Webinar Date and Times:

• Tuesday, May 17, 2022
• 6 AM Sydney Time / 3 PM CT / 4 PM ET

In this engaging session, participants are invited to discuss the new knowledge, capacities, and resources that students and educators need to grapple with the climate crisis.

Presenting case study research conducted at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, the research team will reflect on the experience of students and educators during a period of intersecting crises in Australia: climate change fuelled drought, catastrophic bushfires, and the emergence of COVID-19.

Many students in the study were deeply affected by their learning experience and recognized its importance, but also struggled to integrate it with anticipated future roles and forms of effective action.

The webinar will be informed by Britzman’s concept of ‘difficult knowledge’ (1998; 2004) and the notion of the ‘implicated subject’ (Rothberg 2019), both useful concepts for understanding inherent challenges in teaching and learning, particularly at a time when intersecting crisis events are likely to become commonplace.

We examine questions of how educators in formal tertiary learning and teaching contexts can integrate feelings of distress, anxiety, grief, and disassociation in the student body, and work on supporting students to remain engaged and present in the face of the climate crisis.

Presenters

Tania Leimbach, Research Associate, Climate, Society, Environment Research Centre (C-SERC), University of Technology Sydney Dr. Tania Leimbach’s research and creative practice are focused on environmental communication and climate justice. In 2015, she completed a Ph.D. titled 'Sustainability and the Material Imagination' at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (UTS). Her transdisciplinary thesis evaluates pioneering organizations that facilitate socio-ecological change through creative innovation. Her current research investigates the health impacts of climate change. Passionate about transformative education, Tania has developed resources for Climate Change Education (CCE) now being used in higher education, secondary schools, and local councils. Tania is interested in finding ways to scaffold support for youth-led climate solutions and inter-generational collaboration, along with providing skills and knowledge for educators on how to effectively address climate change across diverse settings.

Jennifer Kent, Research Associate, Climate, Society, Environment Research Centre (C-SERC), University of Technology Sydney Dr. Jennifer Kent is a sessional academic with the Climate Justice Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney with a background in community education and Education for Sustainability. Her research interests span the areas of sustainability transitions, grassroots social innovations, and deliberative democracy. In particular, she is interested in understanding how grassroots collective voluntary action that addresses the wicked challenge of climate change and continued fossil fuel extraction can contribute to better climate change governance. She is an experienced social researcher and has conducted case study research, interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and document analysis in projects related to climate change, sustainability, and deliberative democracy.