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Teaching climate change through the literary arts

Teaching climate change through the literary arts

16 July 2025

Read time: 3mins

‘My research over the last few years has explored teaching the “wicked-problem” of climate change through the literary arts; namely cli-fi literature and latterly, ecopoetry.’

Katie Richardson

Geography is inherently interdisciplinary: history shapes borders and boundaries; science untangles marine ecosystems; economics explains our global industry distributions; and art is a vehicle for culture. So why then do we teach these subjects as distinct, self-sufficient silos?

Despite the obvious benefits (i.e. organisation, standardised assessment and specialisation), to truly unravel the complications of human-nature entanglements that we as geographers are so interested in, we must endeavour to think outside the geography box.

It is also now well ingrained that every teacher is a teacher of literacy. This is particularly pertinent given that the AQA GCSE Human Geography exam paper and the BBC Bitesize support text have respective reading ages of 15.4 and 16.7 years (Renaissance Learning cited in Adam, 2012).

What can we do?

My research over the last few years has explored teaching the ‘wicked-problem’ of climate change through the literary arts; namely, cli-fi literature and latterly ecopoetry.

Teaching through poetry enhanced students’ understandings. This was mainly because reading and writing poetry engages students’ emotions. These feelings (which some curricula have endeavoured to delete) implores to the students’ brains that this thought is worth remembering, and so the knowledge is more likely to be committed to their long-term memories. Poetry can also be used as activism, or as a voice for the otherwise voiceless.

Blackout poems

Yet students are used to learning in a uni-disciplinary way, and getting them outside this comfort zone can be difficult. That’s why I choose to begin with blackout poems. These start with a pre-written text – in this case, newspaper articles about the impacts of climate change.

Then students strikethrough most of the words, with those left behind revealing a hidden poem. This task seems less daunting for students as they do not have to commit pen to paper but merely thoughtfully select words that are already there. You can see examples of this on my poster here.

In a time when the complexities of our world demand creative, connected thinking, we must encourage students to blur the boundaries between disciplines – just as the world itself does.

Katie’s poster won the Rex Walford Geography Student Teacher Award in 2024, if you would like to find out more about the Rex Walford Award and how to apply, click here. The 2025 deadline is 5.00pm on Sunday 31 August 2025.