In this paper, we address students' emotions in existential situations in climate change education (CCE) and present empirical research on how different didactic approaches affect experiencing, expressing and reflecting on these emotions and, by extension, learning about the existential challenge of climate change (CC).

Indeed, several studies highlight that CC can lead to existential experiences and associated emotions. For example, Bergdahl & Langmann (p. 407, 2022) state that "climate change is closely linked to the existential fear of losing something valuable and irreplaceable - here: planet earth as our only home - which generates feelings of worry, helplessness and hopelessness in both adults and children”.  At the same time, several scholars have pointed out that we need to pay attention to these existential experiences and related emotions in climate education or to provide “an educational space and time for youth to confront and begin to deal with their own existential worries and concerns' (Todd, 2020: 1112) and “that emotions and existential questions must be taken into account, and when education about climate change proceeds, the educators must be sensitive to that which arises” (Pihkala, 2018, p. 560). Previous research (Verlie, 2019; Pihkala, 2018) provides insight into the emotions that climate change can evoke as well as into different approaches for educators to deal with these emotions (Ojala, 2016; Verlie, 2021). These approaches have been found to differ in the way they can either align more with a therapeutic pedagogy or with a critical affective pedagogy (Amsler, 2011). However, there is little or no research that focuses on developing detailed, precise didactic knowledge about how emotions in existential situations relate to the didactic work of the teacher nor how this didactic work affects students’ learning in relation to the existential challenge of climate change. It is precisely this kind of knowledge creation that this paper aims to contribute to. We do so by analysing a Master's course in English literature at a Belgian university, where the teacher deliberately sought to address the existential challenge of CC, while at the same time being very aware of the emotions that might arise among the students.

With this research, we are particularly interested in uncovering and understanding how different didactic approaches influence experiencing, expressing and reflecting on emotions and through this learning regarding the existential challenge of climate change. Thus, we gain further insight into how teachers can deal ethically and pedagogically with emotions in the context of CCE and how we can better understand the risks and opportunities of emotions emerging in the CCE classroom. 

The theoretical framework underpinning our study is transactional didactic theory (Östman et al. 2019, a, b) based on the pragmatist work of John Dewey. This theory understands learning as being incited by a 'problematic situation', for instance through encountering existential anxiety or dilemmas, or alternative perspectives on what life is, what it means to live, and how to live well that one has never considered before. This triggers an 'inquiry' that can result in new knowledge, skills, values and beliefs. The transactional theory of teaching, then, focuses on how teachers' actions in, both, the preparation and implementation of lessons affect the encounters that take place and what students learn from them. This is grasped in terms of the scripting of purposes and roles, the staging of a learning environment (objects of attention and activities), and the performance of interventions that help to guide students' learning.

The empirical data consisted of teaching materials, 100 forum posts of students, 6 transcripts of video/audio-recorded observations of lessons, 38 student assignments, and two semi-structured interviews with the involved teacher of our case-study. In our first analytical step, we selected from the original data all existential expressions, more specifically: “profound questions and choices about what life is and what really matters in life - both our personal lives and human existence in general - that may involve threats, fears and incompatible values” (Vandenplas et al. 2023, p. 1733). We then selected only these expressions in which students expressed or described affect or emotions. Our second step consisted of Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA) in order to reveal students’ meaning-making regarding the existential challenge of CC. PEA is designed to study how learning takes shape through individual-environment transactions and allows for a detailed analysis of how perspectives on the existential challenge of CC are (trans)formed ‘in action’. PEA starts from the transactional understanding of learning as the creation of relations between what stands fast for a person – e.g. previously acquired knowledge, ideas, beliefs – and the new situation they encounter. Every time a person encounters a new situation there is a gap. If one manages to bridge the gap by creating a relation to what stands fast, one has learned something. By analysing the created relations, we can investigate the content of what is learned. Analysing the encounters reveals how the learning was made possible. We employ PEA for analysing transcripts of observed conversations, forumposts and assignments. As a final step, we conducted a dramaturgical analysis of the teacher’s scripting, staging, and performance (teacher moves) (Van Poeck et al. 2023). In this way, we investigated the impact of the teacher’s didactic work on the creation of specific encounters and thus how specific existential situations could arise in which students uttered emotions in relation to the existential challenge of CC could come about. As explained above we also analysed in detail how the teacher’s actions influenced the students’ learning in the performance as shown by the created relations between a gap and what stand fast. By analysing the didactic work of scripting, staging, and performance we gain insight into how a specific approach influence existential situations in which emotions where uttered and learning in relation to the existential challenge of climate change.

By conceptualising, describing and empirically illustrating the impact of the teacher's didactic work on students' emotions and learning, we contribute to the much-needed detailed and empirically based understanding of how to deal with the existential dimension of CC and the emotions involved. We therefore analysed the teachers’ work in an English literature master course in which the students read each week fiction combined with non-fiction texts. Our analyses showed how the teacher created a well-suited learning environment for both experiencing, expressing and reflecting on emotions and through this learning about the existential challenge of CC. Therefore well-considered choices in the design of the course were made, namely: (1) offering a spectrum of literary appearances that make the existential challenge of CC and different scenarios for the future concrete and experienceable, (2) offering theoretical concepts about the emotional experience as an analytical framework for their own emotions, and (3) providing a forum for emotions as a starting point for critical reflection. Through this didactic work, the teacher encourages the students to pay close attention to the concreteness of the existential challenge of CC and different scenarios for the future and to reflect extensively about the emotional experiences this entails before proceeding to deliberate (i.e. take and defend a position) about their own place in the universe and what they consider most important in life. As such, we describe the teachers’ work creating a space where students learn about the existential challenge of climate change fuelled by the emotional experience of living in times of climate change. This sheds new light on how to seize the educational opportunities involved, while avoiding potentially devastating effects on students' wellbeing, in the face of serious and far-reaching sustainability issues such as CC in the classroom (Todd 2020; Pihkala 2018; Garrison et al. 2015).

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