Sharing Student Projects

This project aimed to find out what young people, aged 16 -18, thought about being taught about climate change. Previous research has suggested that young people could find the issue of climate change upsetting, so the project also aimed to look at their emotional responses to the topic. The study involved young people taking part in a group discussion about their experiences of being taught about climate change and how they think the topic could be taught in the future. After the discussion they put their ideas about how climate change could be taught in the future into a mind map. Twenty-five young people from colleges in Greater Manchester took part in the study. There were three focus groups held, with between eleven and six participants in each. After the focus group the researcher made transcripts of the discussions by listening to a recording of the focus group and typing up what young people said, without attempting to ‘correct’ their language or grammar. Then the researcher carefully read all the transcripts and mind maps to become familiar with what had been said. Then these were coded, which involves going through the documents line by line and summarising the meaning of each line. Codes which had a shared meaning were grouped together, for example codes that referred to role-models. These groups of codes were used to produce four themes to describe what the young people as a group had reported about their experiences of being taught about climate change. The findings showed that young people knew about climate change but that they had a complex relationship with the issue. Both college and media had provided them with information. However, this information was not deep, and the images shown in the media gave them a negative impression of climate change. They also saw it as a global problem, which they wanted governments to help tackle. Currently they did not think that governments were doing enough. Thus, they saw the problem as so large and negative that it was potentially overwhelming, to avoid this they generally chose not to think about it. Earlier research into teaching about climate change focused on making sure people knew about the problem. However, more recently, research has found that knowing about climate change does not cause people to make environmentally friendly choices. This study helps to understand why this might be. The young people in this study knew about climate change but chose not to think about it. Their choice not to engage was logical: they did not see any solutions to the problem so ignored it to avoid distress. This suggests that when young people are taught about climate change this information needs to be carefully delivered so that they believe that there are solutions and that they can participate in these. This study also indicated that, to support a more positive view of the problem, young people’s education needs to be supported by wider societal changes.

This research would be beneficial to teachers tasked with delivering CCE. Firstly, this study demonstrated the importance of acknowledging the information about climate change that young people absorb outside of the classroom, particularly the negative way that this information is presented. Secondly, these findings suggest that young people currently feel low levels of agency to tackle the climate crisis, but that activities that allow them to participate in solutions would be potentially beneficial to building this. Finally, this study highlighted the importance of young people’s engagement in climate issues being supported by their wider culture. This is relevant to colleges and schools as a whole community as it suggests that CCE would be more effective if supported by the institution making visible moves towards sustainability. Moreover, young people suggested that deep investment in climate issues may not be socially acceptable. Through careful intervention schools could play an influential role in shifting these norms. However, this study also indicates that young people judge climate change to be an issue that requires government intervention. The negative perception of the future, which contributed to young people’s disengagement, was magnified by their perception that the government was not responding to the issue. Thus, these findings are also of political relevance as they suggest a relationship between government’s response to the climate crisis and young people’s ability to engage positively with the issue. Given that this has the potential to impact young people’s mental health in the present and their long-term attitude to the issue, this dimension of the findings cannot be ignored.