Newly Funded Climate Literacy Research Calls on Teachers to Participate in National Networked Classroom

What if classrooms could rethink climate education by listening to the land, learning from each other and co-creating policy? Dr. Carrie Karsgaard’s work, using a ‘networked classroom’ concept, is doing exactly that, turning worldmaking into action across provinces and oceans.

Funded by a $326,614 grant from Environment and Climate Change Canada, Dr. Karsgaard’s latest initiative builds directly on her earlier Learning Collective Worldmaking project, which connected youth and educators worldwide to reimagine climate education. This new phase brings that vision home, creating a national networked classroom linking high schools from coast to coast to coast. Through co-designed teaching materials, local and cross-regional collaborations and policy-focused discussions and deliberations, students will explore the diverse climate and energy realities of their communities, then work together to craft recommendations that could help shape Canada’s emerging environmental literacy framework.

Call for Teachers

Now, Dr. Karsgaard and her team are inviting Canadian high school teachers to join the initiative. Open to grades 9-11 in any subject, the program provides ready-to-use teaching materials, professional support and a collaborative network of educators from across the country. Teachers will adapt the resources to their classrooms, guiding students through local investigations and cross-country collaborations that contribute to a national conversation on climate and energy.

“We’re looking specifically for teachers in grades 9 to 12,” says Dr. Karsgaard. “It could be any subject at all. The only requirement is that the teacher has to be excited and interested in the topic. We will support them with materials, background information and a connection to all the other teachers involved in the project. That community of practice of like-minded people from totally different contexts often becomes a really central part of the project.”

This year’s project will run in two parts: first globally, starting in October, and then across Canada beginning in February. Students and teachers will access shared activities through a Moodle portal hosted by Cape Breton University, with resources adaptable to biology, social studies, English, art, health and more. “Teachers can bring these research questions into the subjects they’re teaching,” explains Dr. Karsgaard. “Students will learn from the land in their local areas, from Elders, from science and from culture in their context.”

The work unfolds in stages. Students start with local investigations before pairing with a class in a completely different context, for example, rural Nova Scotia and downtown Vancouver, “To grapple with their differences and learn to understand one another and come to some shared goals together,” says Dr. Karsgaard. Next, classes will cluster with those in similar contexts, perhaps by biome or by energy source, and then come together nationally to solidify all of their learning toward the ultimate goal of drafting their own white paper on climate policy.

Youth Role in Affecting Policy

Ultimately, the project’s goal is to build youth capacity as policy knowledge holders and policy makers. “They’ll be collaborating together online across provincial boundaries and across biomes: the boreal forest, the tundra, the mountains, the prairies and developing a really robust understanding of climate and energy across those sites,” says Dr. Karsgaard. “Together, through a deliberative process, they’ll create a policy paper and presentation that can be shared with policymakers. For example, they might present to Environment and Climate Change Canada, who are now working on developing a nationwide environmental literacy framework.”

The approach is deeply relational. Over the past several months, teachers and researchers have been thinking about the elements (water, earth, air and fire) and about how learning with the elements can inform our climate action. That perspective, Dr. Karsgaard says, offers something new to the conversation. “It’s not about adding something else into our existing environmental education program,” she explains. “What happens if we start with knowing one another, with knowing the land, with knowing the place that we are and the people and beings and elements that have come before us?”

Dr. Karsgaard says Cape Breton teachers have valuable contributions to make to this work. “I would love for teachers here to know that they have something to contribute to this,” she says. “Many Cape Bretoners may not realize the valuable insight they can offer to policymakers. As people who are experiencing the effects of climate change and energy justice issues on the island, that experience and knowledge could really inform this conversation.”

For Dr. Karsgaard, it all comes back to the heart of worldmaking: living and learning in ways that respect all life while challenging the systems that harm it. By linking classrooms across Canada and the globe, she hopes to help a new generation imagine and create the world they want to live in.

Interested in joining the networked classroom?
Teachers can learn more and express interest by visiting the project’s outreach page at: https://collective-worldmaking.ca/project2.html