Browsing by Subject "ilmastotunteet"

According to the National core curriculum for basic education (2014), schools should guide students towards a sustainable lifestyle, as well as understanding that people are part of na-ture and completely dependent on the surrounding ecosystem. Schools should also address emotions related to climate change, as children have experienced, for example, sadness, fear, and helplessness. Studies suggest that climate education in schools is very fragmented and variable and should be improved. Studies show that children’s books are a good way to deal with difficult issues and emotions among children. In this thesis, I examine what climate emotions occur in children’s books on climate change and how the books present climate change. Based on these questions, I evaluate how children's books on climate change could be used in climate education. This thesis is a qualitative study. Four Finnish children's books on climate change published during 2019 and 2020 were used as data. The books are aimed at children of primary school age. The books were analyzed by using content analysis. In the second research question, I used theory-guided content analysis, in which the guiding theory was the model of ecological literacy by Wong and Kumpulainen (2019). The characters in the books had a wide range of climate emotions: distressing emotions from fear to anxiety, worry, and joy and enthusiasm. The climate emotions in the books were simi-lar to emotions that people have related to climate change. The books described climate change and issues related to climate change in many ways. Children's books on climate change can be useful in climate education, as they can help children deal with difficult climate emotions, as well as understand climate change as a wider phenomenon. More research is needed on how books could improve children’s ecological literacy, and more specifically cli-mate literacy.