Curriculum and Pedagogy
CELI exists in response to, and within, communities in crisis. A low-income mixed-race polycultural urban community, including many immigrants and refugees interlinked with global communities in crisis, that is struggling with the polycrisis of social and environmental collapse. CELI attempts to buffer and heal this damage through a co-developed vision, learning goals, pedagogy, and curriculum, refined through research-based improvement science feedbacks.
What do students need to learn to survive the polycrisis, thrive, and become the next generation of justice-centered, science-grounded climate solutionaries? The basic content is clear: What are the causes and consequences of the climate crisis and its solutions? But is this all they need to learn? And, what are the essential elements of teaching those things? How do we integrate climate learning into existing curriculum? Which subjects should be involved? How do we most effectively engage our particular population of students? We have continued to ask ourselves these questions throughout the project, co-creating and defining our curriculum and pedagogical approach as a community.
Out of these discussions emerged CELI’s justice-centered, science-grounded, and solutions-oriented approach to climate education. While we are not creating curriculum for export – we are co-developing curriculum and pedagogy that work best in our classrooms for our students, at this moment in time. We are learning along with our students and we believe that many of the lessons learned regarding meaningful climate curriculum creation and potent pedagogy apply to all schools. The following table shares these approaches and tools, some adopted, some adapted, and some developed by us:
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CELI Approaches and Tools |
Description |
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A theory of learning that is justice centered, science grounded, and solutions oriented. |
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Regenerative sustainability learning must include the heart, head, and hands (affective, cognitive and practical learning), starting with the heart. |
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These learning goals co-created by the CELI NIC drive CELI curriculum creation and our pedagogical approach. |
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A tool to help teachers see how their subject can contribute to climate education, and how that fits into the big picture context of solving the climate crisis. |
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A lesson and tool for students to fund their climate solutionary niche. |
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CELI units are anchored around specific interdisciplinary and justice focused climate phenomena, which provide a purposeful context for subsequent lessons across disciplines. |
OTHER CURRICULUM RESOURCES
Videos and Podcasts - annotated
Internet Articles and Websites - annotated