Climate Smart: geography, place and climate change adaptation education

ABSTRACT

Geographical education provides a unique space for supporting climate literacy and action. In this article we present a novel place-based online educational resource platform – Climate Smart – which seeks to expand the capacity of young people to engage in one dimension of climate action: adaptation planning. The Climate Smart platform comprises a set of six online student workshops containing videos and quizzes and ends with a serious game: iAdapt. We outline the drivers and process behind the development of the platform, outlining the results of prototype testing and setting out how the platform is evolving. Positive results have been revealed through evaluative analysis and novel extensions of the platform are ongoing, although challenges remain regarding the longer-term sustainability of the platform.

Keywords:

• climate change
• adaptation
• education
• serious games
• place-based learning

Funding details and ethics approval

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 713567, and financial support from Science Foundation Ireland under Grants No. 21/DP/9560 and 22/DP/10421. The research project was approved with ref no: FSTEM_REC_14042023

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna R. Davies

Anna R. Davies is Professor of Geography

Stephan Hügel

Stephan Hügel is Research Fellow, both School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Alison Norman

Alison Norman is a Climate Adaptation Officer

Grainne Ryan

Grainne Ryan is Climate Action Manager, both Environmental Education Unit, An Taisce, Ireland.