16 Worldview Threat and the Climate Crisis

Worldview Threat and the Climate Crisis

Cathryn van Kessel

It is urgent that educators in social studies and science (among other disciplines) consider the ethical imperative of teaching the climate crisis—the future is at stake. From the perspective of terror management theory (TMT), a barrier to teaching this contentious topic effectively is existential threat.

Through the lens of TMT it becomes clear that climate catastrophe is an understandably fraught topic as it can serve as a reminder of death in two ways:

  1. such discussions can elicit not only mortality salience from considering the necrocene produced by climate catastrophe
  2. such discussions produce existential anxiety arising from worldview threat. This threat can occur when Western assumptions are called into question as well as when there is disagreement between those with any worldviews that differ.

For a summary of relevant aspects of TMT in the context of  teaching of the climate crisis, as well as specific strategies to help manage this situation (providing conceptual tools, narrating cascading emotions, carefully using humor to diffuse anxiety, employing language and phrasing that does not overgeneralize divergent groups, and priming ideas of tolerance and even nurturance of difference), see this open-access article:

van Kessel, C. (2020). Teaching the climate crisis: Existential considerations. Journal of Curriculum Studies Research, 2(1), 129–145. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.02.01.8

For an in-depth look at climate anxiety, check out Panu Pikhala’s report for Mental Health Finland,

as well as Pikhala’s Hope and Action Project with teachers, including this list of emotional tasks for classroom use! (Please note that Google translate does a decent job of the website if you don’t read Finnish)

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The Grim Educator Copyright © 2019 by Cathryn van Kessel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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