Despite significant climate change learning outside of formal education sites, climate change education in post-secondary is still only emergent, particularly in education for teachers and other non-formal educators. Drawing on student coursework from three iterations of online graduate education courses, this paper leans on Anna Tsing and colleagues' insights about the "patchy" Anthropocene to examine how students' localized understanding of climate realities can be collectively woven into a broader understanding of the planetary condition, fostering pathways toward climate action through education. By translating place-based education into an asynchronous, online forum, graduate coursework networked students' grounded realities. Students participated in an extension of artist Xavier Cortada's Longitudinal Installation, where each of them storied both the geographic and temporal elements of their climate experiences as they relate to education, engaged affectively with the stories of others, and reflected on their across global/local scales toward climate action through education.
This paper validates a person-centered pedagogical framework for cultivating meaningful student engagement with climate change. The approach fosters alignment between the curriculum and students' personal interests and identities. Using design-based research in a 13-week undergraduate course, we developed and applied the ENDURE framework to analyze this alignment. The framework identifies productive connections where student interest is either 'natural' (pre-existing) or 'stimulated' (sparked by the curriculum). Our analysis revealed that a significant majority of students (21 of 29) achieved these strong forms of alignment. Beyond enhancing knowledge acquisition, this profound connection cultivated a sense of personal relevance and agency. Such person-centered strategies are vital for designing educational experiences that empower students for sustained, meaningful action on the climate crisis.
This article seeks to contribute to understanding how eco-social education in higher education affects how eco-social transitions are understood and problematized by higher education students. Despite recognizing the importance of current discussions on eco-social education, aimed at overcoming the focus on the formative function of higher education institutions through the introduction of active methodologies and the reformulation of university practices toward a transformative agenda, there are questions as to whether the current circumstances of eco-social education in the formative-curricular sphere provide an adequate scenario for these pragmatic approaches. For this purpose, this study takes the senior students at the University of the Basque Country as a case study, examining their perception of eco-social transitions using innovative methods such as the Grid Elaboration Method and automatic text analysis through the IRAMUTEQ program. We ask ourselves whether students' perceptions are consistent with a view of transitions that transcend hegemony or whether, on the contrary, they strengthen it. The study reveals that students value aspects related to the environment, technology, and gender issues. There is evidence of robust environmental awareness and an inclination toward adopting sustainable technologies. However, they see these principles and values more as abstract horizons than as integral components of transition processes. The diagnosis concludes that eco-social transition is perceived from a hegemonic and anthropocentric perspective, focused on economic growth and transformation driven by technological innovation. This diagnosis is of interest for further comparative studies that aim to reconsider the formative-curricular sphere in the field of environmental education at the university level. These findings engage directly with Climate Change Education (CCE) by identifying the curricular and pedagogical factors that enable values to be translated into practice on a larger scale. The study outlines the implications for the design of educational programmes and assessments in higher education, providing actionable evidence for the redesign of CCE curricula at university level.
