Young people today have only ever known a world defined by climate and environmental crisis. Accordingly, studies show that young people are not only engaging with climate knowledge, but are having to navigate new emotional challenges (Hickman et al., 2021; Beaumont, 2021). Older generations therefore have a responsibility to support younger generations to navigate these ongoing climate issues. Many young people are already responding to these emotional challenges by ‘problem-focused coping’, such as trying to use their personal agency to contribute to actions which mitigate climate change (Ojala 2012).  As such, we critically need to foster opportunities for two-way relationships of learning which allow for older generations to learn from the experiences, perspectives, and knowledge of young people. Our paper therefore considers opportunities for intergenerational interaction through ‘reverse pedagogical relationships’, which reverses the typical teacher or parent/carer-led style of learning.  

The core aim of the study we present is to further develop the concept of reverse pedagogical relationship and to demonstrate its research value. Through doing so, we identify the strengths and challenges of reverse pedagogical relationship in contributing to transformational learning for climate change engagement. The objectives of this study are underpinned by the following two research questions: 1) How do young people perceive the opportunities and challenges of reverse pedagogical relationships? 2) How are the possibilities of reverse pedagogical relationships discursively constructed in young people's discourse in relation to climate agency? 

Drawing on data from focus groups (six groups of 27 students) with Finnish young people (aged 15-18) we examine their experiences and thoughts on reverse pedagogical relationships. Since power is manifested in the pedagogical relationship and reverse pedagogy challenges this balance of power, we analysed this through a Foucauldian discourse analysis. By this, we mean we followed in the footsteps of Heikkinen, Silvonen and Simola (1999) and Räisänen (2014) to analyse the data through examining dimensions of subjectivity, power and knowledge. Through presenting our results, we show how these three dimensions are at once distinct and intertwined with each other. 

The study we present is part of a larger project, called ‘Challenging the Climate Crisis: Children’s Agency to Tackle Policy Underpinned by Learning for Transformation’ (CCC-Catapult). This project examines young people’s experiences of and sense of agency in the climate crisis, with a particular focus on climate education and policy-making. As the project engages with a youth-focused co-productive process, the focus group questions for this study have been co-developed with 15–18-year-olds living in Tampere, as well as Bristol (UK) and Galway (Ireland).

As the aim of our research was to generate perspectives from a group of individuals with a shared connection, in this instance this being age and educational status (Herrman, 2017), we gathered data through conducting focus groups with groups of between three to six students between the ages of 15-18, in total 27 students. Our use of focus groups, which are broadly defined as 'an informal discussion among selected individuals about specific topics' (Becket al., 1986, p. 73), reflected our aim to encourage young people to speak honestly about their experiences around climate education and learning. Examples of the interview questions include: what is your role in informing older and/or younger generations on issues relating to climate change; what are your experiences of climate education in school; and, how do you think climate change education should be taught in the future? To encourage students to speak openly about their experiences, and feel comfortable informally engaging with one another, we sought to work with groups of students who have a previous connection with one another. We therefore recruited participants through working with schools across the Tampere region, who facilitated our access to classes of students. Most of the focus groups took place within school environments and one at their hobby’s environment. The focus groups were conducted in April 2022, and lasted between 30 to 55 minutes. Once the focus group was transcribed, we thematically analysed the data. In coding our research, we followed a ‘theoretical’ thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 84). This involves the researchers developing a set of pre-determined themes, and then coding the qualitative data accordingly. Our reason for coding in this way was thus twofold: firstly, the researcher’s close connection with the data, as the people who led the focus group sessions and transcribed the data, allowed for a relative degree of prior understanding about the themes present in the data; second, our interest was in very specific aspects of a much larger data set. Focusing in on pre-determined, particularly relevant themes enabled us to pinpoint specific knowledge contained within a much larger dataset. To assure ‘rigor and trustworthiness’ in the dataset (Nowell et al., 2017), the coded dataset was examined by multiple researchers.

We examined the data through Foucauldian discourse analysis and through dimensions of subjectivity, power and knowledge. On the subjectivity dimension our analysis revealed that young people have three ways of subjectivation. The first type wants to be obedient to their parents or educators, while the second type secretly resists the opinions of older generations. The third type one has more agency in their resistance: they place themselves into the role of the educator. On the power dimension we analysed how young people talk about their opportunities to educate their parents and educators. The first of the three types did not see a need for reverse pedagogy and the second type did not see possibilities for it. However, the third type saw the need and the possibilities as well. In the knowledge dimension we considered how they understood the epistemic authority in the pedagogical relationships. The first type saw the educator or parent as a gatekeeper of the knowledge. In addition to this belief, the second type considers that the youth is receiving new information. While they did not see this new information could question teachers’ or parents’ knowledge, the third type though this is exactly the reason why youth have the epistemic authority. Our findings reveal that, in light of the obstacles which traditionally hinder such a pedagogical relationship, there is a need to develop reverse pedagogy methods and consider what support both younger and older people require to engage in such relationships. Our paper argues that reverse pedagogical relationships are unparalleled for empowering young people; we show how this approach offers an opportunity to develop young people’s agency whilst not requiring them to be in adult dominated situations, thus supporting them to express their views and learn from one another as they live through a time of climate emergency.

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