Enabling students to face the environmental crisis and climate change with resilience: inclusive environmental and sustainability education approaches and strategies for coping with eco-anxiety
Laura Sims, Rhéa Rocque, Marie Élaine Desmarais
Abstract
As university educators, we should educate students to be able to address the challenges presented by the environmental crisis and climate change by being responsible eco-citizens, and creative, solution-oriented thinkers. We have a responsibility to create inclusive environmental and sustainability educational (ESE) approaches that are enabling, emotionally supportive, engaging, and praxis-oriented. Herein we describe ESE approaches that are considered beneficial and provide specific strategies to cope with eco-anxiety, to help students develop emotional resilience in the face of this crisis. We then explore aspects that are mutually complementary between inclusive ESE and the proposed coping strategies for eco-anxiety followed by a discussion on the implications for postsecondary teaching and learning.