The IPCC ranks the Nile Delta among the most vulnerable in the world; climate change threatens urban areas in Egypt where over 40% of Egyptians live, including Nile Delta cities, due to sea level rises resulting from global warming (Schilling et al., 2020). Further, around 5.3 million children are exposed to heatwaves in Egypt, with girls suffering the most from the negative impacts on health and education (UNICEF, 2022). There are significant learning disparities between poorer and richer students in Egypt (Department for Education, 2016); Abd El-Salam et al. (2022) found that young teenagers from poorer socio-economic levels had less environmental knowledge than their more affluent peers. Despite this, research found that 69% of adult Egyptians had not heard of ‘climate change’ and two-thirds did not know its causes (Baseera, 2022). Earlier work identified that only 32% thought that global warming was a very serious problem (Pew Research Center, 2007). Public understanding around climate change does not, therefore, align with negative impacts in Egypt. Furthermore, ongoing political instability in Egypt lowers trust in social and political institutions which might negatively influence climate risk perception (Wachinger et al., 2013). This research foregrounds the fact that young children living in Nile Delta cities will face the worst aspects of climate change destruction. By capturing and amplifying their perspectives, policy-makers and educators might better be able to develop climate change and sustainability education (CCSE) which empowers children with the knowledge, understanding and skills to engage proactively with the climate and environmental challenges they are facing.

The most recent Education Sector Plan for Egypt 2023-2027 emphasises:

“Education plays a key role in realizing the country core goals of sustainable development, social justice, and sustained growth … moving from rote-learning to competency-based learning, preventing discrimination against women, addressing the challenges of globalization, citizenship, climate change, and creating stronger alignment with the pursuit of SDG4” (Ministry of Education and Technical Education, 2022, p.21).

The Plan calls for quality and equity in primary-schooling, by integrating climate education into all school curricula at primary level (ibid, 2022). As such, policymakers appear to recognise the importance of high quality CCSE. However, to date there has been no research in primary-schools in Egypt which would allow them to evaluate the needs and responses of either the children or their teachers.

Greer and Glackin set out six qualities of a meaningful CCSE (2021), arguing that quality education should: offer and be open to alternatives; embrace complexity; develop ecological worldviews; re-orient towards justice; incorporate multiple types of knowledge and skills; and finally it should recognise and support students as agents of change, repositioning students from recipients of information to recognising them as participants in society’s response to climate change and collaborators in society’s transformation. Therefore, the development of CCSE should engage with young people’s perspectives and experience in meaningful ways.

With this in mind, the overarching aim of this work is to capture the voices of girls in particular, about their experiences, beliefs and feelings regarding climate change, sustainability and CCSE, as well as their sense of empowerment in relation to coping with and addressing the issues themselves. We focus on the voices of young girls particularly because girls’ education has crucial potential for avoiding destructive impacts of climate change (Kwauk, 2021). The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement promoted gender equality and empowerment of women as integral to environmental directives; however, in a patriarchal hierarchy that frames Egyptian society, what girls want, need and feel in order to be empowered has traditionally been absent on the research agenda. 

The overarching research question of this project is: What are the experiences, perspectives and aspirations of under-privileged urban girls in Egypt and their teachers regarding CCSE? Research sub-questions: 1. How do girls and their teachers, if at all, express anxiety, fear, hope or optimism in relation to CCSE? 2. In which ways do girls and their teachers feel that their voices have been included or excluded in CCSE in Egypt? 3. How well do girls perceive the current CCSE curriculum, textbooks and pedagogy to be effective in empowering them to grasp and act on climate change and sustainability and what do they see as future needs to enable empowerment? Our constructivist research design used the following methods: 1. Nationwide questionnaire of 738 primary school teachers. The questionnaire, administered online, asked teachers about: their feelings about threats of climate change and sustainability; their experiences of CCSE in school; their perceptions of how CCSE is received by students in school; and their views on how CCSE might better empower girls to cope with and address climate change. 2. Questionnaire with 501 girls in Grades 5/6 in five primary schools in underprivileged areas in Alexandria, Egypt. The questionnaire, administered in small groups, asked girls about: their feelings about climate change; their experiences of CCSE; and their perspectives of what successful CCSE might look like. It used sentence starters and drawing activities to support girls to feel at ease and express thoughts in multiple ways. This is particularly important in a context where girls are rarely asked for their opinions and so can be reluctant to give them. 3. Face to face focus groups with 30 primary school teachers of girls, from five different schools, to discuss and reflect on preliminary analysis from questionnaires with teachers and girls. 4. Individual interviews with 24 girls to further explore themes arising from preliminary analysis from questionnaires with girls. We used non-probability, convenience sampling, including working with Al Azhar schools who serve the least privileged in society. This project followed BERA (2024) and BSA (2017) ethical guidelines. Data analysis was undertaken for quantitative data using descriptive and inferential statistics. All qualitative data were translated, transcribed and coded using thematic content analysis. Thematic analysis drew upon both inductive (revealing common themes as emerging from the data and their prevalence) and deductive (considering whether/how existing themes are present within the data) approaches.

Data collected took place in Autumn 2024 with analysis ongoing, allowing us to present full results at ECER in September. The data brings together a rich data-set on primary school girls’ experiences and perceptions of CCSE in Egypt, particularly with regard to their experience of the formal curriculum, alongside their teachers’ perspectives. Preliminary analysis of the 738 questionnaire responses from teachers shows respondents were teachers of predominantly English (34%), Social Studies (24%) and Science (81%). The majority teach girls and boys (96%) in Governmental schools (69%). 75% of teachers identified as being female, with a range of teaching experience from 0-5 years (16%) to 20 years or more (43%). The majority (73%) had heard the term climate change being used in relation to the world, but only 18% in relation to Egypt. Few had taught CCSE in relation to either the world (10%) or Egypt (9%), and few had received any training to support them to do so (10% for CC and 9% for sustainability). Despite this, 80% strongly agreed or agreed that they feel confident to answer girls’ questions about CCSE in relation to their subjects. This reflects more confidence than conveyed by teachers in a similar survey in England (Greer et al., 2023). The presented paper will highlight key findings pertinent to young learners’ experiences and sense of empowerment and their suggestions for improving these through classroom practice in particular. In addition, it will draw out implications for teachers, textbook writers and policy makers for promoting an empowering climate change education in the language classroom. This will focus on Egypt but extend beyond the Egyptian context to highlight learning for formal education systems in other countries.

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