UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education

Our centre

Director: Professor Nicola Walshe

The importance of teacher development in the area of climate change and sustainability education is hard to overstate. This is the defining existential challenge of our time and the world that schoolchildren will encounter as adults will look different from our world today.

We aim to provide research-informed professional development for teachers and school leaders across all phases, subjects and career stages.

Focus

Teaching young people about climate change and sustainability must include but also go beyond the science of climate change and develop knowledge and values to help them to adapt to a changing world and to embrace the opportunities that more sustainable lifestyles might offer.

Teachers also need to know how to support young people with associated health and wellbeing concerns, including increasing levels of eco-anxiety. These are issues that need to be embedded across the school curriculum, but we know that many teachers lack confidence in this area.

We will work across faculties at UCL to ensure that this professional development is not only informed by our own research into current practice in schools but also by recent academic research to ensure that all our materials are up-to-date.

Image at the top: panadda via Adobe Stock.