{"id":14106,"date":"2026-08-13T10:02:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/?p=14106"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:02:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:02:41","slug":"climate-change-imagining-negotiating-and-co-creating-futures-with-children-and-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/2026\/08\/13\/climate-change-imagining-negotiating-and-co-creating-futures-with-children-and-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change: Imagining, Negotiating, and Co-Creating Futures with Children and Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Climate Change: Imagining, Negotiating, and Co-Creating Futures with Children and Youth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A summary of research by Ellen Field<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change will shape the lives of today\u2019s children and young people more profoundly than those of most adults making decisions today. Yet young people are often treated as passive recipients of education and policy rather than active participants in deciding what their futures should look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giving young people a voice in their future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellen Field\u2019s paper, Climate Change: Imagining, Negotiating, and Co-Creating Future(s) with Children and Youth<\/em>, argues that education needs to move beyond simply teaching children how they are expected to behave in response to environmental problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, children and young people should be able to participate in imagining, designing and creating responses to the environmental and social challenges affecting their communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reflects the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognises young people\u2019s right to have a say in decisions that affect them. With climate change likely to influence everything from food and housing to migration, health and employment, those rights become particularly important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving beyond education as behaviour change<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional approaches to sustainability education can be highly prescriptive. Adults identify a desired outcome and education is then used to encourage young people to adopt particular behaviours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Field argues that this model leaves little room for young people to decide what matters to them, question existing systems or develop their own solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is too complex and unpredictable for education to rely entirely on predetermined answers. Schools therefore need learning environments that encourage participation, experimentation, critical thinking and collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change as a learning opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than seeing uncertainty only as a problem, the paper suggests that climate change can create an important learning opportunity. Young people can explore what they value, consider different possible futures and then participate in making preferred futures possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means connecting education with real environmental, economic and social issues. Students can investigate problems in their communities, work with other people, develop ideas, test possible solutions and evaluate the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of being observers of change, students become participants in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two important shifts in education<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Field proposes two closely connected changes that could help schools become more responsive to the challenges of the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Community as curriculum<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is to make the local community part of the curriculum itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schools could work much more closely with councils, local organisations, businesses, families and community groups to identify local challenges and explore possible solutions. Students would participate in those discussions rather than simply studying the issues from a textbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One example discussed in the paper is New York\u2019s Lowline Project, where primary school students investigated the history and communities of Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side before developing ideas for how an underground park could be used. Students created three-dimensional models and presented their ideas to teachers, parents and community groups involved with the development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning of this kind combines academic knowledge with civic participation, design, creativity and problem-solving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Connected learning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second shift is towards \u201cconnected learning\u201d, where the boundaries between learning inside and outside school become less rigid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital technology allows young people to pursue their interests, find communities with similar concerns, learn from mentors and connect local projects with wider networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper highlights the example of Sagar Aryal, a young person in Kathmandu, Nepal, who became involved in social justice and environmental projects. Starting with a lending library for children who could not attend school, he later taught himself digital skills, connected with programmers online and created an online presence for the youth-led Sano Sansar initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its combination of digital networking and community-based projects helped connect thousands of children and young people interested in environmental and social issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schools as places where futures are created<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the paper\u2019s central messages is that education should not merely prepare young people to enter a future already designed for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schools can instead become places where different generations discuss what kind of future they want and work together on the environmental and social challenges that will shape it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That requires more opportunities for project-based learning, community participation, digital collaboration, design thinking and creative problem-solving. It also requires recognising that students can contribute meaningful ideas now, rather than waiting until adulthood before their opinions are considered important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From climate anxiety to meaningful action<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change presents children and young people with enormous uncertainty. Education cannot remove that uncertainty, but it can give young people greater agency in responding to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By connecting schools with communities and enabling students to use digital networks, personal interests and real-world projects, education can help young people move from simply learning about environmental problems to participating in solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge for educators is therefore not only to teach young people about the future, but to give them genuine opportunities to imagine, negotiate and co-create it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the paper<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Download the PDF<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

View the paper on Academia.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate Change: Imagining, Negotiating, and Co-Creating Futures with Children and Youth A summary of research by Ellen Field Climate change will shape the lives of today\u2019s children and young people more profoundly than those of most adults making decisions today. Yet young people are often treated as passive recipients of education and policy rather than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","category-environmental-sustainability"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14109,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14106\/revisions\/14109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gecco.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}