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.The Climate Crisis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
The climate crisis impacts everyone across the planet including children and young people.
Look at the climate change consequences diagram below:
Adapted from content found on climatechangeresources.org
Consider the following questions:
You may be interested in the following resources:
ü #FridaysForFuture is a youth-led movement that began in August 2018, after 15-year-old Greta Thunberg and other young activists sat in front of the Swedish parliament every schoolday for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis
ü Teach The Future is a youth-led campaign in the United Kingdom to urgently repurpose the entire education system around the climate emergency and ecological crisis
ü Here you can find resources from Education for Climate Justice, a series of workshops organised by young people and researchers. Check out in particular the keynote talk by Jayden Foytlin, a young activist and flood survivor from Louisiana, and this youth-led conversation on emotional responses to intergenerational climate injustice.
ü This page on the UNICEF website showcases youth climate activists from Bangladesh, Dominica, Mexico, Philippines and Zimbabwe.
Children's Health and Illness from an Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Liliana Arias Urueña carried out a qualitative study on children ́s experiences (6-12 years) of living with Cleft Lip and Palate (CLP) in Colombia as her PhD research.
CLP is a birth condition resulting from a failure in the development of facial structures during the development of the embryo. It features visible clefts in the upper lip and the palate which often compromise speech or nutrition.
Most existing research around CLP takes a genetic or environmental approach, and Liliana’s study contributes a qualitative, sociologically informed perspective to this field. By taking an interdisciplinary approach to CLP, her research highlights children’s own views on CLP: they tend to see it as a form of bodily difference rather than an illness, and their own explanations for it are informed by cultural and religious narratives rather than medical ones. However, children actively negotiated medical models as part of their CLP treatment and constructed this as their own ‘project’. Through embodiment and emotion work, children resisted and challenged some of the social costs of the stigma associated with the speech difficulties, lip scars and nasal differences resulting from CLP.
The following are some excerpts from Liliana’s fieldnotes. The children’s names are pseudonyms and permission to use these excerpts has been granted.
[...] Liliana: Ok... so people with CLP are not sick, is that what you mean?
Dilan: Yeah! For some reason God took something away but in return gave us something extra, in my case brain!
Liliana: Ok... so people... hmmm ok so if someone has a missing part in their lip... God gives them something else in return?
Dilan: Yeah, isn’t it mummy?
Mum: [Shy laughter]
Dilan: My mum said that.
Liliana: Ok she said so.
Mum: And what did God give you in return?
Dilan: My brain! Mum: [Laughter]
Liliana: Brain! [laughter] Ok, cool.
Dilan: I’ve always been the 12th in my class... I don ́t know I just like being the 12th, don ́t like being the first.
Liliana: I’ve heard that some people say that speech and listening difficulties can be a kind of illness ...what do you think?
Lina: I think it ́s something normal... ok ...I don’t speak perfectly and obviously something must have happened to me... but... I think it [speech impairment] isn ́t a disease...
Liliana: Hmm ok how is something normal? Tell me more about that.
Lina: Well... it [speech impairment] is normal because any person in the world could have the difficulty I have; I mean speaking like I do. But it is not normal too because... the other way round... the majority of people don’t speak like I do.
Lina: Sometimes... well mmm... when they [teachers] don ́t understand ...say... if they [teachers] don ́t know me very well ... then they [peers] repeat to her what [unintelligible]
Liliana: Ok...can you say it again... what you...?
Lina: What I [unintelligible], what the teacher didn ́t understand about what I said.
Mum: She means if the teacher doesn ́t understand what Lina says, then a child tells the teacher what Lina said.
Liliana: Ooohh ok, and do you like that? [having help from peers when the teacher does not understand her speech]
Lina: Yeah! I do... that means they [peers] are listening to me and they understand me when I speak.
[…]
Lina: We were doing a workshop in class, we have to read aloud... it was my turn to read... I read and some minutes later some girls next to me were like: “Lina, honestly we didn ́t understand what you said”.
Liliana: What happened then?
Lina: Well, I had to read if I wanted to get the workshop done...so I wouldn ́t stay there...doing nothing, so I carried on, I continued reading.
Marcos: My nose is a bit droopy but it can be fixed when I turn 18! [...] I ́m a bit afraid that they [doctors] do a surgery on my nose, but after that I would be a normal boy.
Liliana: What does being a normal child mean?
Marcos: I want to be free from this weight!
Liliana: Which one?
Marcos: My difficulty [...] they [peers] criticise me too much and mock me about my nose.
Consider the following questions:
You can read the full thesis, ‘Children ́s experiences of living with Cleft Lip and Palate (CLP): a qualitative study in Colombia,’ in the Edinburgh Research Archive.
Matching Writers and Disciplines Quiz
Click on link below to test yourself on writers and their disciplines discussed in the book. Use the dropdown list in the bottom right corner of the Quizlet embed to select ‘Learn’. Then match the theorist(s) and their concept or idea (on the left) to the discipline it shares with childhood studies (on the right). Note that there may be multiple theorists/concepts for each discipline.
As you complete this activity, consider:
For educators, here is a printable resource of the same quiz.
