The What, Why, and How of Climate Change Education: Strengthening Teacher Education for Resilience

Abstract

This paper offers content priorities, justifications, and pedagogical approaches for the integration of climate change education into the training of teachers, and thus into public schooling. To meet urgent imperatives presented by the polycrisis of the Anthropocene, climate change education must be inclusive, comprehensive, flexible, and regionally responsive. Climate change education can be achieved by adapting regional programs for teacher education to meet those requirements. An example is the Climate Education in Teacher Education (CETE) project in northern British Columbia, Canada. Using the Education Design-Based Research methodology, the project addresses critical questions for curricular and pedagogical development of teachers to address the following three questions: (a) what content and outcomes to prioritize, (b) why these elements matter, and (c) how to implement them effectively. Over two years, CETE engaged pre-service and in-service teachers through workshops, reflective practices, and consultations with Indigenous communities. Our tentative answers emphasize the importance of adapting curriculum and pedagogy to foster community resilience, address climate anxiety, and promote an ethical renewal toward sustainability. The iterative development of objectives as “High-Level Conjectures” provides flexibility and reflexivity in the design process in the face of rapid contextual change. CETE developed practical pedagogical tools and workshop strategies that align educational priorities with local and global needs. This study offers a replicable framework to empower educators and communities in diverse locations to navigate the complexities of the climate crisis in their quest for a more secure and sustainable future.

1. Introduction

In these uncertain times, the future of sustainability, in all its dimensions, is increasingly called into question. In the face of the polycrisis [1], effective agency and solidarity may yet lead to decisive achievements in sustainability at the local scale, provided that the next generations are sufficiently empowered. One of the most influential tools for such empowerment is public education, although this potential is often overlooked in educational programs that emphasize employability and market success [2]. Long-term solutions for challenges such as climate change and unsustainable practices often begin in the world’s classrooms [3]. One of the most influential groups of professionals involved is teachers; they play a key role in interpreting, framing, and applying the official curriculum. Teachers are the ones who design a relevant curriculum that meets local needs and priorities [4,5]. It is the teachers’ examples that, in some cases, remain in memories for a lifetime. In an age of transgressed planetary boundaries [6] and looming biosphere breakdown [7], with societies hampered by contradictory messages, a teacher’s initiative can make a crucial difference for young citizens. This paper uses an example of climate change education in teacher education to explicate how teacher initiatives can make a difference, why they are of crucial importance for the students’ future, and how teachers can use their agency to bring about change.

In their efforts to empower learners to cope with the challenges of climate change and climate change disinformation [8], all teachers are facing three fundamental questions: What are the justifications for prioritizing climate change education? What conceptual content and learning outcomes do they need to prioritize? How are those contents and outcomes best addressed pedagogically? This paper refers to those questions as the Why, the What, and the How of climate change education. The answers to these questions vary between regions and cultures; they change over time as the climate emergency and global polycrisis proceed, and they determine how teacher education can address sustainable solutions, as our example will show.

The Why, What and How questions are being addressed in a current research project involving pre-service and in-service teachers in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada, called Climate Education in Teacher Education (CETE). The backstory of this project started with observations and sentiments that inspired the founding members of the research team, who are teacher educators in the School of Education at the University of Northern BC. They deliberated about the unprecedented challenges to sustainability arising from climate change in their region. As for the Why, the teacher educators considered the effort to be justified by a call to action from the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (ACDE) in 2022 [9], by the widespread uncertainty in the profession about climate change education, the paucity of governmental support, and existential urgency and rapid systemic change within the climate emergency. The What was developed by the team in the form of specific aims, contents, and strategies for teacher education in the region. In their capacity as teacher educators, the research team has a particular impact on climate change education, which provides them with motivation. The section below summarizes the research team’s consensus on the Why and the What. The subsequent section focuses primarily on the How, which describes the flexible development of the project’s methodology and priorities over the first three years, which took those justifications (the Why) and priorities (the What) into account. Criteria for expert climate change educators, that is, High-Level Conjectures, were developed and iteratively reviewed and refined by the research team members and their associates. Based on those criteria, educational interventions for pre-service and in-service teachers were designed and implemented in the form of workshops. The section concludes by pointing to the ongoing inquiry of how the Why, What, and How come to change over time and how curriculum and pedagogy in climate change education and in teacher education can respond accordingly. The circumstances and considerations that led to the project’s inception continue to influence its ongoing development. However, changes in context and its complexity, as well as lessons learned from the interventions and participants, contributed to the project’s modification over time.

In the Section 3, this paper presents what has been learned by the research team during the first three years of the project. For this project, the aim was to develop a framework for climate change education that focuses on sustainability in northern BC, which would in turn serve as a blueprint to develop regionally focused plans for teacher education and address the climate emergency through community resilience in diverse geographical locations. The results are reported under the themes of Big Ideas for climate change education, representing and interpreting how learners’ experience of climate change, integration of educational aims and means, and dealing with emotional reactions to climate change.

Section 4 builds on those results and explores potential pathways to transformative education for climate change and sustainability. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how researchers as educators can develop such pathways by consensually identifying consensus priorities that guide the creation of curriculum for teacher education and professional development. In an era of rapid contextual change, where program flexibility is essential for success, this approach can serve as a model for similar initiatives in other regions. The shared goal of the research team is to empower teachers to educate learners to contribute toward a more secure and sustainable future.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Justifications and Context for Climate Change Education

This section links the rationale, content, and process of the CETE project in order to explain how its approach to climate change education was developed and implemented, underscoring the urgency of integrating climate change education into teacher training to address the escalating global climate emergency and its disproportionate impacts on northern regions in Canada. Because this paper is presented as a research project report, the emphasis is on documenting project design, pedagogical tools, and reflective insights rather than detailed participant counts or formal coding procedures. Empirical analyses with participant data and coding schemes are being reported in separate manuscripts arising from the CETE project (e.g., Banack et al. [10]). The Why of climate change education lies in the interconnected crises of climate change, resource scarcity, and social instability, which highlights the ethical duty of teachers to prepare learners for these challenges [11]. The What involves prioritizing community resilience, integrating Indigenous knowledge, and addressing gaps in curricula that fail to meet the demands of the Anthropocene [12]. Finally, the How focuses on localized, adaptive educational strategies like those developed in the CETE project, which align global imperatives with regional realities to equip educators with the tools needed to foster a transition toward sustainability in their teaching practices. Together, these components demonstrate how the project’s design-based research approach translates broad sustainability imperatives into practical educational interventions tailored to regional realities. This section unpacks the Why and the What in more detail.

2.2. The Why

The following Why justifications inform the work of CETE and were identified and prioritized by the researchers through iterative rounds of discussions, interventions, and evaluations.

Why (1)—The rate of global heating is still increasing; the North is particularly threatened.

A recent warning by leading climate scientists [13] highlights the inadequacy of current mitigation efforts, with fossil fuel emissions having increased to an all-time high. Current policies place the planet on track for a temperature increase of 2.6–3.1 °C by 2100 [14]. Northern communities in Canada can expect a rate of two to three times the global average [15], meaning more extreme weather and fire risks. As mitigation fails globally, adaptation becomes vital—including the empowerment of young people through climate change education to cope with adversity [16]. This critical situation precipitated the urgent call by the Association of Canadian Deans of Education [9]. Since the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) is the primary institution for the education of teachers in the north of the province, the teacher educators of CETE felt a responsibility to contribute to the empowerment of future teachers and the learners they would be supporting. Figure 1 provides a map of BC showing the CETE project’s study areas: UNBC and School District 57 are in Prince George, and School District 52 is in Prince Rupert.

Why (2)—Climate change is linked to ecological overshoot and the global polycrisis, which affects regions in diverse and complex ways.

Climate change represents only a part of the spectrum of environmental changes caused by the excessive throughput that converts resources into waste at ever-increasing rates [17]. The threats that arise from climate change (heat waves, extreme and unpredictable weather, droughts, floods, fires, ecological disruptions, novel disease vectors, etc.) interact with, and reinforce, other challenges within the global polycrisis [1], such as resource shortages, economic decline, deteriorating infrastructure, population displacement, pandemics and political upheaval [18]. Moreover, unforeseen changes in the dynamics caused by tipping points [19] tend to render projections overconservative [20]. For northern BC, the prospect of increasing isolation from supply routes is the second greatest likely challenge. For CETE, that meant an emphasis on self-sufficiency.

Why (3)—Educators’ professional duty of care applies to the diverse threats to human security, especially in view of the past failure of education systems to address climate change.

At a time when catastrophic environmental change demands global cooperation and solidarity, the global trends of political fragmentation and declining multilateralism are severely undermining human security in all parts of the world [21]. The UN’s various definitions of human security since 1994 revolve around the three principles of freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to live in dignity. A working definition of human security, based on those principles and credited to David Hastings [22], would be the attainment of physical, mental, and spiritual peace/security of individuals and communities at home and in the world—in a balanced local/global context. As a result of declines in human security, climate injustice is worsening around the world. Aside from the failing of governments, education systems worldwide have long been implicated in the polycrisis by teaching falsehoods (explicitly or implicitly) and by not teaching what is most important for attaining sustainability [4,23,24,25,26,27,28]. Educators everywhere have a professional obligation to avoid complicity and a duty of care toward their students [29], which compels them to amend the wrong by rethinking and reinventing their curriculum and pedagogy through innovative approaches [30]. Effective education creates agency, models lifestyle changes, and powers movements toward sustainability. For CETE, that meant developing educational strategies in those directions that specifically address the challenges arising from climate change.

Why (4)—Anthropogenic harm to the biosphere causes much suffering and ecocide in non-human nature.

Climate change has triggered a wide range of ecological consequences. The non-human world is suffering from biodiversity loss that, in its extent and rate, has not occurred since the last mass extinction 66 million years ago [31]. The disappearance of species is of moral concern, regardless of one’s environmental ethic. New pathogens threaten public health and agriculture in many regions [32]. Human resource consumption and pollution output are pushing Earth’s physical and ecological systems beyond their capacities, imperiling the stability of many global and local ecosystems critical to human wellbeing, from food production to international security [13]. The most serious ecological consequence for northern regions is the potential loss of the boreal forest to fires and pests. Culturally and nutritionally significant species such as salmon may be at risk [33]. Beyond specific threats, the principles of solidarity and empathy apply universally. The conflation of ecological risks and ethical concerns contributed to the discourse in CETE’s educational interventions.

Having established why climate change education is essential, the project next identified the specific priorities and content areas that should shape curriculum and pedagogy.

2.3. The What

Building on those justifications, the following content priorities were identified by CETE members. They signify the What? of climate change education and, by extension, sustainability education that it should accomplish.

What (1)—A holistic cultural transformation is necessary to address the diverse roots of the crisis.

As authors from the Club of Rome recognized over five decades ago, sustainable human security (i.e., in its economic, environmental, sociopolitical, and health pillars) requires that the five basic limitations to growth [34,35] are addressed: population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution. Addressing those limitations requires a sufficient degree of proactive vision, political goodwill, and cooperativity [36], as well as judicious assessment of local priorities. Even though climate change represents only one of several dangerous threats in the polycrisis, it now takes a front and center position in people’s awareness; hence, efforts to implement climate change education tend to focus beyond climate change per se, to include a holistic cultural transformation that changes values and attitudes [37]. While prescriptive educational models toward that goal have been published [25,37,38,39,40], official curricula have been slow to implement that imperative. Moreover, while northern communities are not yet facing impending ecological collapse, the prospect of economic isolation will require that local climate change education prioritizes community resilience through sufficiency, cooperation and solidarity.

What (2)—Better relations with Indigenous communities, who are especially strong in northern BC, can help to integrate Traditional Knowledge and Wisdom (TEKW) into public education to develop local resilience and self-sufficiency.

Considering the scarcity of effective solutions and mitigation regimes at super-regional scales, it seems reasonable to propose that “the future of humanity is local” [41]. This proposition would appear as no news to the world’s Indigenous communities. In Canada and many other post-colonial societies, local Indigenous knowledge and wisdom, often referred to as Traditional Knowledge and Wisdom (TEKW) [42], aids communities in weather disruptions of supply routes. TEKW can support education for sustainability [43]: Indigenous peoples have lived in BC for at least 14,000 years, without having caused any major ecological disruptions [44]; the contrast with one and a half centuries of White settler domination, in terms of environmental atrocities and casual ecocide, could not be crasser. The conceptual tension between local and global solutions to the polycrisis is mounting; for northern communities, the prospect of isolation calls for local resilience and self-sufficiency. Community initiatives inspired by catchwords such as repair, reuse, repurpose, reduce, recover, refuse, etc., contribute to resilience. Anticipating and responding to specific threats at the local level, communities can develop mitigation and adaptation measures at a manageable scale and rate [45]. Education and teacher education, as prioritized in CETE, play a vital role in those preparations [40].

What (3)—Pedagogies focusing on community agency and solidarity can support resilience toward regional disasters and emergencies and address local needs.

Unfortunately, the need to develop more sustainable communities in the face of climate change has not been adequately recognized until recently. Internationally, 70% of youths were found unable to explain climate change [46]. Official guides to address such undereducation, such as UNESCO’s Guide for Greening Curriculum [47], usually emphasize anthropocentric justice and entitlements over ecological dependencies and uncertainty [37]. The recent provincial and federal elections indicated that conservative (i.e., status quo-biased, reactive) politics dominate many rural communities in BC, especially in northern ridings. Despite those divisions, focusing educational efforts on community agency, collaborative synergism, and emergency relief might help the region reach a consensus. CETE’s educational aims were developed in that direction.

What (4)—Gaps in the curriculum regarding climate change education and implicit misinterpretations of the status quo must be rectified.

The current BC curriculum [48] offers little support for climate change education: although the curriculum features several courses that include climate and climate change topics, such topics have not been integrated throughout the K-12 curriculum in an interdisciplinary manner, as the climate emergency would demand. Competencies are described in superficial, abstract language that has not ameliorated the concerns of students about their lack of preparedness; nor does the curriculum address the systemic social-economic conditions that rendered climate change inevitable, or mention fundamental facts about human ecology, such as overshoot. Similar curricular shortfalls were evident in an international comparison of curricula in climate literacy that revealed a widespread and appalling lack of ambition, inclusion, pedagogical quality, and attention to injustice [49]. Educational achievements across most subjects in many jurisdictions have declined since the COVID-19 pandemic [50,51]. Students are generally not coping on their own: during the disruptions by the COVID-19 pandemic, it became painfully clear that most learners did not have adequate skills to teach themselves; Learning to Learn [52] is therefore a priority. Climate change education for teachers throughout BC must counteract those influences and empower them to address the gaps in the official curriculum. CETE interacts with other organizations to develop regionally appropriate educational remedies.

What (5)—The development of climate literacy in northern BC requires locally relevant learning resources and teachers who are experienced in putting them to use.

Those curricular gaps extend into teacher education: in a recent survey, only 41 percent of B.C. teachers described feeling empowered to teach climate change in this situation, with 36 percent acknowledging climate change’s importance but not incorporating climate change education into their classrooms [53]. Industry offers no help: Mainly in the postsecondary sector (including teacher education), industrial interest groups exert their influence on institutions through the infusion of industry-friendly curricula, “climate obstruction” blocking climate action, overpromoting technological fixes, and preventing universities from disclosing and severing financial ties to industries [54]. In response, various organizations and entities have produced climate education materials for teachers and teacher education. However, how those materials are reaching their intended audiences remains unclear [28,53,55,56]. A gap is evident between available pedagogical resources on climate change and putting those resources to use in schools. While this gap applies across the province, it is wider in northern and remote communities. CETE works specifically with teachers in northern B.C.

In summary, four justifying arguments for climate change education in teacher education (the Why) were as follows:

• The rate of global heating is still increasing; the North is particularly threatened;
• Climate change is linked to ecological overshoot and the global polycrisis, which affects regions in diverse and complex ways;
• Educators’ professional duty of care applies to the diverse threats to human security, especially in view of the past failure of education systems to address them;
• Anthropogenic harm to the biosphere causes much suffering and ecocide in non-human nature.

There were five priorities for climate change education curriculum and pedagogy (the What):

• A holistic cultural transformation is necessary to address the diverse roots of the crisis;
• Better relationships with Indigenous communities, who are especially strong in northern BC, can help to integrate TEKW into public education to develop local resilience and self-sufficiency;
• Pedagogies focusing on community agency and solidarity can support resilience toward regional disasters and emergencies and address local needs.
• Gaps in the curriculum regarding climate change education and implicit misinterpretations of the status quo must be rectified;
• The development of climate literacy in northern BC requires locally relevant learning resources and teachers who are experienced in putting them to use.

The CETE project is committed to communicating those four basic justifications for climate change education to teachers and to enabling them to share them with their students. The five priorities for curriculum and pedagogy in climate change education inform the professional development of teachers and their educational efforts in schools.

With both the rationale and the content priorities in place, the next step was to determine how these guiding principles could be translated into practice through appropriate research methods and intervention strategies. Consequently, the next section focuses on the How: how methods for climate change education were developed.

2.4. Designing the “How”: Co-Creating Climate Change Education Intervention Strategies

Building on the foundational justifications and priorities for climate change education, the focus now shifts to how these principles are operationalized in CETE’s approach to developing curriculum and pedagogy that can strengthen sustainable security within the unique context of northern BC. This section details the methodological approach and collaborative processes that guide the development of effective, regionally relevant climate change education interventions. As pointed out before, the region’s specific vulnerabilities—exacerbated by its geographic, economic, and ecological realities—demand tailored educational interventions. Furthermore, the accelerating pace of global environmental change calls for built-in flexibility, in the sense that those interventions can be modified in response to changes in priorities, and that teachers can adjust their curriculum and pedagogy to such changes as well. Recognizing the limitations of a one-size-fits-all approach, the CETE initiative emphasizes localized, collaborative, and adaptive strategies for addressing the urgent need for teacher preparation in this area.

The CETE project was triggered by the ACDE Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future (2022). This report stated that the Deans of Education across Canada “are deeply concerned about the climate emergency and environmental crisis” [9] (p. 4). Furthermore, the legal duty of national governments to address the climate emergency was recognized by the International Court of Justice in consultation with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This legal duty complements the moral obligations arising from climate injustice [57]. The ACDE Accord proposed that this duty to address climate change applies to educators throughout Canada, to which UNBC agreed by signing up on 18 June 2025 to the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Accord. This means that henceforth the university is committed to explicitly backing the seventeen SDGs, as well as the CETE agenda.

The CETE research team discussed possible challenges that may be presented by climate change and the polycrisis as they manifest in northern BC. In response, the team developed the justifications and priorities for action that are listed above in the Why and the What. The research question to investigate climate change education with the UNBC School of Education pre-service teachers, with in-service teachers in the region, and with the six faculty members in CETE states is as follows:

How might northern B.C. K-12 teachers be engaged to critically consider and respond to the climate emergency in their contexts and scopes of practice through teacher agency, creative pedagogy, educational leadership, and climate adaptation around climate change education?

From CETE’s inception during the summer of 2022, the team understood that it would be unhelpful to agitate toward a proposal for a revised provincial curriculum for three reasons: (1) the chances for a comprehensive and effective revision to be implemented in a timely fashion without substantial weaknesses were considered slim; (2) under the realization that sustainable solutions are likely to work best at the community level, curricular remedies are best designed in consultation with the local community; and (3) provincial curriculum remains in force for many years, which does not accommodate the flexibility required for responding to global environmental change.

During the following years, two trends became apparent that would lead to course corrections and revisions of priorities. Firstly, goals and solutions that seemed still feasible around the turn of the century, such as the Kyoto goal of 1.50 °C warming above the preindustrial average, have moved beyond our reach. Instead, the prospect of limited collapse and adjustment events has become a virtual certainty for many locales [58]; the aims of climate change education are increasingly turning toward making the future “less worse” for learners. The possibility of a global “unravelling” [59] spells unique challenges for northern communities and educators, including the prospect of isolation and scarcities. Accordingly, curriculum and pedagogy need to address the emotions and feelings of learners, such as anxiety, depression, and apathy.

A second trend is evident in programs for so-called sustainable development. Progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has stalled on many fronts [60,61], despite the merits of the SDGs as the most promising international initiative for collaborative action toward the polycrisis [62]. The CETE project conforms with, and strengthens, the global SDG Agenda, specifically SDG 4 on education, and the agenda of climate justice under SDGs 10 (inequalities), 12 (responsible consumption), 13 (climate action) [63]. However, the SDG Agenda on the whole faces an uncertain future, and the future of northern communities cannot be left to depend on ambitious national or global development schemes; instead, diverse and flexible uses of local resources should enrich the curriculum for sustainability. The focus on regional needs and priorities places the development of community resilience at the top of the agenda for climate change education, with a focus on climate injustice and on addressing shortcomings in the provincial curriculum. This paper will now discuss how CETE has adapted curriculum and pedagogy to the sustainability imperatives in the context of climate change.

2.5. Characteristic Features of the CETE Research Methodology

The two abovementioned trends exemplify the uncertainty that marks the future of education. CETE’s research methodology, Educational Design-Based Research (EDBR), incorporates collaborative, empirical, and pragmatic considerations based on the creation of workable solutions. Its reflexive and iterative approach is complemented with proactive and precautionary aspirations that are informed by external constraints and imperatives. The abovementioned failures of global initiatives toward climate change mitigation and sustainable development make the future even less predictable, apart from the certainty of rapid change. Because rapid change renders conventions unreliable, a flexible methodology such as EDBR was preferred. The research also needed to be capable of addressing unexpected changes in the educational system and outside of it. Unexpected changes are also expected because of the complexity of the system. Educational systems in general are “complex adaptive systems” [64] characterized by the following:

• Interdependence: Components like students, teachers, curricula, policies, and infrastructure depend on and influence each other;
• Non-linear dynamics: Small changes (e.g., a new teaching strategy or policy) and tipping points can have disproportionately large or unpredictable effects;
• Emergence: Patterns, behaviors, or outcomes (e.g., a school culture) arise from interactions rather than being imposed;
• Feedback loops: Decisions in one area (e.g., assessment practices) can create ripple effects, influencing behavior and outcomes in unexpected ways.

Interdependence promises that climate change education of teachers ramifies through the system and affects changes in students, society, policies, and infrastructure; non-linear dynamics work through social and cultural tipping points, amplifying change; emergence creates new, unpredicted changes that ramify through the system and cause it to morph in new directions; and various kinds of feedback (using both negative and positive effects) modify the effects of initial educational interventions, creating new effects in the process. These four interacting mechanisms operate within the educational system, infusing the impacts of educational initiatives such as CETE with an extent of unpredictability that only flexible and ongoing methodologies like EDBR can productively cope with.

Outside of an educational system, sociopolitical and cultural landscapes are changing, and environmental changes are accelerating. In the context of the polycrisis of the Anthropocene and the ensuing rapid changes, pragmatic considerations and flexibility have taken on additional significance because of the urgency, severity, and breadth of the emergency [25]. CETE researchers find themselves obliged to make up for years of inaction and distraction that have prevented school systems from proactively dealing with the approaching imperatives. In the context of rapid change, pragmatism, speed, and flexibility are called for to generate a program of effective educational interventions in collaboration with teachers in local schools. Specific changes in strategic perspectives within the CETE team will be discussed further below.

The abovementioned complex interactive mechanisms, operating within the educational system and from the outside, demand a suitably flexible and pragmatic approach in developing curriculum and pedagogy in climate change education. EDBR leaves strategic latitude, allowing for the development of contingencies and course corrections along the way [65]. The research team collaborates with specialists from other institutions and organizations across Canada, in iterative cycles of analysis and revision of the intervention agenda, mediated through regular meetings online and offline. As the ACDE Accord (2022) [9] indicated, the national extent of the climate emergency warrants collaborative efforts across the country. Collaboration has included the Institute for Environmental Learning (IEL) and Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF), which develop climate education resources for Canadian teachers. For CETE, the nationwide collaborations have complemented the regional focus of the project’s efforts.

Conjecture mapping [66] emerged as a critical method within the EDBR framework to bridge the broader collaborative methodology with the development of targeted educational interventions. The conjecture mapping process, which is outlined in two tables in Appendix A, has allowed the research team to systematically link theoretical priorities with practical interventions, ensuring alignment between overarching goals and the specific needs of northern BC. For example, for a workshop on interpreting climate change, the team prioritized local manifestations and their interpretation and connecting them to planetary change. By incorporating iterative feedback and adapting to emerging insights, conjecture mapping helped refine priorities and strategies to remain responsive to local and national imperatives. This approach ensured that the collaborative efforts of the CETE initiative remained grounded in action, adhered to context-sensitive outcomes, and set the stage for the formulation of High-Level Conjectures (HLCs) as a guiding framework. HLCs are tentative formulations of the intervention agenda and priorities that were identified by consensus as promising and desirable. HLCs also inform goals in teacher education.

Through the conjecture mapping process, the teams collaborated on the articulation and development of HLCs [66,67,68]. The process remains dynamic and open-ended, proceeding back and forth between the analytical and the prescriptive modes. Exemplifying the dynamic aspect, during discussions of experiences from several workshops during the first year, it was decided to expand the project’s units of analysis from pre-service teachers to include in-service teachers; next, a self-study of team members was included; and most recently, knowledge holders from local Indigenous communities were interviewed about their input to climate change education.

Expanding the units of analysis increased the overall efficacy and range of the project. Observations from the intervention program for teacher candidates were complemented by observations with in-service teachers. The reflective aspect of the project was strengthened by the self-study of team members. The most recent expansion enriched the project with unique cultural, historic, and experiential aspects of sustainability in local indigenous contexts. The expansions of the project were facilitated by the growth in funding support.

Parallel to the expansion of the units of analysis, CETE’s interventions were designed to provide structured, multidimensional learning opportunities for participants and northern BC educators. Each annual cohort of participants for the first two projects involving pre- and in-service teachers engaged in workshops, surveys, and focus groups to generate diverse data sources. These methods ensured how CETE strategies are implemented and adapted across varying contexts in northern BC. The annual rounds of interventions consisted of four 90 min workshops (

Table 1. Topics of annual CETE Workshops, including dates. Workshops are referred to as workshop#/year#, e.g., #4/1 for the workshop of May 2023.

Year 1 (Spring 2023)	Year 2 (Fall 2023/Winter 2024)	Year 3 (Fall 2024/Winter 2025)
#1-Interpreting Climate Change (March 2023)	#1-Interpreting Climate Change: Engaging through pedagogy (October 2023)	#1-Feelings and Anxiety (October 2024)
#2-Aims of Climate Education (April 2023)	#2-From Aims to Means: BC’s curriculum & climate education (November 2023)	#2-Health (November 2024)
#3-Pedagogy Planning for the Classroom (April 2023)	#3-Aims and Means to Lesson Planning: Teaching for Climate Action (January 2024)	#3-Mission-at-the-Moment: Collaborative Curriculum Engagement & Climate Change Education (April 2025)
#4-Evaluating Your Pedagogy (May 2023)	#4-Anxiety, Agency, and Action in the Face of Climate Uncertainty (April 2024)	#4-First Peoples Principles of Learning and Climate Change Education: Land is Curriculum (May/June 2025)

).

The choices of topics for the workshops reflected the justifications (Whys) and priorities (Whats) laid out above. The workshops were also informed by the ongoing collaborative discussions and reformulations of the HLC. Furthermore, the later workshops were shaped according to changes in perspectives and feedback from attendees at the workshops and by changes that became apparent over time. The next section gives an overview of those changes.

2.6. Changes in Strategic Perspectives Along the Way

Over the last two years, the research team frequently discussed the potential roles that climate change education could play in support of community sustainability in northern BC, focusing specifically on the school districts where participant teachers were located. The research team identified the following concept areas as subject to change over time. The dynamic of those concept areas calls for flexibility in the framing of interventions.

• Attraction of Participants: The progression of climate change, while no longer preventable, is still amenable to mitigative action and adaptation. Teaching for, and about, climate change is now more imperative than ever. The team recruited participation by advertising a double benefit for teachers in the region: they could attend the workshops for their professional development; in addition, they could participate in the research projects, thus contributing to strengthening their community by empowering learners to cope with the local challenges of climate change. The increasing urgency contributed to the attraction of participants.
• Increasing Importance of Resilience: As climate change proceeds, the development of community resilience becomes an increasingly important part of adaptation measures [69]. Resilience is the capacity of a social-ecological system to sustain its well-being in the face of disturbance and change by buffering shocks and adapting and transforming in response [70]. A system of six indicators is available for monitoring the resilience of a community: diversity, redundancy, balancing connectivity, system feedback, inclusivity and equity, and adaptive learning [70]. These indicators correspond to specific educational aims under the overarching goal of resilience and sustainability [addressed in workshops #2/1 and #1/2].
• Agency and Leadership: The BC curriculum and teachers’ professional standards [29] leave considerable latitude for teacher agency and teacher leadership; they represent key factors and aspirations for the professional development of teachers. While governmental support is still unavailable and uncertain to arrive, CETE’s intervention program of the workshop series focused increasingly on agency and leadership [10,68] [addressed in workshops #2/2 and #3/3].
• Possibility of Unravelling: The global deterioration of political order and the impact of US politics on Canadians have raised a widespread sense of insecurity. According to prescriptive discussions of climate change curriculum and pedagogy in the literature, a well-designed focus on limits to growth, ecological overshoot, and the prospect of collapse events can help strengthen climate literacy [25,40]. Addressing such disheartening issues places the onus on educators to counteract the emergence of despair and apathy in learners [71,72]. CETE interventions were designed around a sense of balance between discussing scenarios of collapse and unravelling and limiting the extent of adverse emotions elicited [addressed in workshops #4/2 and #1/3].
• Inclusive Ethics: An increasing preference for recognizing rights of nature and more-than-humans (i.e., ecocentric environmental ethics) became apparent during the planning and implementation of workshop #2/3. The team, as well as workshop participants, recognized the importance of holistic health for community resilience. That includes the recognition of the security and rights of nature. For example, recent legal precedents illustrate a shift in public views toward the official recognition of legal standing for rivers and watersheds [73,74]. Extending moral standing to non-humans can facilitate the transition to more sustainable lifestyles and mitigate environmental impacts [75,76]; Indigenous belief systems support such moral extension [77]. CETE’s further initiatives in that direction are under discussion.

This section discussed five concept areas that, in the perceptions of the CETE team, have increased in their apparent significance during the duration of the project. The changing perceptions about those concept areas influenced the future design of educational interventions and the continuing process of conjecture mapping. Those influences will be explored further in the next section, which addresses emergent insights, strategies and priorities.

3. Results

3.1. CETE so Far: Reflective Insights, Strategies, and Priorities Toward Education for Sustainability

This section presents four groups of results and insights distilled from CETE’s interventions and from frequent consultations within the team and with external collaborators. These results are framed primarily as reflective insights and illustrative tools rather than as detailed data analyses. Complementary empirical manuscripts from CETE provide detailed participant information, research procedures, and representative evidence [10]. In this way, they represent work in progress but also point the way for future directions of inquiry.

CETE’s ongoing process of conjecture mapping has produced the current HLC [66]. The HLC guide research and pedagogy are refined iteratively over time. Moreover, the HLC also translates into coping strategies that contribute to community resilience, cultural renewal, reducing overshoot, and other strategies that support sustainable living. Secondly, CETE developed a visual model that supports positioning learner experiences about climate change within academic subjects; it also aids in planning curriculum and pedagogy for climate change education. Thirdly, aims and methods for climate change education were identified for application and adaptation in various educational settings, indicating a need to rethink the concept of learning outcomes in this field. Lastly, the necessity of addressing emotional reactions to climate change and its consequences was communicated to the CETE team on multiple occasions as a priority; consequently, it was addressed in several workshops (especially #4/2 and #1/3; see Table 1), and some observations are outlined in this section.

3.2. Big Ideas for Climate Change Education: Formulating High-Level Conjectures (HLCs) to Guide Education and Research

As mentioned above, a list of HLCs that highlights pedagogical norms and priorities was developed through conjecture mapping and EDBR. In frequent collaborative discussions among the research team and design team (collaborators and experts in the field), those HLCs were reconciled and revised to account for current developments in the environmental, sociopolitical, economic, and health-related contexts in northern BC. The aim was to establish a consensus on strategic aims but retain a sufficient degree of pragmatic flexibility. At the time of writing, the draft HLCs (version 6.0) established in June 2025 as goals for individual and collective initiatives and CETE interventions in climate change education are as follows:

1.

Respectfully learn about local Indigenous knowledge systems;

2.

Incorporate traditions of scientific knowledge and practices about climate change in education;

3.

Support holistic health and foster resilience in the context of climate change;

4.

Learn about and communicate different actions, beliefs, and values about climate change and climate change education;

5.

Take an interdisciplinary and iterative inquiry stance on climate change and climate change education;

6.

Cultivate climate change action grounded in hope and urgency through individual and collective agency;

7.

Foster collaborative and reciprocal community relationships that further climate change education.

Two additional HLC, affirming the rights of nature and considering the importance of power relationships, are under discussion. The HLCs serve as objectives for pedagogical interventions in climate change education, as learning outcomes in an aspirational sense, and for criterion-referenced assessment for the educator. These conjectures can be interpreted as categories in a taxonomy of diverse learning outcomes for climate change education, which complements published taxonomies for sustainability education (e.g., [25]). Implemented during a time of crisis, the HLCs rely heavily on social emotional learning, meaning “learners acquiring the competencies to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle challenging situations effectively” [78]. For the CETE project, the HLCs guide the direction of the research and the educational interventions. The HLCs also exemplify the method of conjecture mapping for educators in other regions as a model strategy for developing curriculum and pedagogy, in the context of education for sustainability. Designed through EDBR, the HLCs can be customized by educators anywhere to meet local needs.

3.3. Representing and Interpreting the Learner’s Experience of Climate Change

From the very onset of teaching about climate change, teachers have faced the challenge of how to frame climate change education to best attract the attention of learners. Teachers know from experience that climate graphs and temperature tables are neither conceptually accessible to all learners nor do they attract widespread affective engagement. A more effective approach would be to engage with the learners’ personal experiences. However, any attempt to represent the subjective experiences in a cohort must remain incomplete; the complexity of those experiences seems overwhelming. Responding to that challenge, the CETE team developed and used the ‘Wheel’ graph (Figure 2) to represent the diversity and complexity of experiences to help learners accept that climate change is real, even though people experience it in vastly different ways.

The idea for the Wheel arose from numerous experiences in teaching about climate change and about other kinds of environmental change. Whenever a particular aspect or manifestation of climate change was discussed among learners, only a minority expressed that it resonated with their own experience. A community of learners, when asked to testify about climate change, can contribute diverse experiences relating to diverse areas of human endeavor. The Wheel provides them with appropriate cues to allow that potential to become expressed and explicitly shared in the form of personal narratives and prior learning.

The Wheel graph was designed for two purposes. The first purpose was to aid learners in connecting their personal experiences with the concept of climate change. There are three concentric circles: (1) an outer circle describing areas or aspects of how nature can be experienced, (2) an inner circle representing broad areas of academic knowledge about nature, and (3) a central button that stands for change of climate or other kinds of environmental change. The learner would situate their experience of environmental change, or of its impact, in a subject box in the inner circle; the learner would then connect that box to their area of experience in the outer circle; establishing that connection, and realizing that many alternative connections are possible, enables the learner to compare their experience of change with the experiences of others and with environmental change in the wider context of academic subjects.

The second purpose was to support teachers in designing lessons that integrate climate change into diverse topics and subjects. To build a new lesson on prior knowledge, the teacher would identify a recently taught topic represented in a box of the outer circle. The teacher would proceed by connecting that box with a subject in the inner circle. In the new lesson, the teacher would show evidence of how climate change is observed in the context of that subject, and in the context of the previously covered topic, by virtue of its connection with the subject. This might help learners to understand that the effects of climate change are very diverse. The teacher could practice climate change education through such diverse subjects as literature, recreation, food, economics, art, and more.

Figure 3 illustrates an example for each purpose. From the perspective of the learner, the decline of salmon populations in northern BC could be experienced as a scarcity of fish caught by friends or as price increases for salmon in the food stores (outward-pointing arrows in Figure 3). In search of a causation, learners may investigate how the seasons, landscapes, ecosystems, and other animal and plant life connect with salmon, and how climate change influences those identified domains in nature. The learner explores how climate change manifests in their area of experience and location, and how other people might experience climate change in ways that differ from their own experience. With the support of the Wheel, learning about climate change in local contexts can be achieved through the BC curriculum (represented by the subjects in the inner circle) in interdisciplinary ways. Core Competencies (Province of BC, 2025) are developed over time as prescribed in the curriculum.

From the perspective of a teacher who may have recently covered with their class topics on spirituality, natural disasters, outdoor recreation, or Indigenous perspectives of nature (inward pointing arrows in Figure 3), they would establish a connection from that prior topic, say outdoor recreation, to experiencing animal life in the outdoors, for example through fishing for salmon, and observing a drop in catch numbers. Depending on the academic level, the causation by global heating is readily established.

The two purposes described above were practiced in CETE workshops, with the visual graph being used as a guide. Beyond that practice, the Wheel can function as a conceptual model to inspire class discussions about the diversity of climate change manifestations and of global environmental change in general. The underlying principle of the model is the juxtaposition of personal, experiential knowledge with academic, epistemological knowledge for the purpose of exploring connections between the two domains. The Wheel model could also be used to survey student knowledge about environmental change, to organize independent projects connecting climate change to diverse areas, or to explore connections and commonalities between the sectors of the inner circle that are usually covered separately in the curriculum.

The Wheel model was introduced to pre- and in-service teachers in northern BC during the workshop series and attracted positive feedback. It is likely to prove itself as a relevant and relatable resource for teachers to use in schools, together with the BC curriculum. Learners in other regions might benefit from similar pedagogical approaches exemplified by this model. To expand its use across disciplines, the labels in the inner circle could reflect other academic contexts outside of natural science. This approach could be complemented by substituting the four Why items identified earlier in this paper for the label of general change in the central button. The versatile potential of the Wheel approach for teacher education, professional development, and public education renders it a versatile blueprint for regional contexts in BC and further afield.

3.4. Integration of Aims and Means

During the CETE workshops (listed in Table 1), it was found that (a) aims and means of climate change education can be interchangeably interpreted; and (b) HLCs can also function as aims or means.

Table 2. CETE aims and means. The aims listed on the left can also function as a means to other aims. The means listed on the right can be interpreted as aims in the proximal contexts of single lessons or discussions. This table was used in workshop #2/2 (November 2023).

‘AIMS’	‘MEANS’
Develop a Community of Learners who …. are resilient support holistic security reflect on their values understand climate justice learn from Indigenous practices develop crisis solutions	Strategies used by teachers include … envisioning alternative concepts of ‘progress’ developing an ecocentric/environmental ethic practicing collaboratively exploring common future visions promoting inquiry learning reducing resource dependency increasing local sustainability
Conclusion: Aims and Means run along a single continuum; the teacher decides the priorities.

shows a list of aims and means of climate change education as discussed during the second-year workshops. The conceptual overlap between means and aims illustrates not a conflation but their dual functions. For example, the development of a community of learners that reflects on their values can be understood as a beneficent aim in itself; it is easier to follow one’s conscience. However, reflecting on one’s values or ethos is also a means by which learners can change their environmental ethic toward ecocentrism, which allows a community to avoid many pitfalls in environmental policies that might “backfire” [76].

The CETE members found that the integration of aims and means applies both to the research methodology and to teaching and learning about climate change resilience. For example, in the workshop on feelings and anxiety (#1/3), participants noted that apathy and denialism represent important targets for pedagogical intervention because of their negative effects on mental health and agency. However, by ameliorating apathy and denial, the educator also makes further learning more likely and ultimately improves community resilience [79]. The integration of aims and means is significant for the design of curriculum and its iterative re-thinking and re-conceptualizing by representatives of learners, teachers, subject, and cultural milieu [80]. That integration also affects CETE’s practice of conjecture mapping for research and educational intervention. Even the general aims for climate change education, summarized as What items earlier in this paper, could variously be regarded as aims in themselves or as means to other aims. Lastly, the above example highlights the importance of addressing emotional and psychological barriers to engagement, often overlooked in traditional climate change education, but repeatedly emphasized by attendees in workshops and focus groups. By integrating these considerations into their curriculum and pedagogy, educators can foster a more holistic and adaptive approach to sustainability education, ultimately supporting learners’ mental well-being and capacity for meaningful action. The next section discusses emotions in more detail.

3.5. Dealing with Emotional Reactions to Climate Change

For remote communities, as in northern BC, climate change is likely to affect infrastructure, trade connections, transportation, personal conveniences, and food production with deleterious consequences [7,81]. The boreal forest, for example, is particularly susceptible to the heightened risk of major fires [82]. Therefore, information about climate change can elicit a wide range of emotional reactions. Some of those reactions, such as anxiety, anger, denial, apathy, solastalgia, and despair, interfere with learning and one’s mental health. The danger of eliciting such reactions could make many educators apprehensive about discussing climate change. On the other hand, a teacher might feel a professional obligation toward climate change education to support learners who struggle to cope [29].

Several of the CETE workshop attendees confirmed that emotional reactions to climate change may be widespread and, in some cases, intense. Some of them stated their emotions as their prime motivation for participating. Experience also showed the importance of framing to minimize adverse reactions: the mere mention of “collapse” can raise eyebrows and tempers. However, innovative pedagogical approaches designed around the concept of Deep Adaptation [57,58] (“Deep Adaptation is an agenda and framework for responding to the potential, probable, or inevitable collapse of industrial consumer societies, due to the direct or indirect impacts of human-caused climate change and environmental degradation.” [58]) have shown that proper framing of concepts and terms can make the difference between eliciting dismay about impending adverse events and learners feeling empowered to cope and to help their communities in productive ways [37,40]. In their responses, workshop participants recognized the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) in pedagogies for the development of resilient communities.

Discovering that dealing with emotional reactions (or not) can decisively affect learning disqualifies the conventional practice of relegating climate change education to science courses. The pedagogical success of the Wheel model indicated that education on environmental change can be initiated in any subject, and that the curriculum and pedagogy of education for sustainability are transdisciplinary. Workshop attendees indicated that, by addressing emotions and social-emotional capacities directly, learners’ mental well-being can be supported and is likely to equip them with the agency to enact meaningful change. The enmeshment of cognitive and affective domains in teaching and learning underscores the transformative potential of SEL in empowering individuals to take purposeful action, strengthening their sense of agency, and enabling them to contribute actively to the resilience of their communities [78]. Mediating climate change education through SEL reimagines teachers and learners as active participants in both their education and the broader societal response to climate challenges.

The results and insights described in this section serve to substantiate and illuminate CETE’s five content priorities, summarized earlier in the paper under the What category. The What items reappear in the form of HLC; some of them can be taught through the Wheel model; they can function as aims and as means, depending on the pedagogical context; and most of them require the support of educational strategies involving SEL. Finally, although CETE focuses mainly on climate change education, these results and insights also find application in a broader sense to diverse projects for education toward sustainability. In their general applicability, the results and insights illustrate the potential of CETE’s approach as a blueprint for educational innovation in the face of challenging environmental changes.

4. Discussion: Pathways to Transformative Education for Sustainability

A proposal for innovation is expected to explain the reasons for the innovation, the contents of the innovation, and its methods. In this paper, those requirements were addressed as the Why, the What, and the How of climate change education, framed as the CETE project. In a warming, crowded, and rapidly changing world, education systems and educators play an important part in bringing about the holistic cultural transformation mentioned above under the What priorities for climate change education. Those What priorities suggest that it takes unusual efforts by educators to bring, and to keep, curricula and pedagogies up to date to meet the changing needs of learners. As was discussed in the How section, the process requires flexibility, responsibility, collaboration, and an acknowledgment of the complexity of educational systems.

A primary outcome of the CETE project has been the embodiment of a proactive, pragmatic, and collaborative approach to addressing the multifaceted challenges of climate change education within the context of northern BC. By aligning with principles of EDBR and conjecture mapping, including deliberations on the Why, What, and How of climate change education, CETE has illuminated pathways for developing regionally attuned, community-centered strategies that have been empowering both pre-service and in-service teachers in northern BC to navigate the Anthropocene’s uncertainties. CETE fostered collaboration among diverse stakeholders—including the research and design teams, key partners and collaborators, northern BC educators, UNBC teacher candidates, and workshop attendees—as well as northern BC communities. These collaborative efforts ensured the CETE project and workshops were informed by a range of perspectives and enriched with localized knowledge. This collaborative process demonstrated the ubiquitous principle of shared ownership in advancing meaningful educational practices. Tangible products of that collaboration are the HLCs, guiding further development of the project while being subject to iterative rethinking and revision.

The development and application of HLCs represent key insights from which educational strategies in diverse cultural contexts can benefit. The HLCs have served as a critical mechanism for aligning CETE’s vision with the evolving challenges of the polycrisis. HLCs—such as integrating diverse knowledge systems, addressing climate anxiety, and fostering local action—represent guiding principles and actionable priorities for promoting and sustaining community engagement, resilience, and educational change initiatives. The collaborative and iterative refinement of these conjectures reflects the beneficial potential of adaptive and inclusive methodology, ensuring responsiveness to local (i.e., northern BC) needs, global imperatives, and rapid change.

CETE’s results both reinforce and extend prior research. Its focus on community resilience and agency echoes earlier calls for transformative sustainability learning that engages the “head, hands, and heart” [4]. Additionally, the Wheel model aligns with Krasny et al. [16], where the author emphasized connecting climate concepts to learners’ lived experiences, while the project’s attention to climate anxiety supports Bright and Eames’s finding [72] that emotions can motivate meaningful action. Likewise, CETE’s integration of Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEKW) builds on Turner et al. [42] and more recent work (Earthday.org [43]) that highlight the role of Indigenous wisdom in resilience and self-sufficiency. Finally, its critique of curricular gaps parallels Wynne’s and Nicholas’ study [28], who documented weaknesses in Canadian climate science education. Together, these comparisons and synergies show how CETE has contributed practical tools and frameworks that enrich and contextualize ongoing research, particularly by addressing the unique challenges of northern and rural settings.

CETE has also provided a robust conceptual framework through the Wheel model and graph (Figure 2), a versatile strategy designed to integrate climate change education into the professional training of teachers and their practice. The Wheel serves as a dynamic visual and pedagogical tool that illustrates the interconnected dimensions of climate change education, including cognitive, emotional, social, and ethical components. It encourages educators to adopt a holistic approach, weaving together knowledge, skills, attitudes, and actions to foster both individual and community resilience in locally relevant ways. By accommodating diverse entry points and emphasizing the iterative nature of learning, the Wheel can empower teachers and learners everywhere to situate individual experiences within global environmental change and to adapt climate change education to the unique needs of their classrooms and local contexts. These results reinforce earlier work that highlights the importance of contextualized and adaptive approaches to climate change education. For example, UNESCO’s guidance on “greening curriculum” stresses the need for flexible, locally responsive pedagogies [47], while Sipos et al. [4] argue that transformative sustainability learning must connect with learners’ lived experiences through cognitive, affective, and practical dimensions. By echoing these insights, CETE’s Wheel model demonstrates how complex global imperatives can be translated into meaningful, classroom-level practice. As described above, the Wheel model lends itself to diverse projects that involve the contextualization of experiential knowledge with academic disciplines or subjects. That versatility supports the potential of the CETE project as a blueprint for diverse projects on education toward sustainability.

Its potential as a blueprint suggests that CETE’s contributions extend beyond its immediate context of coping with the exigencies of climate change. The project’s emphasis on lived experiences, exemplified through tools like the Wheel model and through strategic questioning of the Why, What, and How of education, highlights innovative strategies for bridging abstract scientific knowledge with tangible, localized engagement. Through EDBR and conjecture mapping, innovative educational projects develop according to changing priorities, as documented in Appendix A. Those strategies offer a replicable framework for educators seeking to contextualize global environmental change in diverse learning environments, reinforcing the necessity of tailoring sustainability education to community-specific realities. Its blueprint potential means that the approaches taken by the CETE project toward curriculum and pedagogies for climate change education, as described in this paper, can support the efforts of educators who share the Why justifications listed above, regardless of their geographical locations and local imperatives.

While these results emphasize the agency of educators and the adaptability of tools like the Wheel model, it is also essential to recognize that educational administrators and community leaders may not always view climate change and sustainability issues as immediate priorities, given competing institutional and systemic demands. Positioning sustainability initiatives in relation to broader school and community goals, such as student success, well-being, and long-term resilience, can help situate this work as complementary rather than additional. Engaging administrators and leaders early in the design process can help build ownership and ensure that climate change and sustainability education are better aligned with existing educational mandates, thereby strengthening the long-term impact of initiatives like CETE.

5. Conclusions

Looking ahead, the CETE project provides a model for integrating urgent, equitable, and ecologically grounded approaches into teacher education. By continuing to refine its strategies in collaboration with regional and national partners, CETE aims to expand its influence and contribute to a broader movement for sustainable educational reform. Future directions may explore deeper engagements with demographic changes, with the evolving socio-political landscape, and the interplay of human and ecological imperatives—including iteratively revisiting and rethinking the Why, What, and How of climate change education—and ensuring that learners in northern communities and beyond are equipped with realistic hopes, actionable priorities, and the resilience to face an uncertain future. CETE aims to continue its intervention work with pre-service and in-service teachers, to reach out to communities in the region, and to share its progress through future publications.

The potential of the CETE’s approach to work as a blueprint for the development of innovative educational initiatives toward sustainability indicates the existence of future applicability at a more general level. The transition of regions and communities to a secure and sustainable future will require a diverse armamentarium of innovative and creative ideas and approaches. CETE’s commitment to collaboration, inclusivity, and adaptability offers a compelling model for initiatives in sustainability education worldwide. As the climate crisis and global change intensify, projects like CETE demonstrate the transformative potential of education to empower individuals and communities, not merely to survive but to thrive in the face of adversity. In this spirit, CETE invites ongoing dialogue and partnership to advance the shared mission of nurturing sustainable futures through education.

Finally, CETE’s work has clear resonance with the European Green Competences Framework (GreenComp), which identifies core sustainability competences such as systems thinking, values-driven action, and fostering collective agency [83]. CETE’s emphasis on High-Level Conjectures, the Wheel model, and the integration of Indigenous knowledge and emotional learning aligns closely with GreenComp’s dimensions of embodied sustainability competences. By situating localized climate education in northern BC within a competence-based framework, CETE contributes insights that can inform not only Canadian teacher education but also international efforts to strengthen sustainability competencies across diverse educational systems.