Art, Hope, and Action (AHA)
In this research, we are particularly interested in how climate change education can move beyond dualistic Western epistemological approaches which separate qualitative and quantitative scientific approaches, facts from emotions and knowledge from experience. The practice is to create links between art and science to support meaning making, create new images and metaphors, build novel curricular approaches, and broaden solutions to climate change. This framework uses art in education as a tool to communicate climate change issues, a medium to promote dialogue and learning, and a means of personal and social transformation.
Background
Climate change is an environmental, social and intergenerational justice issue which disproportionately impacts children who have contributed the least to the drivers of the climate crisis but must build their lives within a world that is paying for the costs of these actions (Daly, 2023). Children and youth also have unique needs given both the short- and long-term and the direct and indirect effects of climate change (Crandon et al., 2022; Vergunst & Berry, 2022). To date, how climate change has largely been taught within Canadian educational systems has not been systematically developed (Burke et al., 2025; Leite, 2025). In contrast, research is finding that active, place-based, creative- and arts-based approaches, as well as Indigenizing methodologies, can help students connect their learning about climate change with tools and processes to develop more adaptive personal, social and cultural coping mechanisms which can also engender collective actions (Jadallah et al., 2025). When children and youth engage in social life through creative and participatory processes, they can be empowered through the acts of cultivating a sense of agency and awareness of significant social and environmental issues (Bentz & O'Brien, 2019).
Objectives
This qualitative inquiry aimed to bridge the gap between climate science curriculum and the lived experiences of educators delivering climate change curriculum to youth and children in BC. We were most interested in the role that integrating the arts into climate education could play in teaching about climate change. By interviewing key stakeholders, the study explored the manifestations of climate-related distress in learning environments, the experiences of educators trying to teach about climate change, reflections about the efficacy of current educational frameworks in supporting youth mental health and the identification of 'support gaps' educators face when facilitating difficult climate conversations.
The goal was to articulate important characteristics of creative educational approaches that more successfully integrated students' learning. Drawing from The Head-Heart-Hands framework (also known as the 3H model), the goal is to enable educators to connect how students think (cognitive/knowledge), feel (emotions/values), and act (skills/actions) (Olsen et al., 2024). By developing a more trauma informed and health promoting curriculum, a longer term goal is to develop a more supportive infrastructure for increasing the creativity, imagination and solutions-based thinking of future planetary stewards.
Findings
This study shows that climate change is already present in school life not only as content to be taught, but as an emotional and relational condition experienced by children and youth. Educators described students absorbing crisis-laden climate messaging without adequate opportunities to debrief, contextualize, or metabolize what they were hearing, and they observed that this distress surfaced differently across developmental stages, from imaginative play in younger children to anger, apathy, or activism in older youth. Our research found the importance of having avenues for youth and children to process things they are hearing about climate change, and while educators become one avenue for this, parents and guardians are another outlet. Our findings also suggest that what matters is not only whether climate change is taught, but how it is taught. Taken together, the findings suggest that the challenge is not simply adding more climate content to curriculum, but building educational infrastructures that support emotionally responsive, action-oriented, and culturally grounded climate pedagogy.
