Climate change representation in secondary geography textbooks: a comparative analysis of psychological distance and message framing across Australia, Germany, and Japan

How geography textbooks frame climate change shapes how students understand and respond to it, yet this framing has received little systematic scrutiny. This paper provides the first combined application of psychological distance theory and message framing theory to climate change representation in secondary geography textbooks across three countries. We analysed 101 climate change entries in 32 textbooks: Australia (n = 35), Germany (n = 31), and Japan (n = 35). The first two authors independently coded entries across four psychological distance dimensions (temporal, spatial, social, hypothetical) and three message framing strategies (valence, concreteness, action orientation) with high inter-rater reliability (κ = 0.87). Refined operationalisations of spatial and social distance distinguished psychologically meaningful categories that prior schemes had often conflated. Significant cross-country differences emerged in five of seven dimensions at p < 0.05; valence (V = 0.31) and concreteness (V = 0.32) remained significant after Bonferroni adjustment. All countries framed climate change predominantly at the global scale (AUS = 51.4%, GER = 58.1%, JPN = 71.4%), while Japan showed the strongest social distance, with 57.1% of entries framing climate change as affecting distant others. Association analysis revealed two structurally important cross-dimensional findings: a very strong valence–action orientation association (Cramér’s V = 0.77) indicating that threat-based framing and problem-focused content are systematically coupled; and a strong concreteness–action orientation association (V = 0.59) suggesting that concrete presentation and solution-focused content co-occur as an integrated pedagogical mode. Cluster analysis identified three cross-national typologies: ‘Process-Focused’ (19.8%), ‘Concrete Impact Awareness’ (29.7%), and ‘Global Urgency’ (50.5%). Findings suggest that improving climate change education requires addressing the structural coupling between framing mode and action orientation as an integrated pedagogical challenge.