Centering Care in Transformative Climate Change Education: A Theoretical Framework for Communal Learning Ecosystems

ABSTRACT Research‐practice partnerships addressing climate change education face challenges navigating political resistance, epistemic tensions, and systemic inequities within schools and communities. Recent scholarship has outlined transformative climate change education (TCCE) as requiring the simultaneous transformation of curricula, pedagogies, and assessment systems. Building on this work, we propose Communal Learning Ecosystems (CLEs) as a theoretical model addressing the partnership structures and relational infrastructure necessary to support and sustain TCCE. Grounded in an ethics of care and drawing from literature on research‐practice partnerships, Indigenous relationality, and transformative learning, the CLE framework emphasizes co‐design, adaptive strategies, relational trust‐building, and land‐based positionality. We theorize how caring, relationality, and positionality within partnerships can foster effective TCCE, particularly in politically resistant contexts. We argue this model serves as a framework for addressing structural challenges, sustaining collective action, and co‐creating just and sustainable educational futures.