Rae André

Teaching climate leadership is one of the most challenging pedagogical missions of our time.  What we know about it boils down to three questions: what should we teach, how should we teach it, and where should we teach it? 

 

To address these questions, in my new article Teaching to Save the Planet: The Challenges Ahead for Instructors, Business Schools, and Universities I review nearly 100 articles (99, but who's counting?) on teaching environmental sustainability. You can find it in the 50th anniversary edition of the Journal of Management Education. Our colleagues across the globe have developed both specific teaching techniques and theoretical critiques that are driving the field forward. Although their focus is on teaching climate leadership in business schools, trends in the literature suggest that b schools alone are not up to the task, and that university level courses and commitment are needed. This is just one of the challenges that the article identifies. Thanks to a grant from Sage, this article is free to access.

 

On this site you can also learn more about the change-oriented approach I developed and taught from for more than a decade. My book on climate leadership was published in 2020 by the excellent University of Toronto Press.  Lead for the Planet: Five Practices for Confronting Climate Change emphasizes social science and change across all levels of systems. In the left column here you will discover a handbook of cases and exercises, a description of a stand-alone course, and various author talks that summarize this approach.

 

Lead for the Planet: Five Practices for Confronting Climate Change applies social science to climate leadership, helping both students and concerned citizens take on the twin challenges of climate change and energy evolution. With an emphasis on action to address the climate crisis, it mines the social science of change for individuals, organizations, and societies.

 

When climate is the topic, books go out of date fast. For the book to continue to be relevant, I concentrated on basics like how to find science, rather than what the latest results are.  Wherever possible I did not give readers the fish but instead taught them how to fish.

 

Written in a style that converts complex problems into clear practices, Lead for the Planet  anchors integrative, interdisciplinary university courses on climate leadership. It supplements readings in courses like climate science, entrepreneurship, and business strategy. The five practices can also serve as a benchmark for evaluating the content of university courses and curricula on climate change.  Here are a couple of reviews…see also the dedicated book page for more reviews and an excerpt.

 

Daniel Nyberg, Professor of Management, Newcastle Business School, co-author of Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction, writes that: 

 

"The book takes the reader by the hand and clears the way through the thorny and political field of climate change with grace and intelligence. With simple and clear language, the book confronts what is seen as a complex and overwhelming problem. The beauty of the book is making strong climate actions obvious by unpacking five practices – seek the truth, evaluate the risk, weight the decision, take a leadership role, and act collectively – that after Rae André's clarifications are no-brainers. The great achievement of the book is making it so obvious and clear to act on climate change, and the message is clear: only collective informed decisions can save us now. It is a tiresome trope, but I write it anyway: this book, really, should be obligatory reading for every high-school and university student. Honestly, human civilization depends on it."

 

Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? writes that: "The climate movement is not leader-less, but leader-full – and increasingly the leadership is coming from frontline and Indigenous communities. It's very good to have the latest social science research brought to bear as well, and this book supplies it! We need all the good thinking we can get if we're going to make progress fast."