Climate change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment (UNESCO, 2019). In today’s global society, it is an issue that must be tackled from a wide range of angles, including education. Educating our youth to lead more sustainable lifestyles and in harmony with nature are central pillars of the social and economic changes we must undergo in the upcoming years in order to not surpass the 1.5ºC increase in global temperature, as urged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2019).

The UN Tbilisi conference in 1977 was the first international conference focused on the interconnection of environmental issues and education (UNESCO, 1997). Since then, the 1992 UN Framework Convention, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement have highlighted the crucial role education plays in environmental challenges (Hargis and McKenzie, 2020). There has been an increase in public awareness towards the climate crisis and the relation between sustainability and education. This link has become crucial not only for scholars and international organisations, but other key actors such as the general public, governments and civil society organisations.

Climate change education (CCE) tends to be conceptualised within citizenship education, or rather global citizenship education (GCED). The multiple conceptualisations of “global citizens” tend to be based on Western ideals and neoliberalism (Jickling and Wals, 2008; Mannion et al., 2011; Ideland and Malmberg, 2014; Bengtsson and Östman, 2016). Therefore, experiences and perspectives from different contexts in the Global South are particularly relevant when dealing with CCE. It is vital to align education policies and practices with sustainability objectives that are relevant at the local level. This includes reorientating our teaching and learning methods to tackle the climate emergency. Nonetheless, there is little consensus about what CCE should look like, how it should be provided and how to adapt pedagogical practices to ensure its effectiveness (Reid, 2019).

In this context, I conducted a case study focusing on CCE at School No.294 in Jaureguiberry, Uruguay. The school is better known as “Escuela Sustentable” or “Sustainable School” and it is internationally renowned for being the first sustainable and self-sufficient public school in Latin America (IADB, 2020; Una Escuela Sustentable, 2021).

School No. 294 is located in Jaureguiberry, a small coastal town 70 km East of Montevideo. School No.294 has been internationally renowned for being the first sustainable and self-sufficient public school in Latin America (IADB, 2020; Una Escuela Sustentable, 2021). It was inaugurated in 2016 and has a pedagogical focus on CCE and sustainability (Una Escuela Sustentable, 2021). It is a rural school that hosts approximately 80 students from a lower-middle socioeconomic background. As with most rural schools in Uruguay, it is structured by a multi-grade system in which educators teach two or more grades simultaneously (ANEP-CEIP, 2013). The educational team consists of the Headteacher, two primary school teachers, one pre-school teacher and a school inspector. Moreover, they are supported by a Vegetable Garden Expert and volunteers from Tagma, the NGO that built the school.

Research aims and questions

The aim of this research is to investigate how actors within the school community have perceived and adopted the CCE policies and practices carried out in the school. The research questions were:

RQ1: How have the educational team, students and parents interpreted the climate change education policies of the school and how did they react to these policies in their own practice?

RQ2: What personal and contextual circumstances can explain the different interpretations and reactions to the climate change education policy among the school community?

This research is a case study and qualitative in nature. The methodological approach taken was constructivist, thus ‘exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem’ (Creswell and Cresswell, 2017, p.4). The research questions are broad and open-ended, and data offers a rich and complex description of a real life social phenomenon (Perkins et al., 2018). A qualitative research approach is suited to investigate education related to sustainability and climate change (Perkins et al., 2018). In this case study, data was collected through semi-structured online interviews and document analysis. It is worth noting that lesson observations were originally planned but had to be cancelled due to restrictions related to COVID-19. This case study emphasises the role of subjectivity and relies on verbal data and interpretation (Hammersley, 2013). The research questions are broad and open-ended, and data offers a rich and complex description of a real life social phenomenon (Perkins et al., 2018). Qualitative research approaches have been deemed well-suited to investigate sustainability and CCE due to its rich and complex nature and data (Perkins et al., 2018). In total, fourteen interviews were conducted. The main themes of the interviews were: 1) the school, 2) CCE practices at the school, and 3) sustainability and climate change. The total number of participants was N=17: six parents, five members of the educational team, two students, one national educational expert and three international CCE experts were interviewed. These last 4 experts were interviewed in order to contextualise the school within the education system and key academic concepts of CCE. The data collected through in-depth interviews was analysed through content analysis, by seeking patterns and looking for pathways and connections in the transcriptions (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The aim was to create a framework that helped answer the research questions. Furthermore, this research followed three ethical principles: no harm, voluntary consent and scientific integrity (Denscombe, 2012). This qualitative study can be framed as an empirical attempt to study a phenomenon that has several more variables than data points (Yin, 2018), and therefore its design, methods and data analysis are guided by theory (Yin, 2018). More specifically, this study aims at providing evidence to understand how the educational community perceives the CCE policies and practices present in the school and how they have reacted to them since the school project started in 2016.

The two main findings of this study are a Theory of Change and an analysis of enablers and barriers to Transformative Education for Sustainability. The Theory of Change depicts an ideal situation for the school in terms of inputs, activities, output, intermediate outcomes and final outcomes. “Transformative education for sustainability” can be defined as learning processes that transform how we comprehend the relationship between humans, nature and wellbeing (Laininen, 2019). One of its key objectives is to harmonise the natural environment with communities that lead sustainable lifestyles (Cook, 2019). Enablers and barriers to transformative education for sustainability were identified using Ball et al. (2011) policy enactment contexts: situated, professional, material and external. For instance, the professional contexts that have been identified as enablers are its active and place-based pedagogical practices (Chang and Pascua, 2017; Peñalba et al., 2012), its experienced and flexible staff and shared values regarding sustainability. Conversely, staffing practices have been a barrier to establishing a consolidated professional team, which has resulted in an uneven commitment to the project by members of the educational team. This has been detrimental for educational practices and has affected all members of the community. This qualitative study aimed at analysing how the community perceives an innovative climate change education project immersed in the public education system in Uruguay. The project has been received differently by actors in the community. This has been detrimental for the school project, which relies on active community participation. Moreover, enablers and barriers for the educational project have been identified. All in all, carrying out an innovative educational project in a public system which does not proactively support it has been challenging for educational project and community of School No.294 in Jaureguiberry, Uruguay.

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