Environmental Justice and Climate Justice in Formal Primary and Secondary Education: A Systematized Literature Review

Practice Paper Recommended citation: Higbee, R. E., Moore, T. J., & Douglas, K. A. (2025). Environmental Justice and Climate Justice in Formal Primary and Secondary Education: A Systematized Literature Review. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631911. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND CLIMATE JUSTICE IN FORMAL PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION: A SYSTEMATIZED LITERATURE REVIEW R. E. Higbee a,1, T. J. Moore b, K. A. Douglas c a Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, ORCID: 0000-0002-6011-9279 b Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, ORCID: 0000-0002-7956-4479 c Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, ORCID: 0000-0002-2693-5272 Conference Key Areas: Sustainability and society in engineering; Dialogue between engineering and society – effects on education Keywords: environmental justice, climate justice, primary education, secondary education, systematized literature review ABSTRACT Engineers are strong contributors to the development of society and technology, but the trade-off of this progress is contamination of the natural environment. As climate change and environmental contamination become increasingly concerning, especially to historically marginalized groups, it is important to ensure people are properly educated about the importance of environmental justice (EJ) and climate justice (CJ). While the primary and secondary education spaces are ideal for EJ and CJ education because children are strong agents of social change, this is a newly developing area of research. Therefore, this systematized literature review was guided by the research questions: (1) How has the quantity of EJ and CJ curriculum in primary and secondary education changed over time? and (2) What lessons have researchers learned about implementing primary and secondary EJ and CJ education and do these connect to engineering thinking? After filtering the results through our inclusion criteria, a total 20 articles were identified and reviewed. Key findings highlight that there is less literature than anticipated about this topic, but there is an increasing trend in the number of publications. The literature that we included all point to how including EJ and/or CJ is vital to education and produces highly positive results for student participants, but there is a lack of engineering contexts for these efforts. 1 Corresponding Author R. E. Higbee [email protected] 1 INTRODUCTION Engineers are important members of society as they foster industrial growth and contribute to innovative technology, but the trade-off of these developments is contamination of the natural environment (e.g., Lee et al., 2021; Madhav et al., 2019; Zhang & Wang, 2020). The industrial manufacturing and heavy use of fossil fuels necessitated by engineering causes contamination of air, water, and soil, which in turn leads to public health concerns. Heightened exposure to environmental toxins may cause minor inconveniences such as headaches, or severe chronic illnesses, including mental disorders, asthma, and cancer (Brugge et al., 2007; Health Effects Institute [HEI] Panel, 2010; Lanphear, 2015; Meadows-Oliver, 2022; Piazza & Urbanetz, 2019). These environmental public health concerns are statistically most likely to impact people from marginalized groups, including those of low socioeconomic status (SES), rural communities, and immigrants (Balazs et al., 2012; Del Real, 2019; Mohai, 2015). The concept that everyone has the right to a clean and healthy environment, regardless of their demographics, SES, or geographic location, is known as environmental justice (USEPA, 2019). In a similar vein, climate change is the result of anthropogenic activity (Hegerl et al., 2019), but its negative consequences disproportionately impact historically marginalized communities and people of low SES (Gregory et al., 2023; Odeku, 2022). Climate justice is a movement focused on recognizing and addressing the disproportionate impacts of climate change. The concepts of environmental justice (EJ) and climate justice (CJ) often overlap, or CJ is considered the overarching concept under which EJ is housed. Regardless of their exact relationship, together, these two terms represent a global effort to pursue equal access to a clean and healthy environment for everyone. Environmental and climate injustice are systemic issues because they are deeply rooted in political and economic structures. Therefore, a systemic solution that consists of various approaches is required to truly mitigate these injustices. To promote change and a global motivation to pursue justice, we must first ensure that people are correctly educated about these topics. A 2024 survey of the United States discovered that only 37 percent of households understood that there is environmental racial disparity (Bugden, 2024). Educating primary and secondary students about EJ and CJ is beneficial because children are agents of social change due to their engagement in learning, adoption of new behaviours at a rapid pace, ability to educate others, and passion for being global and community citizens (Dilworth, 2004; Simovska & Carlsson, 2011; Torres-Harding et al., 2018). When children participate in societal change through activism projects, students have seen an increase in their self-efficacy, positive self-identity, leadership skills, and sense of meaning and purpose (Cammarota, 2007; Harre, 2007; Hipolito-Delgado & Lee, 2007; Kirshner, 2007; Malone, 2013; Milakovich et al., 2018; Stuhmcke, 2012; Taines, 2012; Walker, 2017). There is a clear positive impact when youth are provided the chance to participate in important societal issues such as EJ and CJ. Teaching complex topics such as EJ and CJ within an engineering context provides the opportunity for students to engage in integrated STEM content in a meaningful way. Prompting students to use engineering thinking techniques in the classroom can help them self-identify as engineers, which can improve students’ perceptions of who can be an engineer (Capobiano et al., 2011; Pantoya et al., 2015). Additionally, since engineering has led to contamination of natural resources, by situating EJ and CJ education within the context of engineering, students can learn how engineers can also contribute to the remediation of this issue. Regardless of whether these students become engineers, it is important for everyone to understand how engineering impacts society (Carberry & Baker, 2018; Gupta et al., 2015). While the opportunity to integrate EJ and CJ education into current curriculum is beneficial for students, there is little research about this integration in the primary and secondary education space. There are several recently published literature reviews that focus on environmental or climate justice education (e.g., GuevaraHerrero et al., 2024; Kinol et al., 2023; Mercan & Varol Selçuk, 2024; Trott et al., 2023); however, none of these focus exclusively on formal primary and secondary education that intentionally and explicitly discuss EJ and/or CJ. Our systematized literature review builds on and differs from these examples by including all levels within formal primary and secondary education, and looking explicitly for studies that intentionally use “justice” terminology. Our goal is to delve into research that highlights EJ and CJ within engineering contexts at the pre-college level. However, at this point, there is little to no literature that directly connects engineering education with EJ and CJ. Therefore, the purpose of this systematized literature review is to understand the current landscape of how current EJ and CJ education efforts may incorporate components of engineering. We were guided by the research questions: (1) How has the quantity of EJ and CJ curriculum in primary and secondary education changed over time? and (2) What lessons have researchers learned about implementing primary and secondary EJ and CJ education and do these connect to engineering thinking? Answering these questions will provide researchers and educators with information about progress being made to increase engineering-based EJ and CJ youth education and what methods should continue to be explored or improved upon. 2 METHODOLOGY We chose to conduct a systematized literature review because it allows for a structured and methodical approach to gathering and analysing existing research without requiring the comprehensive efforts and assessment of a systematic review (Grant & Booth, 2009). Additionally, completing a systematic review does not align with our research questions of simply learning the amount of effort being made to foster primary and secondary EJ and CJ education, and how those efforts have been successful or unsuccessful. Finally, to align with the publication expectations for this conference, we scoped our work to be an appropriate length, which does not allow for a systematic literature review. Therefore, this systematized review does not include a formal validity assessment of the reviewed papers. 2.1 Search Parameters and Results The search string was developed to represent our research questions and to be inclusive of the different educational terminology used across continents. For example, we included a number of terms that encompass the level of education taking place before students enter college or university (e.g., pre-college, pre-university, primary, secondary, K-12, etc.). The term “justice” is central to both of our research questions, so the terms, “environmental justice” and/or “climate justice” were required to be in every part of the search string. Since our research questions are focused on education about environmental science and engineering topics, we queried four databases that include education and scientific literature: EBSCO, Scopus, Societal Abstracts, and Web of Science. A summary of the number of articles queried from each database can be found as part of Figure 1. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were set to align with our research questions, focusing on EJ and CJ education at the primary and secondary levels. We intentionally excluded any articles that focused on education for university students or adults as these settings either have a very different set of educational standards, or none at all. Additionally, discussing sensitive topics like EJ and CJ should be approached differently at the primary and secondary levels than for adults. A full list of inclusion and exclusion criteria can be found in Table 1. Table 1. Eligibility criteria for peer-reviewed items Inclusion Criteria Exclusion Criteria • Included the term “environmental justice” or “climate justice” in the abstract or title • Within the primary and/or secondary education space (i.e., pre-college) • Were identified as a peer-reviewed journal article or conference paper, or a dissertation/thesis • Did not include anything about justice, but simply environmental concerns or climate change in general • Did not include any discussion or efforts at the primary and/or secondary education level • Were focused on EJ or CJ, but not within the education space • The full paper was not available in English After removing duplicates, we reviewed 55 abstracts based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in the exclusion of 24 items. We then reviewed the remaining 31 articles in full based on the eligibility criteria and excluded an additional 12. We came to a final number of 19 papers to be analysed in full. The inclusion process is shown graphically in Figure 1, based on the PRISMA flowchart for systematic reviews by Moher et al. (2009). 2.2 Paper Analysis Once the final set of 19 peer-reviewed journal articles (n = 16), conference papers (n = 1), and book chapters (n = 2) were determined, we created a list of citations with relevant study information (e.g., engineering context, grade level, location of intervention, EJ or CJ, participant type, etc.). We reviewed articles in full and annotated them or relevant information and themes. Additional categories emerged while reviewing the articles, such as whether the paper was discussing why EJ or CJ should be included in education as opposed to a research study with curriculum implementation, surveys, and/or interviews. The emerging trends and answers to our research questions are provided in the following section. The five papers that were classified as EJ or CJ curriculum interventions (further described in Section 4.2) were coded according to the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education (Moore, et al., 2014). This framework is a comprehensive classification of engineering learning and consists of nine key indicators: (1) Process of Design (POD), (2) Apply Science, Engineering, and Mathematics (SEM), (3) Engineering Thinking (EThink), (4) Conceptions of Engineers and Engineering (CEE), (5) Engineering Tools (ETool), (6) Issues, Solutions, and Impacts (ISI), (7) Ethics, (8) Teamwork (Team), and (9) Communication Related to Engineering (Comm-Engr). Fig. 1. Adaption of the PRISMA flowchart (Moher et al., 2009) for systematic literature review 2.3 Limitations This paper is limited by our approach of using a systematized literature review method instead of a systematic review. However, as previously discussed, a systematized literature review is more appropriate for this study considering our goals. The first author completed the search for literature, exclusion process, and generation of themes and answers to the research questions. This work was reviewed and discussed among all authors to prevent bias or misinterpretation. We believe the findings of our study are trustworthy and provide informative trends and themes about primary and secondary EJ and CJ education. 3 RESULTS The final 19 included items were annotated and categorized to look for trends in the type of work being published about EJ and CJ education, as shown in Table 2. Publications that implemented curriculum, surveys, and/or interviews were classified as a research study (RS; n = 9). Authors whose work focused on advocating for EJ and/or CJ to be included in education were classified as discussions (D; n = 8). These items, along with the two literature reviews (LR; n = 2) that met our inclusion criteria, were exempt from identifying grade level or location codes as they were not applicable. Table 2. Literature on Primary and Secondary EJ and CJ Education Article Approacha Participant Information Location Borgerding et al., 2024 RS Secondary science teachers United States Bursa, 2022 RS Pre-service social studies teachers Not provided Collins & Watson, 2023 D - - Cripps, 2025 D - - Gladwin et al., 2022 RS High school students ages 14 – 18 18 countries across 5 continents Guevara-Herrero et al., 2024 LR - - Haq et al., 2024 RS 5th and 6th grade students United States Kruidenier & Morrison, 2024 D - - McGregor & Christie, 2021 RS Primary, secondary, and support teachers Scotland Mendoza et al., 2020 RS 5th grade students United States Miles et al., 2021 D - - Miles et al., 2024 D - - Penrod & Kaly, 2024 RS 4th grade United States Robinson et al., 2023 D - - Satchwell et al., 2024 RS 5th and 6th grade students ages 9 – 11 United Kingdom; Fiji Schindel et al., 2023 D - - Stapleton, 2023 D - - Trott et al., 2023 LR - - Vamvalis, 2023 RS Students ages 16 – 20 Canada a D, LR, or RS denote a discussion paper, literature review, or research study, respectively. 4 DISCUSSION 4.1 Research Question 1: How has the quantity of EJ and CJ curriculum in primary and secondary education changed over time? Despite our search not being bounded by publication date, the first included item was not published until 2013, and there is a six-year gap until we see a second item. It is not until 2021 that multiple publications meet our inclusion criteria. Over the past five years, there has been a significant increase in the amount of literature addressing these topics. We expect the lower number of publications in 2025 to be due to the initial search process taking place in February 2025. Overall, this is an encouraging trend that we hope to see continue as we raise awareness and foster education for the importance of environmental and climate justice. Fig. 2. Distribution of included papers (n = 19) from 2010 through February 2025 4.2 Research Question 2: What lessons have researchers learned about implementing primary and secondary EJ and CJ education and do these connect to engineering thinking? Our second research question has a less detailed answer than anticipated since many of the included papers do not focus on a curriculum intervention. Four of the research papers were focused on teachers and/or activists. The five papers that do focus on the implementation of EJ and/or CJ curriculum all saw positive results for the student participants, as shown in Table 3. These studies prove that not only are EJ and CJ a vital part of education to increase student understanding about climate change and the environment, but they also develop important skills that children need as they grow into functioning members of society. We are delighted that, while low in number, the impact being made through EJ and CJ education consists exclusively of positive results. When coding each article using the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education, we found that none of the articles explicitly mentioned an engineering context or setting when teaching EJ or CJ. However, all five articles met the criteria for at least two key indicators. All of the articles include indication of Issues, Solutions, and Impact (ISI), and Communication Related to Engineering (CommEngr). These promising results indicate that engineering may be an ideal context to teach EJ and CJ in the pre-college space. Table 3. Summary of EJ and CJ curriculum and findings for intervention studies. Article Curriculum Intervention Summary of Findings Key Indicator(s) of Quality Engr. Ed. Gladwin et al., 2022 Seven-month high school energy literacy curriculum; CJ was a central topic. Some schools embedded it in curriculum while others offered it as an extracurricular. Students generated hope, assessed how they had otherwise learned about CJ, and developed justicefocused relationships with one another. ISI Team Comm-Engr Haq et al., 2024 Interdisciplinary curriculum unit for 5th and 6th grade across English, mathematics, science, and social studies. Students increased in their awareness, ownership, civic involvement, and debate skills. SEM EThink ISI Comm-Engr Mendoza et al., 2020 Nine-week EJ unit for 5th graders with nature walks, campaign posters, and letters to community members. Students were significantly more invested in being stewards of the environment, wrote persuasive letters to community members, cleaned up nature, and felt empowered. ISI Comm-Engr Penrod & Kaley, 2024 Yearlong project for 4th graders about CJ through investigating local bird ecology. Students, acting as scientists who collected data to support their claims, felt connected to nature and empowered to educate their community. ISI Comm-Engr Satchwell et al., 2024 Two-year collaborative project between the UK and Fiji for 45 students in 5th and 6th grade. Children learned about the relationship between anthropogenic activity and climate change through developing empathetic relationships. EThink ISI Team Comm-Engr 4.3 Discussion Papers While not originally considered within the research questions, eight discussion papers met our inclusion criteria and provide an important contribution to the discourse. These papers primarily focused on three themes: (1) identifying that current education efforts, especially about climate change, lack a justice perspective, (2) recommending that climate change education be reframed around justice for a variety of reasons, and (3) providing recommendations for how this type of justicefocused education can be implemented. These important articles provide both research-backed justification for why justice should be included as well as the necessary steps we can take to implement this improved form of education. 5 CONCLUSIONS As stated by Kruidenier & Morrison (2013), “It is one thing to express a value system, but it is quite another to express fairly what practices would follow from that value system. The move from theory to practice matters” (p. 434). This systematized literature review revealed that while there is only a small effort being made toward EJ and CJ education in the pre-college space, these efforts are increasing with time. Despite the lack of engineering context, these complex topics inherently include components of engineering. Moving forward, we hope to see a continued increase in published literature about this topic and the development of EJ and CJ curriculum that utilizes engineering as the context.