Engaged Climate Change Pedagogy: Lessons from 15 Years of Interdisciplinary Climate Change Education

This article explores lessons learned from 15 years of an interdisciplinary, team-taught course on global climate change at a minority-serving public university in the United States San Francisco Bay Area integrating climate science with policymaking, public communication strategies, and principles of climate justice. First taught in 2007, 16 faculty from 5 different departments collaborated across disciplines to produce innovative teaching practices and curriculum design that evolved through each iteration of the course. Theme analysis of two roundtable discussions with course instructors identified three themes: changing course context, integrative learning, and community engagement. The essay concludes with lessons learned from this case study and recommendations for future interdisciplinary climate change education models. We argue that effective climate change education must foster bottom-up interdisciplinarity, respond to students’ social and political realities, and cultivate student agency to enact personal, social, and ecological well-being. For climate change education to be effective, it needs to actively engage students in hands-on, participatory learning experience that fosters critical thinking and real-world problem solving.