to these questions in different locations, the readers are encouraged to ask these questions in their own circumstances and formulate context-specific solutions. Second, the proposal is action oriented. The contributors recognize that students must be educated not only to contemplate climate change, but to make decisions and act as engaged citizens. The environmental crisis demands a concrete and meaningful change in actions, consumption patterns, political decisions, and economic priorities. The strategies proposed in the book exemplify how to move from theoretical discussions toward an action-oriented pedagogical practice. Third, the book is multidimensional, multi-leveled and systemic. Since climate change is a complex topic, curriculum proposals for education for climate change must take into account several dimensions: cultural, psychological, professional, institutional, and political. In another sense, the curriculum must be informed according to cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral dimensions. Furthermore, climate change curriculum must be systemic and multi-level as individual teachers or schools cannot provide sufficient effort to single-handedly create meaningful impact on climate change. It is necessary to engage in systemic projects that provide enough momentum to mitigate the environmental crisis. To address this systemic problem, Reimers and colleagues emphasize the important position of universities, especially in teacher education. Universities are responsible for forming future professionals in specialized Education Review /Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 4 fields as well as forming future teachers, and so they play a crucial role in creating a culture and environment conducive to addressing climate change. Reimers recommends that universities should form partnerships with schools and other institutions of learning to form project-based curriculum that have the capacity to make real or concrete changes in their local communities. Climate change, as well as other socio-scientific global issues like pandemics, will be the greatest challenges of the 21st century. For those interested thinking about how education can contribute to this scenario and engage in pedagogical practices that can contribute to the mitigation or even reversal of climate change, Education and Climate Change is an important source of reflection, insight, and encouragement. More than providing the reader with important theoretical aspects, the book is an invitation to action, a call for engaging in a transformative, committed, and responsible education for the next century. References Fleming, J. R. (1998). Historical perspectives on climate change. Oxford University Press. IPCC. (2001). Summary for policymakers. In Climate change 2001: The scientific basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the third assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [J. T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D. J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P. J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell, & C. A. Johnson (Eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. Junges, A., & Massoni, N. T. (2018). O consenso científico sobre aquecimento global antropogênico: Considerações históricas e epistemológicas e reflexões para o ensino dessa temática. Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências, 18(2) 455-491. Latour, B. (2020). Onde aterrar? Como se orientar politicamente no Antropoceno? Bazar do Tempo. Moura, C. B., Nascimento, M. M., & Lima, N. W. (2021). Epistemic and political confrontations around the public policies to fight COVID-19 pandemic. Science & Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-021- 00193-3 Nobel Prize Organization. (2021). The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/summary/ Weart, S. R. (2008). The discovery of global warming. Harvard University Press. Review of Education and Climate Change 5 About the Reviewer Nathan Willig Lima is an associate professor at the Physics Department of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. He is a member of the graduate program in physics education at the same university. Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. Readers are free to copy, display, distribute, and adapt this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Review, the changes are identified, and the same license applies to the derivative work. More details of this Creative Commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. 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