Educating for a Climate Changed Future
Fernando M. Reimers and Margaret Wang-Aghania
Climate change is already transforming the conditions in which education takes place. Extreme heat, floods, storms, displacement, deteriorating health, and damaged infrastructure are interrupting schooling and deepening existing inequalities. At the same time, education has an essential role to play in helping students and communities understand climate change, adapt to its consequences, and contribute to more sustainable and just futures.
Educating for a Climate Changed Future examines this two-way relationship from a global and systemic perspective. The book distinguishes between the first-order effects of climate change—the ways in which it disrupts students, teachers, schools, and educational opportunity—and its second-order effects—the changes education systems make to curriculum, teaching, infrastructure, and institutional practices in response to the climate crisis.
Drawing on international research, national policy experiences, student assessment evidence, and cases from schools and communities around the world, the book examines what students currently know about climate change, how it is being taught, and what kinds of educational experiences can connect knowledge with action, identity, and ethical responsibility. It also considers the contributions of governments, teacher networks, school leaders, civil-society organizations, and communities.
The book’s central argument is that isolated lessons or projects are not enough. Climate-ready education requires greater coherence among curriculum, assessment, teacher preparation, professional learning, leadership, governance, infrastructure, and community partnerships. Schools must also be understood as anchors of community resilience: places that can support learning continuity, coordinate responses to emergencies, and strengthen collective capacity for adaptation and action.
Ultimately, the book calls for a reorientation of education in a warming world—one that responds to the immediate effects of climate change while developing the knowledge, skills, values, and agency required to shape a more sustainable future. Published by Springer in 2026, the book is available open access.
