Content uploaded by Maria Ojala
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Maria Ojala on Aug 15, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
41Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 21, 2016
Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education: From
Therapeutic Practice to Hopeful Transgressive Learning
Maria Ojala, Örebro University, Sweden
Abstract
This article discusses the need for critical emotional awareness in environmental
and sustainability education that aspires to result in transgressive learning and
transformation. The focus is on the emotions of anxiety/worry and hope, and their
role in climate change education. By disrupting unsustainable norms and habits,
hope for another way of being could be evoked, but transgressive learning can
also trigger anxiety due to the undecided nature of the future and the gravity of
the climate problem. The objective is, on the one hand, to point to the importance
of critical awareness of these emotions and the need to disrupt unsustainable
emotion regulation strategies when aiming for transformation, and, on the other,
to provide suggestions for including these dimensions in climate change education.
Résumé
L’article traite de l’importance de la conscience émotionnelle critique dans
l’éducation à l’environnement et au développement durable lorsque l’enseignement
vise à provoquer un changement et un apprentissage transformationnel. L’accent
est mis sur les sentiments d’anxiété/inquiétude et d’espoir et sur leur rôle dans
la sensibilisation aux changements climatiques. Lorsque l’on ébranle les normes
et les habitudes non viables, il peut être salutaire d’évoquer l’espoir de trouver
d’autres façons de faire. Toutefois, l’apprentissage transformationnel peut
également être source d’anxiété, vu l’avenir incertain et la gravité de la situation
climatique. L’objectif est, d’une part, de souligner l’importance d’acquérir une
conscience critique des émotions et de se débarrasser des stratégies de régulation
émotionnelle non viables si l’on veut occasionner une transformation et, d’autre
part, de suggérer des façons d’inclure ces différentes notions à la sensibilisation
aux changements climatiques.
Keywords: critical pedagogy, emotion regulation, hope, subjectification, transfor-
mative learning
Today many researchers focusing on environmental and sustainability educa-
tion argue that since humanity is faced with very severe and complex sustain-
ability challenges on a global scale, such as loss of biodiversity and climate
change, there is a great need for pedagogical innovations (Johnston, 2009; Lotz-
Sisitka, Wals, Kronlid, & McGarry, 2015; Sterling, 2004; Wals, 2007). There is
a need to learn more than how to do things we do today in a better way; we
42 Maria Ojala
need a paradigm shift toward transformative learning aimed at critical aware-
ness and changing unsustainable norms, habits, and structures (see Wals, 2010).
In this regard, Lotz-Sisitka and colleagues criticize the focus on resilience and
adaption that is quite common when discussing sustainability issues, and main-
tain instead that we should aim for more transgressive learning and disruptive
capacity building in order to deal with this pedagogical challenge (Lotz-Sisitka
et al., 2015). In their article, some potential transgressive pedagogies for the
environmental and sustainability education field are presented.
In this article I take my starting point in the above-mentioned accounts of
environmental and sustainability education; however, though I am sympathetic to
them, I will argue that transformative and transgressive learning in this field also
could benefit from including emotional aspects, not only of a phenomenological
kind as Lotz-Sisitka and colleagues (2015) suggest, but also of a critical kind. The
objective is to show that if aiming for transgressive learning and transformation, it
is not enough to disrupt unsustainable cognition/thinking, norms, and practices;
there is also a need to include critical emotional awareness and to disrupt
unsustainable emotion-regulation patterns. I concentrate on the two interrelated
emotions of anxiety/worry and hope and their role in climate change education.
The objective is, on the one hand, through theoretical argumentation and by
referring to different empirical studies, to show the importance of being aware
of these emotions and related emotion regulation strategies when aiming for
transgressive climate change education, and, on the other hand, to give some
suggestions as to how these emotional aspects and a critical awareness of them
can be included in climate change education.
This article is divided into seven sections, including this introduction. In
the second section, transformative and transgressive learning are introduced
and related to the environmental and sustainability education and climate
change education fields. In the third section, I maintain that there is a need
for educators to be aware that anxiety/worry is often evoked when they teach
students about climate change. The potential positive role of these emotions is
discussed at the same time as it is argued that they can be hard to face and that
students can cope in more or less constructive ways with them. This leads to the
fourth section, where it is pointed out that teachers need to be aware that they
influence their students’ emotion regulation strategies at the same time as larger
societal processes, or emotion-governing strategies, also have an influence on
both students’ and teachers’ ways of coping. This coping, in turn, could have
an effect on learning and environmental engagement. In the fifth section, it is
maintained that we therefore need to include critical awareness of emotional
aspects in climate change education, but we have to be careful not to end up in
a kind of therapeutic education or education that borders on indoctrination. In
the sixth section, I argue for the need to focus on a critical hope that is based
in an acknowledgement of the negative, a positive view of preferable futures,
the possibility of societal change, and that is related to concrete pathways
43Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
toward this preferable future. Here, the concept of meaning-focused coping is
introduced. In the final section the main points of the paper are summarized
and some more concrete suggestions are presented regarding how educators
can include these dimensions in environmental and sustainability education/
climate change education
Transformative and Transgressive Learning
Biesta (2013) argues that, besides focusing on knowledge and socialization, one
important goal of education is to concern itself with a subjectification process in
which the focus is on the emancipation of students from predetermined ways
of thinking and being and the responsibility that follows with it. One pedagogi-
cal model that deals with subjectification processes is transformative learning
(Mezirow, 1978). Mezirow, who formulated this theory, claimed that through
critical reflection and a procedure of “perspective transformation,” students can
change their ways of thinking about themselves as well as their basic value
systems and also alter their lifestyles in a way that is productive both for them-
selves and for society. Taylor (1998) elaborated this theory and pointed out that
transformative learning is not only cognitive but also social. In the field of en-
vironmental and sustainability education, Wals (2007, 2010) has picked up this
way of thinking, arguing for the importance of transformative social learning
where a communicative process, which ideally should include a diverse set of
actors, can help the actors involved to (a) critically examine their own values,
habits, and norms (deconstruction), (b) listen to what others have to say (con-
frontation), and (c) co-construct new viewpoints, values, and action repertoires
(reconstruction). Thus, challenging learners with alternative ways of interpreting
their experiences is an important part of transformative social learning, and
the aim is to break with unsustainable habits and practices and create new, and
more sustainable, ways of thinking and being (Wals, 2007, 2010).
Lotz-Sisitka and colleagues (2015) go one step further and claim that it is
important to aim at developing disruptive and transgressive, or even disobedient,
competences if we are going to succeed in dealing with sustainability challenges
such as global climate change. One of the first who used the term “transgressive
learning” was hooks (1994), who argued that critical thinking and theory need
to be anchored in practice to gain transformative power. In accordance with
this way of thinking, in the broader educational literature transgressive learning
is often about learning through practice (see Barnett, 2004; Biesta, 2013,
hooks, 1994; Leonard, 2004; Saarnivaara, Ellis, & Kinnunen, 2012). People can
transgress, or disrupt, deeply held and taken-for-granted norms, norms that are
at the roots of oppression and unsustainability, by acting in surprising, creative,
and boundary-crossing ways. By examining the inconsistency between these
material practices and pre-existing beliefs, people learn that a different way
of being is possible (Concepción & Thorson Eflin, 2009). Here there is a close
44 Maria Ojala
relation to theories about prefigurative politics that claims that critique is not
enough to disrupt unsustainable systems and create more sustainable futures;
one must also act and experimentally actualize one’s political ideals in the here
and now (Amsler, 2015; Kagan & Burton, 2000; North, 2011). As North (2011,
p. 1592) states it in relation to climate change, in prefigurative politics people
are “embodying ‘the change they want to see’, showing through their personal
actions what is possible… and thereby inviting curiosity from others who might
well make the same changes.” Transformation thus takes place through the
power of example, through prefiguring more sustainable futures.
Regardless of whether learning and transformation take place through criti-
cal thinking and dialogue or through transgressive action, one can argue that
this process also includes emotional components (see Ojala, 2013). Educators
and researchers who work with transgressive learning outside the domain of en-
vironmental and sustainability education point out that the persons included in
the learning process often find it quite unsettling and anxiety-provoking (Amsler,
2015; hooks, 1994; Saarnivaara et al., 2012). Concerning transformative social
learning, Wals (2007, 2010) has argued, although he does not explicitly point out
that this is an emotional phenomenon, that dissonance is an important part of
the learning process and that educators need to take this into account. Still, criti-
cal emotional awareness could be seen as a vital complement to these educa-
tional approaches, especially if they are applied to the deeply anxiety-provoking
problem of climate change.
Climate Change Education and Anxiety/Worry
Besides acknowledging that transformation, disruption, and transgression can
lead to feelings of unease and anxiety, educators aiming at transformative cli-
mate change education need to be aware that this problem in itself is related
to emotions of worry and anxiety.1 Empirical studies show that the most com-
mon emotion evoked by this problem is worry (Connell, Fien, Lee, Sykes, &
Yencken, 1999; Klöckner, Beisenkamp, & Hallman, 2010; Strife, 2012; Taber &
Taylor, 2009). Quite often, this is a worry that is mixed with feelings of guilt and/
or hopelessness (Mead et al., 2012; Ojala, 2007). The reason that climate change
is so anxiety-provoking may be because this problem touches upon the sources
that the well-known existentialist Tillich saw as the root of existential anxiety (Til-
lich, 1952/2000). Tillich maintained that nonbeing, the root of existential anxiety,
threatens the whole individual: the ontic part (anxiety about physical death), the
moral part (anxiety about guilt and condemnation), and the spiritual part (anxi-
ety about meaninglessness, loss of ultimate concern). Climate change is a threat
to the future survival of humanity (the ontic part), it is related to moral questions
about whether it is right to live the way we do in the Western world (the moral
part), and raises questions whether there is any point in being an active citizen
at all due to the seriousness and complexity of this problem (the spiritual part).
45Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
What effect, then, does worry/anxiety have on learning—is it a positive or
negative force? Often, worry about societal problems is perceived as something
only negative; worry distracts people from what is important, makes people
resistant to outside information that could shake them out of their habits, and
traps people in self-absorption that promotes self-interest, thereby paralyzing
social change (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000). Some claim that it is worry/
fear/anxiety that makes people subject themselves to neoliberal ways of coping
with social problems through self-government (Isin, 2010). Because of worry/
anxiety, people are unable to distinguish the structural grounding of social prob-
lems and are therefore more easily swayed to take individualized responsibility
in a way that will not lead to any real change.
In contrast to the more theoretical claims presented above, empirical stud-
ies as well as newer theories of emotions have identified anxiety and worry
as necessary preconditions for social deliberation and critical thinking (Brader,
2006; Marcus et al., 2000; Marcus, MacKuen, & Russell Neuman, 2011; Valen-
tino, Hutchings, Banks, & Davis, 2008). Anxiety keeps people from doing what
they are doing at the moment, activates the cognitive system, and makes peo-
ple more focused on the outside world and more reflective, thereby motivating
people to think critically (see also Ojala, 2013). In accordance with these studies
in political psychology, climate change research has found that climate worry
is related to an inclination to search for more information about the problem
(Yang & Kahlor, 2012; Verplanken & Roy, 2013). Besides its role in motivating
deliberation, one could argue that worry is a rational response to important
values that are threatened by climate change and thereby, if it is verbalized in
learning situations, could help people do something realistic about the prob-
lem (Ojala, 2013; Verplanken & Roy, 2013). Thus, worry/anxiety could be a first
step towards breaking with unsustainable habits and practices or in becoming
politically active in the climate change movement. Indeed, Zembylas (2013)
even claims that “a pedagogy of discomfort” is both unavoidable and necessary
if a major purpose of education is to unsettle and disrupt and that emotional
aspects therefore need to be taken into account (see also Amsler, 2011, 2015).
Still one should not be psychologically naïve: worry/anxiety, unease, and
dissonance are hard to face and bear, and whether or not they will help or over-
turn transformative learning may have to do with how these emotions are coped
with and regulated at an individual level and in social processes (Ojala, 2013).
As Wals (2007, 2010) reasons, dissonance is vital for transformative learning
concerning environmental and sustainability issues, but too much dissonance
could be devastating, so the educator needs to be aware of people’s comfort
zones when it comes to dissonance. This indicates that how educators react to
emotional displays by their students could influence students’ coping and hence
the learning process (see also Ojala, 2015). Thus, one could ask: should learning
about emotions and emotion regulation be a specific part of education that aims
at transformative and transgressive learning?
46 Maria Ojala
The Importance of Emotional Awareness in Environmental and
Sustainability Education
How then could a critical focus on emotions and emotion regulation become
a part of transformative learning toward sustainability? First, it needs to be ac-
knowledged that today it is quite common in different Western countries to
include “emotional competence” as a part of the curriculum in order to en-
hance young people’s well-being (see Amsler, 2011). This “therapeutic” turn in
education has been criticized by, for instance, Ecclestone and Hayes (2008),
who argue that the one-sided focus on “well-being” and “adaptation” to societal
demands in these educational models is a way to undercut social criticism and
instead turn the young into obedient consumers without the capacity to see the
“real” grounding of their unhappiness. Thus it is a tool to govern and steer young
people and to keep them in their place. This thinking is in accordance with ideas
that the sociologist Bauman has put forward that people today find it hard to face
moral emotions in relation to societal problems and to do something construc-
tive with their moral pain because of a neoliberal society that only allows people
to feel positive and pleasurable emotions that can most easily be increased
through consumption (Bauman & Donskis, 2013). In this way people become
insensitive to societal problems, and social change becomes much more difficult
to achieve. In addition, Ahmed (2008) has argued that the “good” feeling of hap-
piness is used as a political tool to exclude certain bodies (that is, persons) due
to their association with “unhappy” feelings, an association that is made due to
their simply being different or their questioning certain norms (see also Yoon,
2005). Empirical studies also show that in regard to climate change people often
cope with this threat by distancing themselves from negative emotions of worry
and despair (Norgaard, 2011; Ojala, 2012; Olausson, 2011).
Another way the neoliberal society steers and governs emotions is to priva-
tize hope, to put forward the notion that larger structures are impossible to
change, and that the only way people can contribute to society is to act at an
individual level, which could easily breed a sense of impotence as people realize
that private-sphere behaviour is not enough, yet are unable to find any alterna-
tive (Amsler, 2015; Thompson & Zizek, 2013). Concerning climate change stud-
ies have found that young people who acknowledge the problem and are willing
to take action are inclined to cope in an individualized way, that is, they focus on
isolated individual actions in everyday life (Ojala, 2012). Paradoxically, this can
lead to both a feeling of empowerment that “there are things I can do” (Taber
& Taylor, 2009) and a feeling that this is not enough, leading to frustration and
hopelessness (Connell et al., 1999; Mead et al., 2012).
The regulation of emotions also takes place in social interaction in the
classroom, or in other learning situations in more informal settings, and here
teachers and educators play an important role (Kristjansson, 2000). According
to Kristjansson, teachers are role models for their students when it comes to
47Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
emotions. Teachers could in their turn be influenced both by larger cultural and
discursive rules about what emotions are appropriate to express in a classroom
setting and in relation to issues such as climate change, but also by more per-
sonal meta-emotion philosophies. When it comes to educating younger children
about more mundane interpersonal issues, empirical studies show that teach-
ers more or less consciously create emotional norms or emotional rules in the
classroom (Cekaite, 2013). For instance, they indicate the right way to regulate
emotions, what emotions are appropriate to express, and whose emotions are
worth taking seriously and whose are not. Zembylas, Charalambous, and Ch-
aralambous (2014) have studied pedagogical strategies with which emotions
are schooled when educating students about larger societal issues, and they
describe emotional rules as “the official or unofficial; explicit or implicit rules
that regulate and guide emotional expression in specific situations…These rules
classify certain emotions as ‘legitimate’ or ‘appropriate’ and others as ‘illegiti-
mate’ or ‘inappropriate’” (p. 71). In relation to environmental and sustainability
education, a study on senior high school students demonstrates that students
who perceived their teachers as not taking seriously their negative emotions
concerning societal problems, and who felt that their teachers perhaps would
even make fun of them if they expressed their emotions in the classroom, were
more inclined to de-emphasize the seriousness of climate change than students
who felt that their teachers respected and validated their emotions (Ojala, 2015).
Thus, there seems to be a relation between the emotional rules that teachers
enforce and individual coping strategies that young people use in relation to the
climate problem. Since individual coping strategies have different impacts on
activity or not concerning this issue, emotional awareness becomes even more
important in environmental and sustainability education.
Beyond Therapeutic Education
What has been described above implies that there is a need to focus on
emotional aspects if aiming at transformative learning in environmental and
sustainability education. However, one must be careful not to fall into the trap
of therapeutic education, or education that borders on indoctrination (see
Öhman & Östman, 2008). Amsler (2011) points out some differences between
a therapeutic pedagogy and a critical affective pedagogy: the former sees
negative emotions as individual shortcomings, focuses on cultivating the “right”
emotions in students, and lacks an awareness of power relations, while the latter
sees negative emotions as normal or even healthy responses to problems in
society, aims not at evoking the “right” emotions but to a critical understanding
of why one experiences certain emotions and desires and not others, as well as
pointing out alternatives, and has a critical awareness of how “power” steers
and governs people’s deepest desires and emotions, that is, sees emotions as
discursive practices.
48 Maria Ojala
In addition, practically oriented transgressive learning theories and prefigu-
rative politics, just like therapeutic education, can be criticized for not taking
into account the relation between truth and knowledge, on the one hand, and
power, on the other (Biesta, 2013; North, 2011). These theories seem to adhere
to certain thoughts in critical theory that have long been criticized, for instance,
believing that there is a “good and true human” deep inside that just needs
to be emancipated through critical awareness, transgressive actions, or by re-
connecting to the local or nature (see Amsler, 2011). Biesta (2013), with the help
of Foucault, argues that educationalists working with subjectification processes
need to acknowledge that there is no truth or knowledge that is separated from
power. Transformation is possible, but we can never free ourselves from power;
we merely work within different power/knowledge constellations. Hence, trans-
gression means the practical confrontation of different power/knowledge con-
stellations in order to show that things do not have to be the way they currently
are (Biesta, 2013). Biesta (2013) argues that it is about the pluralization of truth,
not demystification or speaking truth to power. This does not mean, however,
that in an ethical sense all “truths” are equally good. Thus, there is a need to be
mindful and critical of the new power relations that are created through trans-
gressive education. In addition, I argue that this implies that transformative and
transgressive learning in the environmental and sustainability education field
always has to be related to ethical discussions and to humble self-criticism.
Complementing what has been pointed out above, I maintain that it also
needs to be recognized that emotions are not only discursive but also bodily
and psychological phenomena. The bodily part of emotions has been accepted
in recent years by more researchers in the “critical emotion field” (see Ahmed,
2008; Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015; Zembylas, 2013), but the psychological part is still
dismissed. Instead it is often explicitly mentioned that emotions are not personal
or psychological (see Ahmed, 2008; Yoon, 2005). I claim, on the contrary, that
the very reason why emotions are so tempting to use as “governing tools” is
precisely that they are a mixture of these three dimensions. Emotions reveal
the dialectic relation between the conceptual/discursive and the material/bodily
as experienced by concrete individuals. The psychological part has a great deal
to do with identity or the self as an existential and social phenomenon, that is,
something that brings order and meaning to a person’s life, gives a person self-
esteem, shields against the knowledge of one’s own mortality, and so on (see
Myers, Abell, Kolstad, & Sani, 2010). When education in some way threatens or
disrupts these fundamental social-psychological and existential aspects, it will
evoke strong emotions and also attempts to defend against this knowledge. For
instance, according to Kahan (2013), people in such situations are often inclined
to use a form of motivated reasoning; i.e., they take in information that sup-
ports their values and social identity while denying or ignoring information that
threatens their social identity and the self-esteem attained by belonging to a
certain group. In this regard, Amsler (2015) points out that therapeutic education
49Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
actually has some benefits, as it is more psychologically realistic concerning hu-
mans’ need to cope and defend against identity threatening and thereby anxiety-
provoking information. This implies that there is a psychological and existential
need for positive emotions, and perhaps especially hope, in transgressive learn-
ing. The question is then whether this hope can be something more than a
comfort; that is, whether it can also help people confront their worry about, for
instance, climate change, and do something about it.
The Need for Hope in Transgressive Learning
Much of what has been described in this paper thus far implies that transforma-
tive and transgressive learning use different pedagogical approaches to show
that a different world is possible. Claims that nothing is certain, that the mate-
rial world is in constant change, and that the future is undecided, are not only a
seed of anxiety/worry but also the seed for a sense of hope (see Amsler, 2015;
Thompson, 2013). Thus, hope and disruption are not each other’s opposite:
hope, according to some critical theorists, requires a disruption of the stubborn
neoliberal worldview that we live in the best of societies, a society that further-
more has no alternative and thereby cannot be changed (Daly, 2013).
The psychological and existential part of hope is often said to be about cop-
ing with problems (Lazarus, 1991). Without a “sense of lack” there is no need
for hope. Thompson (2013) and Daly (2013) refer to Bloch’s view of hope as
starting in a “material hunger,” in a realization that something is missing, which
leads to a desire and subsequently to hope. Thus, it is a realization of the “nega-
tive” that gives rise to hope: hope is not happiness and pure optimism; hope is
what gives us strength in the face of difficulty, “it is a light against the darkness”
(Thompson, 2013, p. 10). Zimmerman (2013, p. 246) points out that Bloch saw
that the persistent presence of existential anxiety makes it necessary to develop
a strategy in order to “accept, endure, resist, and withstand it,” that is, “the point
is to learn hope.” In the same manner, Freire (1992, p. 8) perceives hope as an
ontological must: “We need critical hope the way a fish needs unpolluted water.”
In psychology hope is often seen as a cognitive-emotional concept in which
positive views of the future, or visions of preferable futures, are seen as being
within reach (Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2001). Hope is both about future-ori-
ented thoughts about positive expectations and related positive feelings about
the future. Hope is closely related to worry, as both emotions are connected with
uncertainty: “to hope for something is also to fear that this something will not
come true” (Fredlund, 2005, p. 342).
But for hope to become something more than a therapeutic practice or a
consolation, Burton (1983) argues that one must both create images of what is
possible and look realistically at the limits of our current society (see also Freire,
1992). According to Amsler (2015), knowing that there are alternatives out there
50 Maria Ojala
is a prerequisite but not sufficient for critical hope; we also need to develop
paths and infrastructure for learning for a changed society. In the same way,
the best known theory in psychology about hope emphasizes both the need for
concrete and realistic pathways to preferred futures and working with agency in
order for hope to motivate constructive action (Snyder et al., 2001). Educated
hope, according to Bloch, is what can be reached through reflection, but fore-
most through acting in the material world so that one’s hope could eventually
become reality (see Zimmerman, 2013).
Often the emotional part of the hope concept is seen as a motivational force
in itself (Snyder et al., 2001). But in relation to global environmental problems,
Ojala (2007, 2008) has argued and shown through empirical studies with young
people that it is rather the dialectical relation between hope and worry that mo-
tivates pro-environmental actions. Here, the concept of meaning-focused coping
is of interest (Folkman, 2008; Park & Folkman, 1997). In the broader coping
literature, this is about coping with difficult situations not by eliminating nega-
tive emotions, but by evoking positive emotions, such as constructive hope, that
can give people the strength to confront and do something about the problem at
hand. This way of thinking is inspired by Frankl (1988), who in his work showed
that a sense of meaning can help people bear and confront hardships in life. In
relation to climate change, Ojala (2012) identified different meaning-focused
strategies. Of special interest is positive reappraisal, or cognitive restructuring,
which is about perceiving the problem but being able to switch one’s perspective
and also see more positive aspects, thereby activating hope. This can be seen
as a continuous process where a feeling of worry evoked by the problem re-
quires hope, and where hope, in turn, through the uncertainty connected to this
concept, evokes more worry that requires hope, and so on. This process seems
to drive engagement (Ojala, 2007, 2008). Still, this is a demanding way of hop-
ing. Another common complementary meaning-focused strategy that evokes
hope in relation to climate change is trust (Ojala, 2007, 2012): trust in one’s
own capability (agency), trust in other societal actors doing their part (which is
necessary if we are going to be able to manage climate change), and a kind of
existential trust in humanity. Here, it is interesting to notice that, in relation to
transformative social learning in the environmental and sustainability education
field, Wals (2007, 2010) argues for the importance of both gestalt-switching (a
kind of cognitive restructuring) and social coherence (a kind of trust) for this
pedagogical approach to work optimally.
Practical Implications and Conclusion
How then can educators work more concretely with the thoughts presented
above? In this section I will give some suggestions, although the intention is not
to be authoritative since the ideas presented in the paper need to be embedded
51Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
in concrete educational settings with an awareness of the uniqueness of that
specific situation. The suggestions are aimed foremost at senior high school
teachers but can, to a certain extent, also be used by educators working with
both younger and older age groups.
First, educators should not shy away from the enormous problems that hu-
manity is facing in relation to climate change and the related negative emotions.
In this regard, it is important to give space and time to formulate one’s worries
in words so that important concerns and values that lie behind this worry can be
brought to the surface and critically discussed (Ojala, 2013). We need to discuss
negative and pessimistic visions in a more profound way, as these contain both
hope and hopelessness (see Nordensvard, 2014). Hence, to face the negative is
a starting point for constructive hope.
Second, to evoke hope it is important to show that things can change, that
we are aiming for a future that is undecided (see Thompson, 2013). This can be
done by disrupting taken-for-granted thinking, norms, and habits, for instance
through critical discussions in heterogeneous groups, or by using art, literature,
and drama. But this can also be done by inviting into the classroom different
societal actors that transgress unsustainable norms in diverse ways. They could
be people who are active in environmental and climate change organizations,
but also for instance, politicians, civil servants, or business people who care
about these issues, and work to combat climate change despite the inherent
complexity of this problem. They thereby can disrupt the rather common view
among young people that adults do not really care and the cynicism related to
this outlook. To encourage students to do something outside the classroom that
breaks with an unsustainable habit or norm, alone or together, and then discuss
in the classroom the reactions and feeling evoked, could be another way to
practice transgressive learning.
Third, educators should be aware that students can come to grips with the
emotions evoked by both the focus on the negative and the disruption that occurs
through transgressive learning in more or less constructive ways. Furthermore,
these ways of coping are influenced by larger social processes. These emotional
aspects need to be dealt with educationally in a way that helps students, and
teachers, dare to go through transformation and confront “the beautiful risk of
education” (see Biesta, 2013). There is a need to critically discuss for instance
what emotions are allowed in climate change education. Whose emotions are
taken seriously and whose are not? Why do certain groups of students mainly
feel ashamed while others grow angry? If we to a large extent distance ourselves
from negative emotions, are there any other ways of coping with these emo-
tions? In this regard, different meaning-focused strategies could be discussed.
Fourth, to evoke hope it is important to also discuss future dimensions in the
classroom (Hicks, 2014). Thus, climate change educators should allow time and
space to consider probable, preferable, and possible futures. For instance, when
imagining the personal, the local, and the global futures X years from now, what
52 Maria Ojala
are the probable scenarios in relation to climate change? It is also important to
work with visions of preferable futures. In discussing how these futures ought to
look, it is vital to acknowledge that people will not necessarily agree about what
a preferable future should be (see Hicks, 2014). Thus, one needs to discuss ethi-
cal and normative issues about what constitutes a fair and just society.
Finally, to promote constructive hope there is also a need to compare the
“probable” with the “preferable” and come up with materially grounded and
realistic “possible” futures. In this regard it is important to discuss concrete
pathways (both societal and individual) to this possible future and to promote
agency, so that young people can take part actively in these pathways (Snyder
et al., 2001). “Unrealistic hope” could backfire and lead to disengagement and
cynicism. Therefore, it is important to combine utopian and critical perspectives
and “create images of what could be possible while exploring and documenting
the actual limits imposed by the current system” (Burton, 1983, p. 67).
To conclude, in this article I have argued that when applying transformative
and transgressive forms of education in the environmental and sustainability
education field, and more specifically in climate change education, there is also
a need to include critical emotional awareness. By rupturing the order of things,
by disrupting and transgressing, you also evoke negative emotions of worry, for
instance. These feelings could be constructive forces in the learning process;
however, educators should not dismiss the fact that they are also very hard to
confront and deal with and therefore can be coped with in more or less con-
structive ways. By realizing this, a whole new network of power relations opens
up for scrutiny. It is not enough to critically examine unsustainable thinking,
norms, and practices; one also needs to be aware of unsustainable ways of
dealing with emotions and of how “power” governs even what seem to be our
most private feelings and emotions. But in order to be able to face the worry
and the dissonance evoked by these pedagogical models, I have also claimed
that there is a need to include hope, a hope that is both (a) a positive feeling, a
light in the darkness, or rather a light that illuminates the darkness and gives
people the strength to face the problems that are at the heart of our globalized
society, and (b) a concrete activity grounded in visions of preferable futures and
well-deliberated pathways to reach these futures.
Notes
1 Worry is about cognitive ruminations concerning uncertain future negative
events, accompanied by an anxiety-like negative affect (MacLeod, Williams,
& Bekerian, 1991). Worry is a negative emotion related more to uncertainty
than fear is and is also related more to cognitive aspects than anxiety is. These
concepts are, however, often used interchangeably in studies about emotional
reactions to societal issues.
53Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by The Swedish Research Council Formas under
Grant 2010-1152 to the author.
Notes on Contributor
Maria Ojala, Associate Professor in psychology, works as a senior lecturer at
Örebro University, Sweden. Her main research interests are: environmental edu-
cation, environmental psychology, political socialization, and emotion theories.
Contact: maria.ojala@oru.se
References
Ahmed, S. (2008). The politics of good feeling. ACRAWSA e-journal, 4(1), 1-18.
Amsler, S. (2011). From ‘therapeutic’ to political education: The centrality of affective sensibility
in critical pedagogy. Critical Studies in Education, 52(1), 47-63.
Amsler, S. (2015). The education of radical democracy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Barnett, R. (2004). Learning for an unknown future. Higher Education Research and Development,
23(3), 247–260.
Bauman, Z,, & Donskis, L. (2013). Moral blindness: The loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2013). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Brader, T. (2006). Campaigning for hearts and minds. How emotional appeals in political ads
work. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Burton, M. (1983). Understanding mental health services: Theory and practice. Critical Social
Policy, 7, 54-74.
Cekaite, A. (2013). Socializing emotionally and morally appropriate peer group conduct
through classroom discourse. Linguistics and Education, 24(4), 511-522.
Connell, S., Fien, J., Lee, J., Sykes, H., & Yencken, D. (1999). "If it doesn’t directly affect you,
you don´t think about it": A qualitative study of young people’s environmental attitudes
in two Australian cities. Environmental Education Research, 5(1), 95-114.
Concepción, D. W., & Thorson Eflin, J. (2009). Enabling change transformative and transgres-
sive learning in feminist ethics and epistemology. Teaching Philosophy, 32(2), 177-198.
Daly, F. (2013). The zero-point: Encountering the dark emptiness of nothingness. In P.
Thompson & S. Zizek (Eds.), The privatization of hope: Ernst Bloch and the future of utopia
(pp. 164-202). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ecclestone, K., & Hayes, D. (2008). The dangerous rise of therapeutic education. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Folkman, S. (2008). The case for positive emotions in the stress process. Anxiety, Stress &
Coping: An International Journal, 21(1), 3-14.
Frankl, V. (1988). The will to meaning: Foundations and applications of logotherapy. New York,
NY: Plume Books.
54 Maria Ojala
Fredlund, A. P. (2005). Commentary to "Can hope have reasons." In A. Carlson (Ed.),
Philosophical aspects on emotions (pp. 341-346). Stockholm, Sweden: Thales.
Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogy of hope. New York, NY: Continuum.
Hicks, D. (2014). Educating for hope in troubled times. Climate change and the transition to a
post-carbon future. London, UK: Trentham Books.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Isin, E. F. (2010). The neurotic citizen. Citizenship Studies, 8(3), 217-235.
Johnston, J. (2009). Transformative environmental education: Stepping outside the curriculum
box. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 14, 149-157.
Kagan, C., & Burton, M. (2000). Prefigurative action research: An alternative basis for critical
psychology? Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 2, 1-15.
Kahan, D. (2013). Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection. Judgment and
Decision Making, 8(4), 407-424.
Klöckner, C. A., Beisenkamp, A., & Hallmann, S. (2010). Klimawandel aus der Sicht 9-14
jähriger Kinder Emotionen, Bewältigungsressourcen und allgemeines Wohlbefinden.
Umweltpsychologie, 14(2), 121-142.
Kristjansson, K. (2000). The didactics of emotion education. Analytic Teaching, 21(1), 5-15.
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Leonard, A. (2004). Service learning as a transgressive pedagogy: A must for today’s genera-
tion. CrossCurrents, 54(2), 61-73.
Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A. E. J., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, G. (2015). Transformative, transgressive
social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dys-
function. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 16, 73-80.
MacLeod, A. K., Williams, J. M. G., & Bekerian, D. A. (1991). Worry is reasonable: The role of
explanations in pessimism about future personal events. Journal of Abnormal Psychology,
100, 478-486.
Marcus, G. E., MacKuen, M. B., & Russell Neuman, W. (2011). Parsimony and complexity: De-
veloping and testing theories of affective intelligence. Political Psychology, 32(2), 323–336.
Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., & MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective intelligence and political judge-
ment. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Mead, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Rimal, R. N., Flora, J. A., Maibach, E. W., & Leiserowitz, A. (2012).
Information seeking about global climate change among adolescents: The role of risk
perceptions, efficacy beliefs and parental influences. Atlantic Journal of Communication,
20(1), 31–52.
Mezirow, J. (1978). Perspective transformation. Adult Education, 28(2), 100-110.
Myers, D., Abell, J., Kolstad, A., & Sani, F. (2010). Social psychology: European Edition. London,
UK: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Nordensvard, J. (2014). Dystopia and disutopia: Hope and hopelessness in German pupils’
future narratives. Journal of Educational Change, 15, 443–465.
Norgaard, K. M. (2011). Living in denial: Climate change, emotions, and everyday life. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
North, P. (2011). The politics of climate activism in the UK: A social movement analysis. Envi-
ronment and Planning A, 43, 1581-1598.
55Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education
Öhman, J., & Östman, L. (2008). Clarifying the ethical tendency in education for sustainable
development practice: A Wittgenstein-inspired approach. Canadian Journal of Environ-
mental Education, 13(1), 57-72.
Ojala, M. (2007). Confronting macrosocial worries: Worry about environmental problems and
proactive coping among a group of young volunteers. Futures, 39(6), 729-745.
Ojala, M. (2008). Recycling and ambivalence: Quantitative and qualitative analyses of house-
hold recycling among young adults. Environment and Behavior, 40(6), 777-797.
Ojala, M. (2012). Regulating worry, promoting hope: How do children, adolescents, and young
adults cope with climate change? International Journal of Environmental and Science
Education, 7(4), 537-561.
Ojala, M. (2013). Emotional awareness: On the importance of including emotional aspects in
education for sustainable development (ESD). Journal of Education for Sustainable Devel-
opment, 7(2), 162-182.
Ojala, M. (2015). Hope in the face of climate change: Associations with environmental
engagement and student perceptions of teachers’ emotion communication style and
future orientation. Journal of Environmental Education, 46(3), 133-148.
Olausson, U. (2011). “We’re the ones to blame”: Citizens’ representations of climate change
and the role of the media. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture,
5(3), 281-299.
Park, C. L., & Folkman, S. (1997). Meaning in the context of stress and coping. Review of
General Psychology, 1(2), 115-144.
Saarnivaara, M., Ellis, C. S., & Kinnunen, H-M. (2012). Transgressive learning: A possible vista
in higher education. Communication Faculty Publications. Paper 283.
Snyder, C. R., Rand, K. L., & Sigmon, D. R. (2001). Hope theory: A member of the positive
psychology family. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology
(pp. 257-275). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Sterling, S. (2004). Higher education, sustainability, and the role of systemic learning. In
P. B. Corcoran & A. E. J. Wals (Eds.), Higher education and the challenge of sustainability:
Problematics, promise and practice (pp. 47-70). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Press.
Strife. J. S. (2012). Children’s environmental concerns: Expressing ecophobia. The Journal of
Environmental Education, 43(1), 37-54.
Taber, F. & Taylor, N. (2009). Climate of concern: A search for effective strategies for teaching
children about global warming. International Journal of Environmental & Science Educa-
tion, 4(2), 97-116.
Taylor, E. W. (1998). Transformative learning: A critical review (Information Series No. 374).
Retrived from http://www.eric.ed.gov
Thompson, P. (2013). Introduction: The privatization of hope and the crisis of negation. In
P. Thompson & S. Zizek (Eds.), The privatization of hope: Ernst Bloch and the future of
utopia (pp. 1-20). London, UK: Duke University Press.
Thompson, P., & Zizek, S. (2013). The privatization of hope: Ernst Bloch and the future of utopia.
London, UK: Duke University Press.
Tillich, P. (1952/2000). The courage to be. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
56 Maria Ojala
Valentino, N. A., Hutchings, V. L., Banks, A.J., & Davis, A. K. (2008). Is a worried citizen a good
citizen? Emotions, political information seeking, and learning via the Internet. Political
Psychology, 29(2), 247-273.
Verplanken, B., & Roy, D. (2013). “My worries are rational, climate change is not.” Habitual
ecological worrying is an adaptive response. PLoS One, 8(9), 1-6.
Wals, A. E. J. (2007). Learning in a changing world and changing in a learning world: Reflex-
ively fumbling towards sustainability. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education,
22, 35-45.
Wals, A. E. J. (2010). Mirroring, gestaltswitshing and transformative learning: Stepping stones
for developing sustainability competence. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher
Education, 29, 380-390.
Yang, Z. J., & Kahlor, L. (2012). What, me worry? The role of affect in information seeking and
avoidance. Science Communication, 35(2), 189-212.
Yoon, K. H. (2005). Affecting the transformative intellectual: Questioning “noble” sentiments
in critical pedagogy and composition. JAC: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture & Politics, 25(4),
717–759.
Zembylas, M. (2013). Critical pedagogy and emotion: Working through "troubled knowledge"
in posttraumatic contexts. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2),176-189.
Zembylas, M., Charalambous, C., & Charalambous, P. (2014). The schooling of emotion and
memory: Analyzing emotional styles in the context of a teacher’s pedagogical practices.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 44, 69-80.
Zimmerman, R. E. (2013). Transforming utopian into metopian systems: Bloch’s principle of
hope revisited. In P. Thompson & S. Zizek (Eds.), The privatization of hope: Ernst Bloch and
the future of utopia (pp. 246-268). London, UK: Duke University Press.
