The pilot project reported on in this paper is part of a larger aim: to transform English literary education insettler collonial contexts to foreground climate and racial justice as part of its core curriculum. Climate change has been identified as the major crisis facing the world, and a foremost issue for young people. Addressing the climate crisis in education requires new approaches that reflect the urgency and scope and scale of the situation and prepares young people to lead decisions regarding justice-focused, sustainable futures. The Reading Climate Pilot Project explored the way that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literary narratives provide new perspectives on interactions with Country, climate change, allowing readers engagement with Indigenous knowledges and perspectives for the justice-oriented citizenry of the future. There is an urgent need for this research: while Indigenous writers’ contribution to understandings of climate are well documented and awarded, and the power of story to impact on understandings of significant environmental, social and cultural issues is well established, Aboriginal writing remains significantly underrepresented in Australia’s curricula, particularly in

subject English.

This project prioritizes Indigenous stories and interdisciplinary collaboration in

English, cross-curricular knowledge sharing, developing teaching resources in English secondary

settings, and interdisciplinary and international collaboration. The project was undertaken as a collaboration between the Literary Education Lab (members: Sandra Phillips; Sarah E. Truman, Clare Archer Lean, Melitta Hogarth and Larissa McLean Davies) with the Stella Prize for the literature or women and non-binary writers, and Indigenous authors and scholars.

Research questions were:

1. How do English teachers engage with Indigenous ways of knowing and understanding Country to imagine sustainable climate futures?

2. What new knowledge about climate justice in English education can be developed

through interdisciplinary collaboration between Indigenous writers and texts, and the

environmental humanities and climate science?

3. What real-world applications of new knowledge about the intersections of climate fiction, Indigenous knowledges, racial justice and climate science have for the field of sustainability education?

    Theoretical framework:  The project’s conceptual approach draws on three key ideas: Indigenous relationality, literary sociability, and literary linking. First, Indigenous relationality enables thought that connects all living things (Graham 2014; Harrison et al 2017). We are not only shaped by biology but also through our story-telling activities: the stories we tell ourselves have material effects on who we become (Heiss 2015; Clarke 2016). A climate justice citizenry requires the capacity to comprehend the complex relations between human and nonhuman species and Country. Indigenous fiction establishes a corpus of narrative ready for critical classroom engagement to develop this capacity. This argument resonates with English curricula accounts of the promise of literature for building good moral character and citizenship (Atherton 2005), but also prioritises feminist concerns over whose stories are prioritised, whose stories are listened to (Hogarth 2019; Truman 2019). By changing the repertoire of stories and reading practices we can change cultural understandings and futures: this is a pressing concern in an era of ongoing resource inequalities, environmental racism, and climate disasters (Yusoff 2018). Second, the study also draws on an understanding that pedagogical literary study is sociable and relational (Phillips & Archer-Lean 2019). Third, this project activates a new transdisciplinary method called literary linking (McLean Davies et al 2021). Literary linking is informed by principles of relationality and co-design, where research participants and researchers work together to develop shared understandings. It is underpinned by a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration as a necessary component for making sense of pressing social, environmental, and cultural concerns, including climate change.  

In conversation with English’s said aims, the project’s purpose was to advance the decolonisation of English through cross-country book clubs focused on Indigenous climate fiction, a collaborative symposium with Indigenous authors, interdisciplinary experts, and secondary English teachers enabling the development of new disciplinary collaboration, and teaching resources and knowledge mobilisation across English and humanities education. Participants were selected through the Stella Prize networks, and existing researcher networks. Cohort diversity in teaching experience and contexts was considered a priority in participant selection. After assessing the expressions of interest, a total of 120 teachers from across Australia were invited to participate. Each email invitation included information about the Reading Climate project and what we were inviting participants to do: read Australian Aboriginal literary texts and participate in a book group online for 2 sessions (one hour each; and complete a survey following the book groups. Teachers submitted a confirmation of their intention to be involved with the project along with a signed consent form. We received 44 signed consent forms from teachers and established three reading groups that each me twice. Reading group sessions were held in November 2022 (1 hour each session x 6 sessions). All teachers received ebooks and reading information for each session. Reading Groups were audio recorded and transcribed for later thematic analysis. Data sources, evidence, objects or materials This is an interdisciplinary project, with the research team spanning English education, literary studies and publishing studies. As such the data is perceived as the literary works themselves; the initial EOI from participants, outlining their motivation for wanting to join the book club; recordings of the sessions, which were audio recorded and transcribed for later thematic analysis, and the post book club questionnaire undertaken by participants. All data sources will be utilised in the paper presentation

Some data analysis from the Reading Climate Pilot Project showed differences in teachers’ motivation for joining the seminars, for some it was to remediate a lack of understanding and engagement with Indigenous texts. Even through Australian writing more broadly, and Indigenous Australian writing have been prioritised in curriculum terms since 2007, several settler teachers expressed their own personal appreciation of Indigenous writing, yet they also articulated a fear of including Indigenous texts in their classrooms and ‘getting it wrong’ or ‘causing offence’. There are many resources for the teaching of Indigenous texts in English in Australia, however some teachers’ concerns could not be addressed by these, as they were more at the levels of ontology and epistemology rather than materials. This finding was in concert with other research (McLean Davies et al, 2023), which showed that English teachers own knowledge and perspectives profoundly shaped students’ experiences of and approach to set texts. A reluctance and fear of making a cultural mistake, evident in the feedback from some participants, was countered by others, who, working schools with high Aboriginal populations were interested in ‘decentring’ English through Indigenous texts, and had begun this political work. Accordingly the project team discerned to different pedagogical models for understanding the ‘logic of Indigenous texts in English’, one traditionally extractionist, and the other moving toward ‘disciplining and regenerating English in the context of climate justice and sustainability.

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