The following resources are made available to members of the global education network Community Philosophy and the Climate Crisis and to other interested parties. If you wish to join our network, please read our Ethos and Aims and then contact Michelle to be added to the Google Group.

Related groups and sites:

• Community Philosophy and the Climate Crisis – global network of philosophers and educators who support critical and compassionate conversations that help people understand the complex ethical issues at play within the climate and ecological crisis, and connect their considered views with achievable action. Please contact Michelle (Co-convener, with Grace Lockrobin) with any enquiries.
• Tom Drummond – Resources and Writings:  Practical ideas for relating with and advocating for young children. See for instance the page Sixteen Capabilities: “a successful system transformation must include a specific plan for raising capable human beings.”
• Earth Centred Futures: a professional development course offered by the Australian Earth Laws Alliance. 
• Philosophers for Sustainability – encouraging philosophers to take leadership on climate change and environmental sustainability. USA based with global outreach.
• Learning Rebellion – resources and coordinated strategies towards a non-violent direct education. UK based with global outreach. Read their Oct 2019 letter to the UK Department of Education.
• Educators Declare a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency (web and facebook)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS OF MATERIALS ON THIS WEBPAGE

1) Non-classroom resources created by The Philosophy Club:

• Blog posts by Michelle Sowey
• Background information on the climate emergency
• Facebook page: Young Environmental Philosophers (and some sample posts)

2) Classroom resources created by The Philosophy Club:

• Children’s Assembly on climate and ecological issues in Victoria, Australia
• High school philosophy workshop: Climate Action: Why Act Now? 
• High school philosophy workshops: So Entitled – Human nature, human rights, legal personhood and the basis of rights
• Upper primary/junior high school workshop: Water ethics
• Upper primary/junior high school workshop: Nature and De-extinction
• Primary school philosophy module: Wild and Free
• Junior primary school philosophy workshop: Fitting In and Standing Out
• Materials for a ‘Reflective Drawing’ art workshop on philosophical themes

3) Materials from other sources:

• ‘Intergenerational Justice’ podcast transcript
• Papers on the application of Citizens’ Assemblies in educational contexts
• Climate change educational resources, training websites and programs
• Podcast episodes
• Civil disobedience education resources
• Other materials of interest

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1) NON-CLASSROOM RESOURCES CREATED BY THE PHILOSOPHY CLUB

Blog posts by Michelle Sowey

• Wake up! Philosophy education and the climate crisis
• We need to shift the Overton window on the climate and ecological crisis. Here’s how.
• The philosopher activist: An interview with Violet Coco
• A thriving public sphere
• “We don’t want the world to die”

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Background information on the climate emergency

• Recommended reading: Don’t Mention the Emergency? by Jane Morton.
• A brief introductory Keynote slideshow on the climate emergency with associated references, shared here for anyone to use or adapt as they see fit. (Please check layout before presenting, as formatting may differ on your system.)

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Facebook page: Young Environmental Philosophers
All welcome to join!
The page Young Environmental Philosophers – Melbourne is for young people (and their families/supporters) who are big thinkers and concerned about climate and environmental justice. On that page I share articles that dig deeper into the ideas that underlie environmental beliefs and actions, as well as some of my own reflections on current events and issues, such as:

• Empathy and its connection with moral behaviour, with a consideration of the role that empathy with non-human beings can play in averting ecological destruction, as well as the the benefits and risks of anthropomorphism.
• The problem of ‘plant blindness’, including a critique of Victoria’s Western Highway expansion, with reference to Indigenous philosophies.
• Observations on our political climate and its prioritisation of economic efficiency and short-term self-gratification ahead of a concern for the wellbeing and survival – including a critique of Australia’s resistance to a Pacific-wide consensus on the phase-out of coal.
• The science denial, or brazen self-contradiction, in the rhetoric of the UK minister in charge of COP26 who acknowledged climate catastrophe while backing the UK’s plan for new oil and gas fields.
• The baseless assurances offered by a VicForests spokesperson that salvage logging does not increase the risk of wildfires.
• The use of motivated reasoning to justify a high-emissions economy and lifestyle, as exemplified by Senator Jim Molan’s attempt to defend climate denialism live on air on Q & A.
• The concept of ‘sacrifice’ with respect to nations’ unwillingness to sacrifice economic benefit for the sake of the environment, even though economic success depends on the health of the environment.
• The use of evaluativist thinking in protecting our natural life-support systems – including a critique of the Federal Environment Department’s decision to approve the clearing of critical koala habitat.
• The affordances of nature, and how we can avoid irreversible ecological damage and promote environmental goods – including a critique of the gold mine construction near Mount Ida, Turkey.
• The reasonableness of optimistic vs. pessimistic views when contemplating our climate and ecological future.
• The failure to acknowledge how unsustainable our current way of life is with respect to the planet – a critique of a bioethics teaching document published by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

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2) CLASSROOM RESOURCES CREATED BY THE PHILOSOPHY CLUB

Children’s Assembly on climate and ecological issues in Victoria, Australia

Shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial.

You can download the session plan and set of eight issues for deliberation and accompanying images for a Children’s Assembly, designed for children aged 8 – 12. A facilitator supports children as they deliberate on particular environmental issues and controversies in the state of Victoria, with the possibility of the children’s responses being later documented and submitted to Parliament.

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High school philosophy workshop: Climate Action: Why Act Now? 

Original materials shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. Other materials are owned by those credited.

You can download the 80-minute workshop plan. Accompanying resources are below:

• This workshop assumes a level of knowledge as outlined in these Climate emergency background information slides (Keynote) (References here). 
• View the abridged video from Greta Thunberg’s TED talk, to be screened during the introduction to the workshop.
• Download the set of eight stimulus cards used as stimuli for Part 1: ‘Hope or Despair?’ Note: This activity was designed by Grace Lockrobin of Thinking Space (UK).
• Download the Greta Thunberg quote and image for group discussion in Part 2.
• Download the ‘Why act now?’ activity description and printable cards for the inquiry activity in Part 3, in which students work in small groups to rank a given set of reasons for climate action, and to consider their justification for prioritising some reasons over others, before opening to a whole-class discussion. Note: This resource was adapted by The Philosophy Club from an educational activity designed by Green-Schools Ireland.

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High school philosophy workshops: So Entitled – Human nature, human rights, legal personhood and the basis of rights

Original materials shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. Other materials are owned by those credited.

You can download the workshop plans for ‘So Entitled’, our two-hour philosophical enquiry into rights and legal personhood. The first workshop includes a card sorting activity (as described in the workshop plan) using these printable cards and headers to identify what it is about being human that entitles us to rights. The second workshop includes a series of video clips which invite discussion of such as questions as ‘Should rights be granted on the basis of capacities or needs?’ and ‘Should rights always be accompanied by responsibilities?’ Accompanying video clips are: Chimpanzee mirror self-recognition (edited excerpts) (apologies for watermark), ‘The Corporation’ (edited excerpts), ‘The River is Me’ (edited excerpts), and ‘Animals – Property or Persons?‘ (by Voiceless Australia).

Note that we have created a different version of the above workshop to suit contexts where it is not possible to use audio-visual stimuli. It runs a little shorter, at 1.75 hours in total. You can download the A.V.-free version of the ‘So Entitled’ workshop plans. You will still need to use the printable cards and headers linked in the paragraph above.

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Upper primary/junior high school workshop: Nor Any Drop To Drink: Water ethics

Original materials shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. Other materials are owned by those credited.

Note: The first part of this workshop parallels certain segments of the workshop ‘So Entitled’ (described above).

You can download the 80-min ‘Nor Any Drop to Drink: Water ethics’ workshop plan. Accompanying video clips are as follows:

• The Corporation (shorter edited excerpts)
• The River is Me (edited excerpts)
• Excerpts from Waorani, The People: The Waorani Fight for Clean Water (full documentary only available online)
• FenHolloway River video clip, adapted from Episode 66: The Brand, Swindled podcast. (Please support the independent producer of Swindled here.)

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Upper primary/junior high school workshop: Nature and De-extinction

Original materials shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. Other materials are owned by those credited.

You can download the ‘Nature and De-extinction’ workshop plan (pp. 1 – 7) and supplementary materials (pp. 8 – 14). This is a 1.75-hour philosophical enquiry into the ethics of intervening in nature, the meaning of ‘nature’, the ethics of de-extinction, and more. This workshop uses an audio clip and visuals:

• Download the audio clip.
• Download the Keynote slides (including excerpts from a comic by Jerel Dye).

As an additional activity, you may wish to play this audio clip (edited from the podcast episode ‘Introducing This Is Love), and ask students whether the spiders’ behaviours are natural, and whether everything natural is good.

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Primary school philosophy module: ‘Wild and Free’

Shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

You can download four philosophical enquiry lesson plans and associated stimuli and activities, colour coded by suitability for primary school children of different ages. The enquiries are entitled ‘Wilder Than You Know’, ‘Wild Things’, ‘The Wild Girl’, and ‘Wild vs. Domesticated’. Also included is a page of conceptual background for teachers, examining the concepts ‘Wild’ and ‘Free.

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Junior primary school philosophy workshop: ‘Fitting In and Standing Out’

Shared under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

You can download the session plan and accompanying printable images (sourced from the internet) for this one-hour session for 5 – 7 year olds, which includes activities on camouflage and human beings’ place in nature (among other topics).

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Materials for a ‘Reflective Drawing’ art workshop on philosophical themes

The following three activities are designed for children, but could be used with older participants with little or no adaptation.

(1) Give participants printed copies of these body outlines and invite them to draw – for each emotion (e.g. anger, joy, love, fear, sadness) – where in the body they experience that emotion, how far it extends, and whether it has a direction. (To use this activity as the basis of a philosophical discussion, see the post Emotions and the embodied mind on our other blog, Playground Philosopher. And here are the cumulative results of this activity being conducted with numerous participants in the Emotionally}Vague research project.)

(2) For each of the modern-day mammals pictured here, here and here, imagine the sort of animal that may have once lived on the ‘evolutionary path’ as the species evolved from its shrew-like ancestor (the ‘Jurassic Mother’) to the animal you know today. Then, draw the animal you have imagined, and invent a name for its species. (Our post Imagining evolution on our other blog, Playground Philosopher, offers ideas for using this activity in the context of a philosophy workshop about evolution.)

(3) Show participants these four illustrations by Yelena Bryksenkova. Then invite participants to draw their own version on this template (with apologies to the artist). How would other species regard us humans, if they were to visit us in a zoo?

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3) MATERIALS FROM OTHER SOURCES

‘Intergenerational Justice’ podcast transcript

You can download my (slightly rough) abridged transcript from podcast episode ‘Intergenerational Justice’ on Canada’s Flourish radio (CJSW studio), featuring excellent interviews with climate justice philosophers Corey Katz and John Nolt.

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Citizens Assemblies initiatives (this section is to be expanded)

Change Politics

Aikin, S.F. & Clanton, J.C. (2010), Developing Group-Deliberative Virtues. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 27(4).

 

Papers on the application of Citizens’ Assemblies in educational contexts

Lipman, M. (1998), The Contributions of Philosophy to Deliberative Democracy. In D. Evans and I. Kucaradi (eds.). Teaching philosophy at the eve of the 21st century. 6-29. Ankara: International Federation of Philosophical Societies.

Samuelsson, M. (2016), Education for Deliberative Democracy: A typology of classroom discussions. Democracy and Education 24(1), 1-9.

Samuelsson, M. (2018), Education for Deliberative Democracy and the Aim of Consensus, Democracy and Education 26(1), 1-9.

Gershtenson, J., Rainey G., & Rainey, J. (2010), Creating Better Citizens? Effects of a model citizens’ assembly on student political attitudes and behavior. Journal of Political Science Education 6(2), 95-116.

Reykowski, J. (2006), Deliberative Democracy and “Human Nature”: An empirical approach. Political Psychology, 27, 323-346.

Weasel, L. (2017), From Deliberative Democracy to Communicative Democracy in the Classroom. A Response to “Education for Deliberative Democracy: A Typology of Classroom Discussions”. Democracy and Education 25(1).

Backer, D.I. (2017), The Critique of Deliberative Discussion. A Response to “Education for Deliberative Democracy: A Typology of Classroom Discussions”. Democracy and Education 25(1).

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Climate change educational resources, training websites and programs

• ‘Educators Declare’ recommended resources including course materials for educators, resources for integrating climate and biodiversity into education, and resources for advocating for action.
• Talk Climate: Education K – University – a clearinghouse with many useful links
• Cool Australia shares high-quality educational resources for teachers and students on themes including climate, biodiversity, and various sustainability topics. These resources are mapped to year levels, learning areas, general capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities of the Australian Curriculum.
• Teachers for Climate Action – resources shared by Paul Turner (Bedales School, Hampshire). Includes, among many other resources, Climate Breakdown – scheme of work for Year 10 with a focus on risk.
• Leeds Development Education Centre – Educating for a just and sustainable world: Climate change lessons.
• Zinn Education Project: Climate Justice teaching activities.
• Global Oneness Project: Stories and lessons for growing minds (keyword search ‘climate’)
• Thoughtbox: A climate crisis curriculum for the climate strike generation
• The TROP ICSU project, Climate Change Education Across the Curriculum, Across the Globe offers a suite of Teaching Tools and Lesson Plans (including a range submitted by users) to enable current and future citizens to initiate positive action in mitigating the effects of and reversing climate change. The resources enable educators to teach a topic in a particular discipline with the help of examples, case studies, and exercises related to climate change. The Humanities Teaching Tools and the Humanities Lesson Plans might be especially useful for philosophy teachers to consider.
• EduCCate Global: Climate Change Teacher Training Academy offers a free online teacher training course with world-class learning resources. It is endorsed by the UN CC:Learn Program.
• The New Futures Academy (South Devon, UK) is a new educational initiative, currently in development, which aims to deliver full time further education courses for 16 –19 year olds based on ecological design thinking. Its curricula will be focused on employability and sustainability; equipping young people with the practical skills and personal attributes to meet the needs of society, industry and the planet in a changing future, whilst meeting and developing their own aspirations and unique potential. Our students will become entrepreneurs and change agents.
• ResourceSmart Schools – an award-winning Victorian Government program that assists schools to embed sustainability in everything they do.
• EcoSchools Australia – an environmental education framework and awards program promoting learning for a litter free and sustainable Australia.
• Resources: Climate Change in the Classroom – educational resources collated by the Port Phillip EcoCentre.
• Tomorrow’s Leaders for Sustainability – a Port Phillip EcoCentre educator works with the same group of students for a whole term, guiding them through sustainability curriculum, leadership activities, sustainability projects and spending time helping them investigate their local environments.
• CERES: The Sustainability Hub – hands on curriculum activities for primary and secondary schools.
• Sustainable Action Process Resources from Sustainable Schools NSW.
• Climate Action Teacher Resource for junior high school, from Green-Schools Ireland.
• The California Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI) Curriculum. A K-12 curriculum that uses environment as a context to help students learn science and history/social science.
• Lesson plans and supporting resources for teachers and educators of young people aged 7 to 14. World Wildlife Fund. Includes the resource Shaping Our Future (specifically on the theme of climate).
• ‘For the love of…’ Take action on climate change to protect the things you love; Climate Challenge for 7 – 11 Years; and Climate Challenge for 11 – 14 Years. Oxfam.
• Worksheets on Mary Midgley’s philosophy for different year levels, including Level 3 Philosophical Plumbing worksheet and Gaia worksheet, from the website Notes from a biscuit tin.

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Podcast episodes
How to talk to kids about the climate crisis, Full Story podcast, The Guardian.

Links to numerous environment justice podcasts.

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Civil disobedience education resources

See Brian Martin’s excellent outline of Protest in a Liberal Democracy, Philosophy and Social Action, Vol. 20, Nos. 1-2, January-June 1994, pp. 13-24.

The Power of Courage: Civic Participation in Everyday Life (Years 3 – 5), Global Oneness Project.

Habits for a Healthy Democracy (Years 6 – 8)  See the ‘Reflecting and Projecting’ section on the Freedom Riders. Global Oneness Project.

More to be added here in due course.

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Other materials of interest

Bad Future, Better Future: a guide for kids, and everyone else, about climate change and what we can do about it by Julia Rosen with illustrations by Yuliya Parshina-Kottas

Books for the Climate Emergency: A list of books for children and adults recommended by BICAG, the Book Industry Climate Action Group. 

Jacob Blumenfeld’s Syllabus: The Ethics and Politics of Climate Change, 2019-2020

Children, Citizenship and Environment: #SchoolStrike Edition by Bronwyn Hayward (2021) examines how students, with teachers, parents, and other activists can take effective action to confront the complex drivers of the current climate crisis including economic and social injustice, colonialism and racism. It reminds us of the importance of youth activism, and presents the ‘SEEDS’ model of strong environmental citizenship for the school strike generation, encouraging students to develop skills for Social agency, Environmental education, Embedded justice, Decentred deliberation and Self-transcendence.

Case study: Seeing Green by Allison M. Stevens and accompanying Discussion Protocols from the Harvard Justice in Schools Project. This US-based case study explores the challenges of teaching about climate change in a community where a large portion of the residents work in the petroleum industry. Should science teachers accommodate local concerns about the dangers of demonising the very industry their town’s economy relies on? Or teach climate change as the threat that scientists tell us it it?

Case study: Politics, Partisanship and Pedagogy: What should be controversial in the classroom? (micro version) by Heather Johnson and Ellis Reid and accompanying Discussion Protocols from the Harvard Justice in Schools Project. This US-based case study explores which topics are appropriately controversial for Year 10 students to investigate in a persuasive argument project, and which topics endanger safe and inclusive classroom spaces. See also the case study page which includes a longer version, a Reader’s theatre version, and facilitator guidelines. (This case study is not climate-related, but raises concerns that may still be relevant to the teaching of climate and ecological issues.)

A snapshot of climate change educational initiatives in Europe: Initial findings and implications for future Climate Change Education, by Cliona Murphy et al. May 2020. Among its findings: ‘Further information is required to examine the extent to which ‘climate justice’ is addressed in the different educational resources / projects. The question arises, for example, in the context of when mitigation is being addressed in developed countries, to what extent students are being supported in their understanding about the role society today has to play in acting not only on their own interests but in the interest of others. Students have to understand that mitigation is not only crucial for future generations but is also essential for current disadvantaged populations on whom climate change is having the biggest impact resulting in these populations having to deal with significantly bigger challenges. Stapleton (2015) highlights that a climate justice approach to climate change education is also pragmatic, as many learners are motivated more by ‘justice’ concerns than by the ‘ecological’ concerns with which climate change has traditionally been associated.’

Teach Indigenous Knowledge: Teaching resources and activities for ages 13+, produced by a secondary school teacher in Norway. This site aims to use sources produced by Indigenous peoples themselves.

Facing History and Ourselves: Resources on topics include Democracy and Civic Engagement; Justice & Human Rights, etc.

Climate and education – ethical issues. A summary of media articles and online sources, prepared in 2021.

Stanford’s Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum. See also What’s at stake?