Introduction
This article was first published on The Curriculum Journal, BERA and is an output from the Striking Voices research project.
While many agree that education is essential to prepare societies to address the climate crisis, there are widely differing opportunities for justice-driven climate change education (see Trott et al., 2023) that centres the intersecting social injustices that climate change amplifies and compounds (Sultana, 2022).
If the purpose of education is to transform the world, it is time to centre justice, equity and solidarity in school-based climate change education.
In this post, we share how young climate justice advocates in Australia narrate their experiences of learning (or not) about climate change and justice within and beyond mainstream schooling.
These findings were recently published in the Curriculum Journal (see Mayes et al., 2025) with an accompanying zine created by Netta Maiava and Dani Villafaña. These young people’s stories illuminate a significant disconnect – a curricular injustice (Connell, 1992) – between how climate change is taught (or not) in schools, and how they are learning, teaching and taking action for climate justice beyond school.
As an intergenerational research team, over the past three years we’ve listened to stories of young climate advocates from across the lands and waters now known as Australia. What follows is some of what we’ve heard in our conversations and from online survey responses.
Learning climate change at school
- Distress and emotional isolation
While these young people have grown up with climate change, school-based climate education was frequently associated with learning. As one survey participant described: ‘all the problems’ but feeling ‘kinda stuck in how to fix it’. - Frustrating ‘oversimplified’ narratives
Climate education foregrounding individual behaviour change (‘recycle and turn off your lights’) was experienced by Alexa, as ‘frustratingly missing’ ‘the more complex picture’. - Disconnected from justice
Science-focused climate education was described by Imo as taught separately from colonisation, without naming how ‘we [settlers] didn’t look after the land’ after ‘stripp[ing]’ First Nations’ people’s land rights. - Support from individual teachers
Some spoke about teachers who fostered opportunities to consider the root causes and unjust impacts of climate change. Grace described a history teacher who encouraged her to take a ‘decolonial perspective on history [which] has really shaped a lot of my journey with climate change’.
Uneven Conditions for Taking Action
The School Strike for Climate movement has strategically disrupted rather than aligned with school attendance and curricular objectives (Verlie & Flynn, 2022). However, school responses to strike participation have varied dramatically, depending on ‘school dynamics’ (Varsha). This ‘spectrum of responses’ (see Mayes & Hartup, 2021) signals the uneven conditions for students’ climate action across school sectors, socioeconomic communities, geographic regions and individual positionalities.
- Activism reinforcing privilege
Alarmingly, our analysis suggested that already-advantaged students’ political participation (particularly, elite independent schoolboys) was more likely to be recognised as legitimate learning (and used for school marketing). But this school support was contingent on students keeping their dissent ‘dutiful’ (see O’Brien et al., 2018). - Quiet encouragement from teachers
Some reported that certain teachers ‘cared’ and ‘quietly encouraged’ them in ‘non-official’ ways (survey response). - Teacher caution
Others shared that they felt that their teachers were ‘not allowed to have opinions regarding politics’ (survey response). Y asked: ‘I’m wondering, can schools actually bring in justice elements of climate change without [people] being outraged about it?’
Learning Climate Justice Beyond School
These young people turned to social movement spaces to learn about ‘the systems that are driving climate change’ and how ‘issues intersect’ (Shoi). These spaces became sites of teaching and learning (see Mayes, 2023), marked by:
- Affective justice
Supportive spaces for ‘giving voice’ to overlapping emotions (Alexa). - Embodied justice
Intergenerational spaces for planning collective actions for ‘real impact’ (Varsha). - Epistemic justice
Challenging spaces exploring critical concepts (such as coloniality, capitalism and intersectionality) that were often absent from school classrooms (Imo).
Towards Curricular and Climate Justice
Listening to these young climate justice advocates’ powerful stories, we notice cracks and possibilities to nurture more critical and just climate education in mainstream schooling. As Nicola, put it: ‘It’s not that schools can’t. It’s just harder.’
If the purpose of education is to transform the world, it is time to centre justice, equity and solidarity in school-based climate change education.
References
- Connell, R. W. (1992). Citizenship, social justice and curriculum. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2(2), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/0962021920020202
- Mayes, E. (2023). Young people learning climate justice: Education beyond schooling through youth-led climate justice activism. In J. Wyn, H. Cahill, & H. Cuervo (Eds.), Handbook of children and youth studies. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-96-3_99-1
- Mayes, E., & Hartup, M. E. (2021). Passion as politics. In S. Riddle, A. Heffernan, & D. Bright (Eds.), New perspectives on education for democracy. Routledge.
- Mayes, E. Villafaña, D., Chiew, S., Maiava, N., Abhayawickrama, N., & Finneran, R. (2025). Climate justice and curriculum justice: Young people’s accounts of schools’ uneven responses to their climate justice activism. Curriculum Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.335
- O’Brien, K., Selboe, E., & Hayward, B. M. (2018). Exploring youth activism on climate change: Dutiful, disruptive, and dangerous dissent. Ecology and Society, 23(3). https://www.jstor.org/stable/26799169
- Sultana, F. (2022). Critical climate justice. The Geographical Journal, 188, 118–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12417
- Trott, C. D., Lam, S., Roncker, J., Gray, E. S., Courtney, R. H., & Even, T. L. (2023). Justice in climate change education: A systematic review. Environmental Education Research, 29(11), 1535–1572. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2023.2181265
- Verlie, B., & Flynn, A. (2022). School strike for climate: A reckoning for education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 38, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2022.5
Access the Original Article
This blog post is based on the article ‘Climate justice and curriculum justice: Young people’s accounts of schools’ uneven responses to their climate justice activism’ by Eve Mayes, Dani Villafaña, Sophie Chiew, Netta Maiava, Natasha Abhayawickrama and Rachel Finneran, published in the Curriculum Journal.
Explore Further
- The Striking Voices collection on The Commons Library
- “When the Bombs Drop, School Stops” – Over 100 years of Australian School Strikes and Direct Action
- The Power to be a Changemaker: Resources for Teachers and Students
- Watch Inspiring Activist and Protest Speeches
- Understanding Politics, Government, Elections and Activism Through Books for Australian Children
- How to Stop a Data Centre: Tools for Community Resistance
- Organising Stories and Lessons from the 350 Organising Story Telling Lab
