Provocations for Education from Youth Climate Activism

Provocations for Education from Youth Climate Activism

Edited by Carrie Karsgaard, Victoria Desimoni, and Iveta Silova

Call for blog contributions

Youth climate activism offers both direct and indirect provocations to education systems. Whether walking out of schools for climate strikes, organizing for fossil fuel divestment, engaging in “everyday activism,” tweeting at decision-makers about climate policy, occupying offices of fossil fuel investors and insurers, installing climate artwork in public spaces, or guerilla gardening in public spaces – the actions of young people point to the inadequacy of dominant systems and  paradigms that not only uphold extractivist ideologies fueling the present climate crisis but also reinforce the colonial-capitalist framework exacerbating its effects. 

While the messages of youth are arguably clear, this blog series invites provocations for education that emerge from various youth activist expressions – or are directed expressly at education by and with youth.

We invite submissions of blogs or vlogs that can speak to a wider global audience of policymakers, academics, researchers, civil society organizations, activists, and other actors working in education. These can be created by academics, professionals, or youth climate activists (or both!) and take a wide variety of forms: research contributions, interviews with youth activists, creative submissions (poetry, artwork, zines, short climate fiction), or direct provocations to education professionals, leaders, or decision-makers. While we invite articles from all areas of the planet, we particularly want to hear from youth and youth researchers who are not often heard in academic spaces, including youth from the Global South, marginalized communities in the Global North, and from contexts where activism is culturally unacceptable, criminalized, underground, or perhaps unrecognized as activism.

Some blogs in this series will be reprinted (with a possibility of a longer contribution) in an edited open-access volume in fall/winter 2026. The edited volume will invite education policymakers, professionals, and researchers to respond to the blogs and vlogs shared through the series, creating an intentional dialogue among activists and formal education. We plan to continue this dialogue through a series of webinars and conferences presentations following the publication of the book. 

To contribute to the series, please contact series curators Carrie Karsgaard (Carrie_Karsgaard@cbu.ca), Victoria Desimoni (vdesimon@asu.edu), and Iveta Silova (iveta.silova@asu.edu). Blogs will be posted between fall 2024 and spring 2025.