This chapter describes the need for students to engage in critical inquiry through inferring the goals/purposes, roles, and tools driving capitalist economics, fossil fuel energy, transportation/community design, and agriculture/food production systems impacting climate change to determine ways to transform these systems. Teachers can have students respond to portrayals of these systems in literature/movies, engage in role-play activities, or engage in critical media analyses for sharing their analyses of these systems, as illustrated by examples of students activities from two high school environment clubs.

Using Systems Thinking to Understand Climate Change

Beach - Teachers and students use of systems thinking about their participation in school (1).pdf

Podcast interview about the above reports published in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

Video presentation about the above presentation

DeGrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era

elementary teachers use of mapping for systems thinking.pdf

reimagining food systems.pdf

Youth investigation of air quality in Richmond, CA.pdf

Beach, R. (2023). Literacy research, systems thinking, and climate change. Research in the Teaching of English, 58(1), 105-122.