ROSS BUCKINGHAM, HEAD OF ENGLISH, SHREWSBURY HOUSE SCHOOL, UK
Abstract
The imperative to address the climate emergency demands that education shifts beyond factual transmission and towards innovative and imaginative pedagogy. This research presents evidence that demonstrates how narrative pedagogy, anchored in children’s literature and the wider English canon, can cultivate ecological consciousness, creative thinking and ethical responsibility in students. Drawing on empirical classroom inquiry and the ecocritical analysis of four key texts, the study details a progression where multimodal literary engagement transforms passive reading into environmental creative agency. Crucially, the findings from this primary research provide a robust, transferable pedagogical framework for the strategic integration of ecological thinking into the Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 English curricula. This framework enables secondary teachers to seamlessly apply the ecocritical lens to set texts and transact
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I really enjoyed this article. Over the years, I have noticed how students become increasingly engaged with a range of important global issues through reading, debating and writing about them in English lessons. In my classroom, I have seen students disappear down research rabbit holes while preparing to debate plastic pollution, write an argumentative response on climate change or draft a poem about bees.
Using an ecocritical lens to explore both children’s literature and established texts makes a lot of sense. It seems like an effective and natural way to embed environmental education within the existing curriculum while developing students’ creativity, critical thinking and awareness of the world around them.