Understanding Students’ Climate Emotions: A Joint HARP Symposium at ESERA

Understanding Students’ Climate Emotions: A Joint HARP Symposium at ESERA

Our HARP teams organized a research symposium at this year’s 16th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Under the title “Agency in the midst of the climate crisis: Entangling the connections between students’ emotions, hope and action” we presented three interconnected research contributions exploring the emotional and motivational dimensions of climate change education.

The Czech team introduced a quantitative study based on representative surveys of 17-year-old students in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary (N = 6,477). The results showed that eco-anxiety was associated mainly with household-level pro-environmental behaviours, whereas deliberate community action was mediated by environmental hope, particularly its self-efficacy dimension. Strengthening hope therefore appears to be a crucial strategy for empowering students to engage in meaningful climate action.

The Austrian contribution examined the relationship between individual and collective hope and corresponding behaviours among Austrian students aged 14–17 (N = 437). Mixed-methods findings revealed a notable disparity: students expressed greater hope in individual rather than collective solutions and were more involved in personal-sphere actions than in collective activities. These outcomes highlight the need for science education initiatives that rebuild young people’s trust in societal climate solutions.

The team from Utrecht investigated coping strategies and emotions among Dutch lower secondary school students, drawing on both quantitative (N = 232) and qualitative (N = 42) data. Their study revealed a complex coexistence of worry, hope, and diverse coping mechanisms within individual students. While worry and hope were differently linked to problem-focused and meaning-focused coping, some students also showed signs of disengagement, underscoring the varied emotional landscapes that science teachers need to be attentive to.

For our international team, this symposium was the first – and certainly not the last – joint presentation on the interconnected roles of emotions, hope, and action in climate change education. Judging by the audience’s reactions, it was a highly successful and well-received session.