Areas of tension in teaching climate change – conflicts between Swedish preservice science teachers’ beliefs

Introducing climate change education into the science curricula and the classroom requires science teacher education to prepare preservice science teachers to navigate political, ethical, and emotional dimensions. This study investigates Swedish preservice science teachers’ beliefs about teaching climate change, revealing tensions between traditional science teaching and climate change education. Using semi-structured interviews with six preservice science teachers from a Swedish university, we identified beliefs about teaching approaches, content, students, self, teaching strategies, and context relating to teaching climate change. Three tensions emerged between the preservice teachers’ held beliefs: (1) dealing with values in balancing teacher neutrality and passion for the topic, (2) dealing with emotions in giving students an understanding of the severity of climate change while managing negative impacts on students’ emotional wellbeing, and (3) aligning a view of climate change as an anthropocentric issue and a traditional focus on scientific concepts in science education. These findings indicate the need to develop science teacher education to address these tensions, as introducing climate change education into the science curricula requires navigating political, ethical, and emotional dimensions, diverging from traditional science teaching focused on facts and concepts. Finally, we offer recommendations for teacher education programmes.