Patchy pedagogies: Networking place-based climate change education online

Despite significant climate change learning outside of formal education sites, climate change education in post-secondary is still only emergent, particularly in education for teachers and other non-formal educators. Drawing on student coursework from three iterations of online graduate education courses, this paper leans on Anna Tsing and colleagues’ insights about the “patchy” Anthropocene to examine how students’ localized understanding of climate realities can be collectively woven into a broader understanding of the planetary condition, fostering pathways toward climate action through education. By translating place-based education into an asynchronous, online forum, graduate coursework networked students’ grounded realities. Students participated in an extension of artist Xavier Cortada’s Longitudinal Installation, where each of them storied both the geographic and temporal elements of their climate experiences as they relate to education, engaged affectively with the stories of others, and reflected on their across global/local scales toward climate action through education.