Teacher beliefs about climate action teaching: Exploring variation across instructional phases and types of action

Abstact Climate change education requires fostering students' skills in making informed decisions on climate-related actions. Thus, teacher education must equip teachers for such “climate action teaching” and may build on investigating teacher beliefs. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, we examine which instrumental, injunctive, capacity, and autonomy beliefs shape teachers’ perceptions of climate action teaching. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 secondary physics teachers in Austria, presented five different instructional phases, and analyzed transcripts via structuring qualitative content analysis both deductively and inductively. Teachers viewed introducing the need for climate action as uncontroversial, were more hesitant to address civic actions than policy measures, reported mixed capacity for deliberate discussion, and indicated unclear aims for reflection on decision-making. These patterns suggest distinguishing teaching climate change from teaching climate action, clarifying aims and strategies of addressing civic action, providing feasible examples of policy measures, and articulating the purposes of reflection in teacher education.