Holistic climate change education in Finnish lower secondary science: textbook representations and teachers’ perspectives

Climate change education is widely promoted as a holistic and cross-curricular goal. The study examines, through Finnish textbooks and teachers’ perspectives, the opportunities and challenges of implementing holistic climate change education in lower secondary science. The analysis combines textbook analysis, a teacher survey (N = 66), and interviews, guided by the UNESCO Greening Curriculum framework. The findings show that teachers consider climate change highly relevant and demonstrate the knowledge and pedagogical capacity for holistic approaches, although these remain largely implicit. However, three interrelated challenges constrain the implementation of these approaches. Climate change is represented unevenly across textbook series, resulting in different learning pathways and potentially unequal opportunities for students. Teachers report that textbooks provide insufficient support, particularly in physics and chemistry, and that their educational background has not adequately prepared them. Therefore, they rely on self-produced materials and continuous self-directed learning, increasing workload. Structural conditions of subject-based schooling and the subject-centred nature of teaching contribute to fragmented and teacher-dependent practices, while school architecture shapes opportunities for teacher collaboration, and socio-economic context and school culture influence how climate change is positioned in teaching. The findings suggest that developing holistic climate change education requires a research-informed understanding of how climate change concepts develop and how this understanding can be translated into practice. This calls for closer integration of research and practice through collaborative approaches, such as co-design, involving multidisciplinary actors and teacher-researchers. The results can inform curriculum, textbook, and teacher education development. Without such efforts, fragmented practices are likely to persist.