Year of Action for Education and Climate Action 2022 - 2023

The Faculty of Education is particularly attentive to climate change, which is rooted in an excessive, inequitable, and unsustainable consumption model. This consumption model is historically and culturally situated and learned; therefore, it can be changed.

Our Faculty (through its teaching, research, and services offered to the community) is well positioned to foster change by educating people about local and global dynamics and by exploring how we can change our lifestyles, which threaten to extinguish human life on the planet. We believe that urgent, concrete educational action is needed to address these issues and to stop us from continuing down this path to self-destruction.

We recognize that our actions can have a positive impact on our community. Therefore, we do not have the luxury of wasting any opportunity to make a difference. Taking action is our social and ethical responsibility – it is not a choice.

We seek to implement actions that are based on pedagogies of care and responsibility, the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals, as well as other relevant Canadian documents, including the Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future, the Quebec City Statement of Commitment, the current strategic plans of the Faculty of Education and the University of Ottawa, etc. To do so, we are launching a year of action on education and climate, which will aim to solidify our commitment to a sustainable future for both humans and non-humans.

Over the next year, we will aim to prepare an action plan to guide and inform the Faculty of Education on education and climate action.

The working group will base the development of this plan on the principles and responsibilities outlined in the Accord on Education for a Sustainable Future, which stresses:

• the importance of: Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing; relationality; social justice; well-being; engagement; and hope; 
• our responsibilities: to ourselves and our students; to our relationships; for our environmental impact; and in terms of leadership.

The plan will guide our curricular, research, service, policy, and outreach activities. Likewise, we will provide opportunities to participate, learn, and reflect together, including conferences and workshops, among other activities oriented around the concepts of interdisciplinarity and collaboration.