Grasping “hidden” values: exploring affective climate change goals in the geography curricula of Spain and The Netherlands

Increasingly severe impacts of climate change on humankind and youngsters' lives highlight the urgency for climate change education (CCE). Sustainability academics plea for transformative approaches, but the purpose and kinds of goals remain controversial. The European Union recently proposed the GreenComp framework, which guides towards sustainable development and is grafted on sustainable values. For elaboration into educational programs across Europe, we must pay attention to its fit, and tensions, with diverse national education contexts. We aim to explore this fit by conducting content analysis on the current geography curricula for secondary education in the Netherlands and Spain through the lens of GreenComp, thereby further specifying affective goals to suit robust curriculum analysis, and exploring how differences can be explained by the national educational context. Our analysis showed that the Spanish curriculum includes a broader and more guiding package of CCE goals, including numerous affective goals based on "hidden" sustainable values, with that, revealing stronger fit with international GreenComp. The Dutch features a more specific and open-ended package of CCE goals, barely including any values, hence, revealing less fit with GreenComp. Differences between CCE in the Dutch and Spanish geography curricula may be explained by different curricular traditions, and sociopolitical contexts.