Don’t Look Up: Teachers Navigating Educational Movements in Times of Climate Crisis—Insights from Israel

Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change (CC), the response in the education sector has been limited. This article works to identify reasons why by examining how teachers perceive CC. Specifically, we explore how teachers in Israel respond to climate change education (CCE), a global educational movement seeking to empower all people to participate in climate action. Drawing on social movement theory, we consider the factors and conditions under which teachers decide to teach about CC. We use a multimethod survey, including questions on self-reported practices and an embedded survey experiment to do so. Our results show that although most teachers endorse the scientific consensus on CC and support CCE, less than one-fifth teach the topic. Factors like climate concern, teaching experience, and subject assignment (e.g., science) foster teaching about CC, whereas test-based accountability hinders it.