https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><em>Climate Literacy in Education</em> is a pocket journal publishing short, practical, teacher-oriented content on all aspects of climate literacy education at all grade levels and across all subject areas (primarily preK-16, but including teacher education and professional development).</span></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Call for submissions for Special Issue 4.4: Teaching Climate Change: A Call for Innovative Assessment Tools and Practices</strong></p> <p>In classrooms today, students are making sense of climate change as a complex, lived reality—one that invites understanding, reflection, and response. Educators across disciplines and grade levels are, in turn, increasingly committed to developing students’ climate literacy—their ability to understand climate systems, evaluate evidence, consider social and ethical dimensions, and engage thoughtfully in decision-making and action. In PreK–12 settings, teachers are developing powerful ways to engage students with climate-related topics through science investigations, climate literature studies, interdisciplinary projects, civic inquiry, and community-connected learning. Yet even as these instructional approaches continue to expand, questions about assessment remain open and pressing. The challenge now lies in designing evaluations of learning that reflect climate literacy not only as a body of scientific knowledge, but as a framework for critical thinking and social engagement across the entire curriculum.</p> <p>Traditional assessments of learning often privilege discrete content knowledge and decontextualized skills. Climate literacy, however, calls for a broader set of competencies, including the ability to evaluate evidence, reason across disciplines, consider social and ethical dimensions, navigate uncertainty, and imagine responses to complex, real-world challenges. How can assessment practices begin to address these aims? What kinds of tasks and evidence can capture students’ thinking, growth, and emerging sense of agency? Answering these questions requires a shift toward interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches—assessments that are not only responsive and context-sensitive but deeply aligned with the transformative goals of climate education.</p> <p>For this special issue of <a href="https://climateliteracy.umn.edu/what-we-do/climate-literacy-education"><em>Climate Literacy in Education</em></a>, we invite educators to reflect on a shared question:</p> <p><strong>What might a meaningful, fair, and useful assessment of climate literacy look like in PreK–12 classrooms?</strong></p> <p>We seek contributions that examine climate literacy assessment from multiple perspectives and educational contexts. Submissions may be conceptual, design-oriented, empirical, or reflective in nature. We are particularly interested in work that pushes beyond conventional testing formats and explores new ways of understanding and documenting evidence of student learning.</p> <p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Iudkseg16wjyXQoIh0dJyWtjRc3z5pW7/view?usp=sharing">Read the full CfP here</a>.</p> University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing en-US Climate Literacy in Education 2836-4546 https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle/article/view/6906 <p>This article describes a seven-step process for offering contemplative outdoor experiences for students. Contemplative outdoor engagements are those experiences and practices that ask humans to move slowly through nature to foster introspection, attention to details, and deep gratitude for our earth-kin. Contemplative outdoor engagements include practices like forest therapy, forest bathing, or mindful outdoor engagements, and they can be done individually or within group settings, guided or alone. We propose that these activities can support the development of climate literacy, which depends on providing students with opportunities to form meaningful connections with the more-than-human world.</p> Amanda Kingston Jessica Fundalinski Copyright (c) 2026 Amanda Kingston, Jessica Fundalinski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2026-03-19 2026-03-19 4 2 https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle/article/view/7122 <p class="Body">This essay examines Jan Brett’s <em>The Three Snow Bears</em> (2007) as a retelling of the Goldilocks tale set in the Arctic and enriched with Inuit cultural elements. Drawing on Brett’s visits to Iqaluit in the Canadian Arctic, the book uses detailed illustrations of polar landscapes, traditional clothing, and Inuit homes to immerse readers in a threatened ecosystem. The essay argues that Brett’s illustrations operate as visual texts that teach ecological interdependence, allowing the book to function as a tool for early climate literacy. By integrating cultural specificity, ecological awareness, and visual storytelling, Brett’s adaptation models how children’s literature can cultivate ecological empathy and foster interdisciplinary climate education.</p> Zahira Sánchez Madrero Copyright (c) 2026 Zahira Sánchez Madrero https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2026-03-19 2026-03-19 4 2 https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle/article/view/7342 <p>We argue that GenAI runs contrary to climate literacy, a stance that emerged after a period of experimenting with Large Language Models (LLMs). This article explores this position by presenting ethical questions around GenAI, ranging from light concerns to the darkest dilemmas of the climate emergency. We conclude by offering a three-step instructional framework based on shifting our approach from teaching with GenAI to teaching about it. The framework emphasizes investigating the presence of GenAI in our lives, raising awareness about GenAI’s environmental costs, and making something real (an essay, poem, infographic, skit, and so on) to convey ideas about climate justice. We close the article by providing a link to additional resources.</p> Mark Sulzer Macy Bruner Robert Cornwell Copyright (c) 2026 Mark Sulzer, Macy Bruner, Robert Cornwell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2026-03-19 2026-03-19 4 2 https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle/article/view/7210 <p class="Body">The topic of generative AI is inseparable from environmental ethics. Drawing on four mini-cases from our own experiences, we explore moments that prompted reflection on the environmental costs of generative AI. We highlight how those questions are entangled with additional concerns of student identity, teacher identity, stances toward technology, data privacy, professionalism, ideology, and creativity. Our purpose is to provide a narrative resource for readers to respond with their own connections and questions about environmental ethics in the era of generative AI.</p> Mark Sulzer Macy Bruner Robert Cornwell Copyright (c) 2026 Mark Sulzer, Macy Bruner, Robert Cornwell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2026-03-19 2026-03-19 4 2 https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle/article/view/7344 <p>I was lucky enough to be granted an interview with British playwright Flora Wilson Brown<a href="http://sarahguillory.com/">,</a> after seeing her climate change-themed play <em>The Beautiful Future Is Coming </em>at the Bristol Old Vic (UK) in Spring 2025. The conversation explores Flora’s thoughts on the role of drama in deepening climate literacy and the challenge of living happily in an uncertain age.</p> Ben Screech Copyright (c) 2026 Ben Screech https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2026-04-08 2026-04-08 4 2