Art and empathy in the classroom – decolonizing climate mobility education in primary schools by Vilhelmiina Vainikka

I would like to welcome researchers, teacher educators and teachers to discuss climate change education in primary schools. In this talk, I will argue why climate mobilities education should be included in the Finnish (and other) primary school curriculum (Kallio et al. 2023). And how art-based methods and decolonizing empathy would fit into this education. We have conducted ethnographic research in Finnish and Greek primary schools with 4th grade students in the spring of 2024. We tested different kinds of art-based methods and teaching materials to learn more about learning in primary school climate mobilities education. This talk will present some of our results with the art created during our interventions in multi-cultural classes.