Imagine a science education that enables our learners to reflect critically on the world and their place in it. This paper puts forward that primary science education can provide a crucial opportunity to establish a caring mindset in which learners’ question, understand, imagine and hope in ways that bring about planetary consciousness and responsible action. While previous research has reasoned that we need to look beyond science education to develop a more holistic climate change education (OECD, 2023), this research returns to the importance of science education by considering not only the substantive knowledge associated with climate change education, but the pedagogical approaches that value the nature of science as a ‘more-than-human endeavour’ (Olson, 2008), addressing questions about and for the planet.
There has been an exponential growth in the number of publications related to climate change education (Kumar et al, 2023). In response to this growth, a scoping review of the climate change education pedagogical approaches recommended in recent research (2022 – 2024) was conducted to inform a planetary-conscious pedagogical approach to primary science education.
The emerging principles from the review (promoting climate literacy, interdisciplinarity, context-based inquiry learning, valuing and celebrating nature, enacting pedagogies of care, equity and social justice, the promotion of green careers, and community action) were then embedded into Initial Teacher Education primary science courses in England and Australian, using a design-based research approach (Anderson and Shattuck, 2012). Through reflecting and comparing how these principles could be integrated into primary science education (e.g. embedding nature-based inquiries into lesson plans, drawing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges to inform a deeper understanding of how we can care for and connect to the planet) the paper will conclude by discussing the findings of how future teachers can be supported to critically consider how evidence-informed planetary-conscious pedagogical principles can ensure that substantive and disciplinary knowledge within curriculum frameworks can be underpinned by pedagogical approaches that promote more just and caring responses to climate challenges faced now and in the future.