Justice-Centered Environmental Learning: A Design Tool

Climate change and other environmental harms disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities, and therefore represent existential social justice issues for science classrooms to address.Although learning scientists and science educators have theorized sociopolitical dimensions of environmental learning, there are few practical tools for justice-centered design.To this end, we developed a design tool that consists of four environmental justice lenses: address positionality, engage multiple ways of knowing, analyze structures of oppression, and engage in justice-focused action.We illustrate these lenses with vignettes from an institute on air quality for in-service teachers.We discuss the potential of this tool to guide environmental learning and inform future research.