GeoCapabilities Approach to Climate Change Education: Developing an Epistemic Model for Geographical Thinking

Figures & data

Figure 1. The preliminary epistemic model for thinking about climate change geographically (source: the authors).

Table 1. Understanding climate change from different geographical perspectives.

Geographical perspectives	Understanding human-environmental relationship (sample views on climate change)
Natural scientific perspective	Both physical and human elements are regarded as objects that can be observed and measured by scientific methods, aiding in problem-solving. (e.g., mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gases)
Humanistic perspective	Focusing on individual experience and human subjectivity—how people attach their own meanings to the environment. (e.g., reflecting on the human condition and values based on responses to climate change)
Social scientific perspective	Focusing on social justice issues from the standpoint of different individuals, groups, and societies, especially in terms of different identities based on socio-economic background, gender, race, age, and body abilities, to name a few, in their relationship with the environment. (e.g., criticizing social justice issues among different people in climate policymaking)
Posthuman perspective	Challenging the separation between humans and the environment; engaging with the materiality and agency of non-human entities; tracing relations in the environment network. (e.g., seeing climate change as a hybrid and more-than-climate assemblage where humans and non-humans are mutually implicated in, constitutive of, and vulnerable to climate change; extending care to more-than-human strangers, such as multispecies, in cataclysmic times; adapting and learning to be affected by an unruly planet)

Table 2. Interviewees’ ideas on geographical thinking about climate change, colored based on authors’ analysis (blue: natural scientific perspective; green: humanistic perspective; red: social scientific perspective; yellow: posthuman perspective).

Themes	Codes
Factual phenomena, data, and events related to climate change	Atmospheric changes (global distribution of rising temperatures and CO2) (P1, P4, P6)
	Changing landscapes and natural disasters related to climate change (e.g., melting glaciers and rising sea level) (P4, P5, P7, P9)
	Vulnerable people (climate refugee / immigrants) because of climate change (P1, P9)
	It is difficult to reach agreements about climate change among different countries based on intergovernmental negotiations (P1, P2, P6)
Explanation of the processes of climate change	Explaining the physical processes of climate change, i.e., increasing levels of greenhouse gas pollution, by learning about physical geography, meteorology, earth system science, and climatology (P1, P2, P3, P4, P6, P7, P9)
	Explaining the social processes underpinning climate justice issues, e.g., different historical responsibilities, political conflicts, and economic relationships among different countries (P1, P2, P3, P4, P6, P7, P8, P9)
	Providing the political economic reasons (capitalism) for climate change (P3)
Relevant geography concepts for understanding climate change	Human-environmental (nature-society) relationship / interactions (P1, P3, P4, P5, P6, P8, P9)
	Place (P1, P3, P6, P7, P8)
	Space (P1, P5, P8)
	Scale (local and global) (P3, P5)
	Time and development / change (P5, P9)
Solutions and values for reacting to climate change	Pay attention to local, indigenous, minority, or ethnic knowledge and experiences with climate change (P3, P7)
	Promoting survival knowledge to react to possible disasters in local areas (P9)
	Addressing climate change requires global collaboration (P1)
	Providing hope that individual agency can make a difference in dealing with climate change (P1, P2, P5)
	Foregrounding the role of individual moral actions and behaviors in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., food and transportation choices) (P2, P5)
	Showing care and empathy for the surrounding environment, knowing how other species change and adapt to climate change (P2, P3, P9)
	Discerning the differences between fact, fiction, and opinions about climate change (P3, P6, P7)
	Becoming aware of the social justice issues underlying climate change, e.g., responsibilities and vulnerabilities of various countries (P1, P2)