OUR RESOURCES
Resources For Parents and Educators
Resources For Researchers
Resources for Parents & Educators
What is Climate Distress and How Can Educators Support Their Students
This resource booklet was created to help educators understand and address climate distress and other emotional responses that may arise in their students when discussing climate change. It includes practical tips for practicing active empathic listening, strategies for fostering positive emotions like hope and optimism, and encourages educators to embark on their own journey of self-transformation. Additionally, the booklet provides tip sheets and sample lesson plans to support educators in addressing climate emotions effectively in their teaching.
What is Climate Distress and How Can Parents Support Their Children
This resource booklet is designed to help parents support their children during times of climate change. It provides information on different types of extreme weather events and their impact on children, along with insights into collective trauma. The booklet covers various emotions children may experience after a climate-related event and offers guidance on how to support children who are struggling. It includes tips for practicing active empathic listening and fostering positive emotions like hope and optimism. Additionally, it offers strategies for helping children cope with climate distress and encourages parents to begin their own journey of self-transformation. The booklet also features a section with resources and tip sheets on topics such as therapy and psychological support, youth-focused initiatives and projects, recommended books for children, educational video games, and coloring pages.
Kibou’s Light – A children’s book
Written with young children in mind, this book extends its hand to parents and early childhood educators, especially those concerned for our planet’s future. The story provides parents and educators with a gentle yet powerful tool to broach the topic of climate change with preschool children, delicately paving the way for those necessary conversations that we must learn to have, regardless of how old we are or where we come from. Narrated through the lens of the fictional world of Kibou, children will maintain their sense of safety, while empathizing with the Mochis’ trials and tribulations. Mochis are the imaginary dwellings of Kibou, a planet turned upside down by climate change. With the help of their parents and teachers, children will see that Mochis’ problems are not so different from those humanity is currently facing; that there are lessons to be learnt; and inspiration to be drawn from these endearing creatures who will discover that the answer to keeping their planet alive is in the (guiding) ‘light’.
Reading Kibou’s Light with Your Children: A How-To Guide for Parents
These resources were developed in partnership with Families Canada to provide parents and educators with additional guidance on how to best use the children’s book titled Kibou’s Light to facilitate conversations about extreme weather events and climate change impacts and solutions with children of preschool age.
Reading Kibou’s Light with Young Learners: A How-To Guide for Educators
These resources were developed in partnership with Families Canada to provide parents and educators with additional guidance on how to best use the children’s book titled Kibou’s Light to facilitate conversations about extreme weather events and climate change impacts and solutions with children of preschool age.
How Does Ki Feel? Talking About Climate Emotions with Young Children
This resource was created to help adults gain insights about how experiencing extreme weather events, such as a flood or a wildfire, might impact the emotional wellbeing of the young children in their lives. This activity-based book is designed to stimulate conversations with preschool children on the difficult topic of climate emotions. Inspired by art therapy approaches centered on drawing and storytelling, this book focuses children’s attention on the world of the Mochis, little imaginary creatures who are facing a difficult situation on their home planet Kibou. At first, the young children learn how to express basic emotions such as sadness, joy and anger using a simplified wheel of climate emotions that has been adapted for children of preschool age. As they progress with the various activities offered in this resource, young children learn that the challenges the Mochis encounter are causing them to feel a wide range of feelings, and they are then asked to imagine what these emotions might be. Intended to be enjoyed in the company of a supportive adult, this resource offers coloring activities that encourage young children to explore feelings associated with the challenges posed by climate related events.
A Comprehensive Guide to Active Empathic Listening: Strategies and Tip Sheets for Professionals
Another collaborative effort with Families Canada, this guide was created for professionals working with families, children, and youth to enhance their active empathic listening skills. The guide includes comprehensive tip sheets on various aspects of active empathic listening, addressing topics such as the dark side of empathy, compassion fatigue, avoiding burnout, and practicing self-compassion. Additionally, it features tip cards that can be easily cut out and used in their practice, providing practical tools for professionals to implement in their daily interactions.
Resources for Researchers
Publications
The global youth mental health crisis is increasingly intertwined with climate change,
as young people experience heightened climate anxiety and ecological grief. This study
examines the relationship between nature connectedness, climate worry, coping strategies,
and mental health outcomes among Canadian university students. Drawing on Pihkala’s
process model of eco-anxiety, we propose the Developing Ecological Consciousness Model, a
three-act framework that traces young people’s journey from climate awareness to meaningful
engagement.
In this article, we explore the power of listening in the context of children’s rights, emphasizing its positive impact on children’s psychological and neurological development. We unpack the seemingly simple concept of listening and its significance in communication between adults and children. We share findings from a comprehensive review of neuroscientific studies that underscore the benefits of listening and then discuss how this evidence is relevant to the implementation of children’s rights. This article demonstrates that when adults genuinely listen to children within a safe, nurturing, and empathetic environment, children reap substantial benefits in various aspects of their development. We conclude by suggesting that enhancing adults’ listening skills could be a strategic approach to fulfilling the rights of children of all ages.
This study explores emotional responses to climate change, and their association with engagement in climate activism and pro-environmental behaviours. The study, which was conducted on a sample of 912 university students revealed that climate worry and concern were prevalent among the participants. The most commonly reported climate emotions included disappointment, frustration, helplessness, fear, sadness, anxiety, shame, disgust, and guilt. Our findings also indicate that young people who experience pleasant emotions such as joy and hope are more likely to engage in climate action.
In this book chapter we challenge the notion that nature and technology are opposing elements and mutually irreconcilable environments. We propose that new possibilities for interaction between these worlds perceived as distant have emerged, and the development achieved by some digital tools (such as Virtual Reality and video games) could stimulate a synergistic meeting between the two realities. In this contribution, we introduce the concept of “technoludobiophilia”, building on Thomas’s technobiophilia, to explain how play in the technological medium can contribute to strengthening the sense of connection with the natural environment. We offer examples of the relationship between video games and nature as well as game design logic applied to non-gaming (gamification) and natural contexts by analyzing how certain mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics can engage and motivate users to experience their personal relationship with the natural environment.
In this publication Dr. Maggi argues that career educators are in a unique position to help shift societal paradigms towards more sustainable practices. She explains how this involves changing aspects of their professional practice that they have control over, and rethinking how they view careers. Instead of just focusing on individual advancement, they should also consider how careers can contribute to solving environmental issues. This is known as “green guidance”. Green guidance is particularly important now, as it can help young people find purpose in their careers while also contributing to the fight against climate change.
This article introduced the 100 Jobs Challenge, a pilot program designed to promote early career development and climate change awareness. It aimed at encouraging youth to identify jobs that can mitigate climate change and then discover the skills and competences associated with those career paths. This unique approach promotes self-directed learning, collaboration, reflection, and integrates technology. It helps youth realize the importance of lifelong learning for the changing world of work. The author argues that the focus of this program should be on helping young people discover their career aspirations from within, preparing them for the future of work.
In this publication, Dr. Maggi presents a compelling argument as to why we should pay more attention to younger generations who have the potential to contribute significantly to society and to the fight against climate change. However, she argues, they are often underutilized because adults underestimate their abilities. Career development programs, such as workshops, can help empower youth and allow them to see how they can impact our shared future. By acknowledging both the vulnerabilities and competencies of young people, we can nurture them and provide them with the skills they need to lead fulfilling lives.
Career guidance and education offer a unique opportunity to prepare the workforce of tomorrow. They can help young people think critically about jobs and the environment, and how these can contribute to the health of our planet. However, the training teachers receive to become guidance counselors is often insufficient. By making career courses more personally meaningful and showing students how their professional choices can make the planet healthier, we can empower them and prepare them for the future.
Theses
Luca investigated whether climate change specific pre-traumatic stress (PTS) emerges as a distinct construct from climate anxiety. To test this tenet, he measured the predictive power of a climate change PTS scale and climate anxiety scale against two mental health outcomes, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), in a sample of Canadian university students. Results showed that, in a model where both PTS and climate anxiety were entered, PTS is a significant predictor of both MDD and GAD, while climate anxiety is not significantly associated with these outcomes. These findings suggest that a climate change specific PTS scale may be more appropriate to capture clinical impacts of climate change on the mental health of young people than a scale more narrowly focused on functional and cognitive impairments associated with climate anxiety.
Kavita’s thesis investigates whether students who directly experience a climate-related event report lower life satisfaction compared to students who have not experienced such events. She found that directly experiencing a climate-related event was not a significant predictor of life satisfaction and interprets the results drawing from the broader context of developmental psychology which suggests that young people may not judge their life satisfaction solely on the basis of discrete moments in time, like surviving an extreme weather event, especially if such events are perceived beyond their control.
McKenna’s thesis introduces a new framework for understanding how young people become aware of and engage with climate change. Using path analyses on two distinct samples of students from a Canadian university, she found that young people with a deep connection to nature are more likely to be worried about the effects of climate change and take action to address it. However, this strong connection to nature can also lead to increased anxiety and depression, especially if these youth lack effective strategies to cope with their emotions about climate change.
Importantly, the study revealed that when young people are able to find meaning in their climate action, they are less likely to experience anxiety or depression. Finding meaning and purpose during the climate crisis acts as a protective factor against negative mental health outcomes that can arise.
Emily conducted a descriptive phenomenological analysis to explore psychology professionals’ vision of their role in the context of climate change and the barriers preventing full engagement. Her analysis identified four main themes: emotional distancing, role inefficiency, ambiguous, conflicting, or evolving opinions, and existential hope. Additionally, several barriers faced by professionals were highlighted, including lack of time, limited knowledge, structural or institutional barriers, and the perception of climate change as a “wicked” problem.
Gracie’s study focused on Canadian family support professionals to understand how factors such as personal experience with climate change, professional experiences with clients affected by climate change, climate change knowledge, professional self-efficacy, and years of career experience predict preparedness. Her findings revealed that family service providers do not feel confident in their ability to assist clients facing climate change-related issues. Additionally, climate change knowledge and professional self-efficacy were identified as significant predictors of preparedness among family service professionals.
Joshua’s thesis explored the role of life purpose in mitigating mental health impacts of climate change in young people. He discovered that young people who believe their purpose in life is important are more likely to feel optimistic about the future, regardless of their level of depression and anxiety.
Elise set out to explore whether young people with self-efficacy express high environmental optimism, and if that protects them from feeling the mental health effects of climate anxiety. She discovered that both individual and collective environmental self-efficacy is positively associated with being optimistic about the future of our planet, and the effect is stronger than that of climate worry and eco-anxiety.
McKenna’s thesis aimed to gain insight into young people’s anxiety towards climate change and how they cope with climate change amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Her results showed that young people who exclusively rely on problem-focused strategies to cope with climate change are more likely to experience levels of eco-anxiety that pose a threat to mental health.
Kate’s thesis set out to explore whether gender differences exist in the emotional landscape of young people during the climate crisis. She found that females are more likely to experience negative emotions towards climate change, use problem-focused coping strategies, and to have a stronger connection to nature compared to male participants.
Ashley’s thesis explored the perspectives of climate change from Indigenous youth using qualitative methods. She found that young people feel a range of both positive and negative emotions towards climate change. She also found that young people are hopeful for change and for their future, and participants shared suggestions and solutions to mitigate climate change.
