Many thanks to Petra Molthan-Hill and Lia Blaj-Ward of the Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, UK, for lending their expertise to contextualize and apply what they dub the "André five-practice model" to educate climate leaders "at university" (as they say in their British English!). In their 2022 Open Access article "Assessing climate solutions and taking climate leadership: how can universities prepare their students for challenging times?" they dig deeply into how to use the model to educate effective climate leaders. The full article is a significant read from Teaching in Higher Education that can help jumpstart university thinking about how to teach climate change and develop climate leaders across disciplines.
Highlights:
HOW TO USE THE BLUEPRINT
Petra and Lia describe how my book Lead for the Planet: Five Practices for Confronting Climate Change, developed in classrooms over a decade, is "a relevant blueprint to help facilitate climate learning and leadership in university students not only in the specific US context of a university-wide module but also in other types of higher education institutions or national systems. Disciplines with a climate science orientation or with a direct connection to the natural or built environment would benefit from including it into their curriculum to help students develop a systemic perspective and make meaningful connections between ways of thinking about the climate, practising relevant climate action and be(com)ing climate leaders. Disciplines with a social science underpinning or with a broader societal remit (e.g. Business, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Media, Journalism) would find the blueprint a natural fit. Disciplines whose remit is further removed from climate science or planning and leading social action (e.g. Literature, Philosophy, Languages, History) would benefit from exploring how the texts they engage with construct messages about the climate and how these texts can be used as a basis for conversations which raise awareness and prompt more substantial and active engagement with climate debates."
HOW TO PROMOTE INTEGRATIVE LEARNING
They write..."Creating space within the curriculum for interdisciplinary conversations and reflection on the valuable and unique contribution of each subject area to making the planet a better place to live would enrich university learning. Equally valuable would be scope to consider how academic knowledge about the climate and relevant climate solutions as well as co- or extracurricular experiences at university converge to enable students' growth into rounded professionals and citizens."
HOW TO DEVELOP OUR MODELS
The authors continue to develop theory that promotes the teaching of climate leadership, as here:
Molthan-Hill, P., L. Blaj-Ward, M. Mbah, and T. Ledley Shapiro. 2021. "Climate Change Education at Universities: Relevance and Strategies for Every Discipline." In Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, edited by M. Lackner, B. Sajjadi, and W. Y. Chen. New York, NY: Springer. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6431-0_153-1.
Molthan-Hill, P., N. Worsfold, G. J. Nagy, W. Leal Filho, and M. Mifsud. 2019. "Climate Change Education for Universities: A Conceptual Framework from an International Study." Journal of Cleaner Production 226: 1092–1101. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.04.053. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]
SHARE YOUR LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Sponsored by the United Nations PRME Working Group on Climate Change and Environment, I will talk about this (and invite you to engage in the conversation, sharing your local knowledge) March 24, 2022, at 11 a.m. EST.