Climate action and sustainability for schooling in Egypt (CLASS)

This project provides policy-relevant evidence from girls and their teachers in underprivileged urban primary schools in Egypt.

Illustration of school children in a classroom with wooden desks. Credit Lucy Hunt

The project runs from July 2024 to December 2025 and is funded by the British Academy.

Background
Aims
Methodology
Team
Related links

Background

Egypt’s coastal and Nile Delta cities are among the most environmentally precarious in the world. Little research exists on Egyptians’ awareness of or understanding of taking climate action. Extant data suggests these need investigating.

Among the least consulted in the population are girls in primary school in disadvantaged areas of cities. They will bear the greatest brunt of potential climate disaster.

School children sitting in a classroom with wooden desks. Credit Eleanore Hargreaves for UCL with consent from Al Azhar schools

Aims

The overarching aims of this research are as follows:

To support policy-makers in Egypt to fulfil Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 of inclusive and equitable schooling.
To investigate national Climate Change and Sustainable Development (CCSD) textbooks and teaching. We will look at how this is experienced by girls and their teachers within the most disadvantaged urban primary schools.
Contribute to international research on children’s voices in CCSD education. With special reference to the Egypt/UK Partnership for Sustainable Cities.

We will work closely with key partners in Egypt, including Al Azhar Schools Network, and the British Council.

Through questionnaires, interviews and drawings, our research investigates voices of hundreds of girls. We will examine their sense of empowerment for climate action and how this can be boosted. Furthermore, we will survey hundreds of primary school teachers.

Our findings inform future policy on Sustainable Cities. We do so by contributing to national textbooks and materials for primary children. We will also potentially develop teachers in using these.

More specifically, we aim to elicit voices of primary school girls and their teachers. This will enhance their climate change empowerment.

We will consider their:

feelings and hopes about CCSD
reactions to existing CCSD textbooks and teaching, and
suggestions for future CCSD materials and teaching to enhance girls’ empowerment in relation to CCSD.

Two school children in a classroom in front of a yellow and brown wall. Credit Eleanore Hargreaves for UCL with consent from Al Azhar schools

Methodology

Our research will address the overarching research question: What evidence can we gain from the voices of Egypt's underprivileged urban girls and their teachers? We focus on their awareness of, and empowering responses to, CCSD issues in Egypt. Especially to national educational materials relating to CCSD.

We will achieve this through three question subsets:

Subset A: How do girls and their teachers express anxiety, fear, hope, or optimism about CCSD, considering the urgent nature of 2030 target in SDG 4?
Subset B: In which ways do participants feel that their voices have been included in the CCSD agenda in Egypt? For example, as demonstrated in their official textbooks.
Subset C: How well do they perceive the current CCSD curriculum, educational materials and pedagogy to be effective in empowering them to grasp and act on CCSD? Additionally, what do they see as future needs to enable empowerment?

To answer these, the project will carry out a mixed methods approach with four key methods:

Instrument 1: Building on a survey of teachers undertaken in England, we will undertake a questionnaire of 800 primary school teachers. They will be from at least 15 schools in the urban cities of Lower Egypt. This will explore teachers’ feelings about threats of CCSD. It will also examine their perceptions, experiences, and aspirations for CCSD education in schools.
Instrument 2: We will undertake a questionnaire with 500 girls. They will be in Grade 6 (ages 10–12) from underprivileged urban areas in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city. The questionnaire will consider girls’ emotional responses to climate change. It will also look at their experiences of CCSD textbooks and teaching. It will include open questions and drawings. We will administer it in person, question-by-question, to whole-class groups.
Instrument 3: We will undertake focus groups with 30 primary school teachers of girls. This will help us to further explore emergent themes from questionnaire data.
Instrument 4: We will undertake individual interviews with at least 18 girls. This includes girls from the most underprivileged homes (as advised by teachers). We will further explore their:
- understanding and experiences of CCSD in school
- creative ideas for improving lessons to be more empowering, and
- advice for textbook writers to enhance their learning potential.