Teachers’ Literacy-Based Climate Change Learning through a Knowledge-Building Book Club
摘要
This chapter examines the transformative potential of one example of literacy-based climate pedagogy, a year-long book club designed for preK–middle school educators dedicated to deepening their understanding about climate change and its integration into classroom instruction. Participants read and discussed the anthology All We Can Save: Truth Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, edited by Ayana Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, and participated in supplementary activities including exploring children’s literature, creative writing, and art-making to support their learning. We examine data from a year-long book club including session recordings, written reflections from participants, interview transcripts, and artwork they created. Findings demonstrate how this book club structure supported elementary teachers to build transdisciplinary knowledge about the complexity of climate change, recognize the importance of centering diverse perspectives in climate change education, expand their book knowledge of children’s literature, and articulate and express their new knowledge and feelings about climate change. This book club model, and other literacy-based climate pedagogies that center talking, reading, and writing/composing, offer a promising method to support teachers’ learning about climate change across disciplines and teacher education contexts.