CORE conference 2026: Climate Collaborations.

Partnerships at all societal levels and among diverse organizations with interdisciplinary approaches are critical for achieving a sustainable future for people and planet as articulated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) #17. Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are critical partners In addressing climate change (SDG#13) because globally about 80% identify with a faith tradition, and religions share the characteristics of: transnational and inter-generational reach, moral imperative of care for the earth and disadvantaged humans, and transformative actions. We share from our experiences as persons of faith who are academic scientists, nonformal and informal educators and work on climate-related ecology research, education, and action.

The 2015 release of the SDGs and Pope Francis’ Laudato si 2015 encyclical – On Care for our Common Home, catalyzed partnership-building between scientists and FBOs including joint documents (e.g. Our Common Home guide 2023, by the Vatican and Stockholm Environmental Institute), Faith Pavilions at UN-COP meetings, Laudato si Action Platform and many resources for building effective mutual partnerships, including enhancing literacy across disciplines (Boorse & Jablonski 2024 https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-024-00077-8)

Scientists have been increasing in interdisciplinarity to address climate change. The Ecological Society of America (ESA) features more human-related and interdisciplinary sections and meeting activities including environmental justice, traditional ecological knowledge, community partnerships, and responding to the SDGs. Two of the four themes in the college curriculum developed by ESA (Four-Dimensional Ecology Education Framework – 4DEE) are interdisciplinary.

Religious educators can promote interdisciplinary collaboration by encouraging literacy across disciplines and sharing how FBOs engage in climate justice. Understanding how people learn about subjects that are emotionally difficult and approaches that are age and culturally appropriate are needed. Globally, youth mental health consequences attributed to climate change are increasing including anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies and post-traumatic stress in response to climate disasters. Youth welcome a hope-filled vision and concrete action opportunities with peers and elders.

Partnerships between religious educators, scientists, and youth are key for more effective climate action. FBOs, promoters of hope and unity, are under-represented in youth climate networks, yet are well positioned globally as owners of 8% of habitable land and 50% of schools. Connecting with the current UN Decades: eg. Ecosystem Restoration, Sciences (and Water) for Sustainable Development, Family Farming, and Eradication of Poverty can connect scientists and FBOs in finding solutions. Hands-on land service such as tree-planting and invasive species eradication combined with ecospirituality, can restore hope and ecosystem health.

Many colleges and universities are plagued by an ever-increasing speed of the academy, something endemic to a Western culture built on the values of industrialization and capitalism. More and more Americans are relying on fast food, fast fashion, fast delivery, fast communication, all resulting in a fast-paced lifestyle that leads to exhaustion and burnout. The influences of capitalism on education have been vast, and, in my view, detrimental to cultivating a just, educated citizenry committed to the common good. I argue that higher learning educators need to begin incorporating slow pedagogy into their educational praxis to resist the fast-paced nature of academia in an industrial-capitalist system. Slow pedagogy incorporates principles from the global Slow Movement started as the Slow Food Movement in Italy in the 1980s in response to fast food’s growth in Rome. Some of the principles of the Slow Movement to inform pedagogy include intentionality, sustainability, fairness, prioritizing quality over quantity, and authentic connectedness. Professors should embrace these principles to explore topics in greater depth rather than oversaturating our students minds with endless information. Slow pedagogy asks, “Is the depositing of information into students’ brains actually learning? Actually education?” in the same way that the Slow Food Movement asked, “Does eating fast food actually result in nutrition and wellbeing?” The Slow Movement asks us to reconsider cultural habits and the status quo of speed, efficiency, and convenience. This presentation proposes a slow pedagogy in response to the speed of daily life that has resulted from Western culture’s embrace of the industrial-capitalist system that has caused harm to learners and the environment in which they learn. Slow pedagogy suggests a counter-cultural approach to education that resists the fast-paced nature of our society that does violence to both people and planet. Slow pedagogy privileges substance over abundance, quality over quantity, depth over breadth, intentionality over speed, and community over individualism. The embrace of Slow principles and values in our pedagogy can actively respond to both educational injustice and ecological injustice and move us and our students to a more just and sustainable ecosystem.

The RE curriculum in England under the World Religions approach has a strong tendency to abstraction. This is found in the repeated encounter of doctrinal constructs with little or no increase in complexity for students. In a curriculum in which beliefs about reality are abstracted from people, times and places, students rarely engage with wider contexts. This is a grave omission when it comes to the urgent need for the ecological and climate understanding we face, and which all educators need to contribute to. Human domination of ecosystems and the climate and ecological emergencies cannot be explored in abstract. It is happening on this planet, now, in concrete times and places. Pupils need to explore case studies which reveal contexts, including power dynamics, to make sense of the world as it is. A clear idea of what has led us to this point allows the next generation to imagine solutions, alternatives and evolution. I will share two examples of what this could look like in the RE curriculum. I will exemplify principles developed for the emerging Religion and Worldviews approach in England which allows a far greater engagement with context and diversity in the study of religions. I will show how teachers can unlock critical, contextual thinking through well-chosen case studies. I will argue that exploring the worldviews which perpetuate domination and destruction of our home is the unique contribution that RE could make to education.

Religious Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is being conceptually and didactically developed in Religious Education (RE). So far, neither the developed concepts nor the corresponding learning settings have been empirically tested. The project addresses this issue by empirically examining the underlying thesis that a politically oriented religious ESD contributes to environmentally conscious planned behaviour. Therefore, the project uses learning settings that were designed on the basis of didactic principles of a politically oriented religious ESD. They are sensitive to heterogeneity and target lower secondary school students, who are statistically more likely to have negative, sceptical or undecided environmental attitudes and who are rarely studied in RE. The project aims to investigate the extent to which these students are empowered to adopt more environmentally conscious planned behaviour on the basis of the designed learning settings. The project uses a contrastive sample to compare extracurricular, non-formal learning with school-based, formal religious learning. Accordingly, the project is structured into two sub-projects: Sub-project 1 investigates extracurricular religious learning in social seminaries for educationally disadvantaged students. Sub-project 2 investigates religious learning in school-based religious education in 9-10th lower secondary school classes (Haupt-/Sekundarschulen). The project does not claim to survey the effectiveness of learning settings in an evidence-based way. Rather, it is about the empirical reconstruction of process-related effects of religious ESD based on learning settings. The study follows a mixed-method approach. The initial learning baseline and results are collected quantitatively through questionnaires; the learning status, results and processes are collected in more detail through qualitative semi-standardised interviews as well as observation studies and the evaluation of learning products. At the CORE conference, we primarily aim to present initial findings from our project, alongside a brief outline of its design, implementation, and objectives.

The ecological crisis frequently generates anxiety, grief, and paralysis, presenting a profound challenge for secular and religious educational settings alike. This presentation explores how urban congregations in Stockholm address this urgent pedagogical challenge through collaborative liturgical design. Based on a qualitative multi-case study of climate-focused worship services celebrated on Judgement Sunday, we examine how clergy, musicians, church wardens, and congregants collaborate to create communal spaces for “eco-learning”—learning processes that support inner transformation and agency in response to the climate crisis. Drawing on transformative learning theory, this study conceptualizes the liturgy through the lens of pedagogical affordances and constraints. Specifically, we investigate the delicate interplay between rupture (the affordance of disruptive elements that challenge established assumptions) and holding (the ritual and communal constraints that safely contain the experience and prevent overwhelm). Without rupture, prior frames of reference remain unsettled and little new learning occurs; yet, without the holding environment collaboratively constructed by the parish community and familiar rites, participants risk retreating into defense, denial, or despair. By triangulating leader intentions (interviews), liturgical artifacts (observations), and congregant experiences (micro-surveys) across 8–10 ecotheological services, this research highlights the vital community collaboration required to safely navigate these tensions. We will share findings on how specific liturgical elements—such as sermons, music, and physical symbols—embody this balance, fostering cognitive insight, affective processing, and embodied agency. Ultimately, this presentation will let church practice speak back to the academy, offering interdisciplinary insights into how collaborative, ritualized holding environments can inform broader pedagogical strategies for climate education

As major transnational actors within civil society, religious traditions hold significant yet underexplored potential for fostering ecological awareness and ethical responsibility. This keynote conceptualizes Interreligious Education for Sustainable Development (irESD) as a subject-oriented pedagogical approach that integrates spiritual resources from diverse religious traditions into sustainability-focused religious education. Drawing on the Erasmus+ project Facing Global Challenges.  Environmental and Peace Education in Interreligious Cooperation for Religious Teacher Training (2023–2026), the contribution highlights teacher education as a key field for enabling learning environments that empower pupils in pluralistic societies. IrESD is understood as fostering students’ agency, resilience, and hope by addressing existential questions of meaning and responsibility in the context of climate change, climate justice, and peace education. Emphasizing spirituality as connectedness, interreligious learning supports pupils in developing participatory competencies and collective intentionality beyond religious and cultural boundaries. In this way, irESD offers an encouraging educational response to experiences of crisis and powerlessness, strengthening learners’ capacity for transformative action.

Climate change education is increasingly recognised as a crucial site for moral formation, meaning-making, and the cultivation of hope within Religious Education and Practical Theology. Yet a significant gap remains: the near absence of research and pedagogical development addressing learners with intellectual disabilities. This paper argues that such exclusion constitutes not only an empirical oversight but also a theological and ethical problem, challenging commitments to justice, inclusion, and human dignity. Drawing on an interdisciplinary participatory research project currently under development, the paper outlines theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological foundations for integrating special education perspectives into climate change education. Existing research highlights both the prevalence of climate anxiety among young people and the particular vulnerability of individuals with intellectual disabilities to climate-related impacts, while also demonstrating their marginalisation in research and practice . This gap provides a critical starting point for rethinking climate pedagogy. The project develops a place-based and embodied approach, centred on the concept Livets vägar (“Paths of Life”), integrating biodiversity, existential sustainability, and sensory engagement. Through collaboration between schools, researchers, and community partners, it explores how children in adapted educational settings experience and interpret climate-related issues. Particular attention is given to non-verbal, affective, and embodied forms of knowing, which challenge dominant cognitively oriented pedagogies. The paper advances three arguments. First, climate change education in Religious Education and Practical Theology must expand its epistemological frameworks to include embodied and relational modes of learning. Second, inclusive pedagogy requires reconceptualisation, recognising learners with intellectual disabilities as contributors to theological and ethical reflection. Third, place-based environments—such as cemeteries as ecological and existential sites—offer distinctive opportunities to connect environmental awareness with questions of mortality, hope, and belonging. While primarily theoretical, the paper presents initial examples from the forthcoming project, including sensory-based learning pathways and dialogical stations designed to foster participation and meaning-making. It contributes to the emerging intersection of climate education, special education, and theology, and calls for more inclusive and justice-oriented approaches to the climate crisis.

The water crisis is an ecological problem. Not only that, the water crisis is also part of
climate change. This article presents proposed ideas for overcoming the water crisis through
religious education. This idea is derived from religious education for youth. Religious
education is carried out by describing the foundations and methods.

Keywords: foundations, methods, religious education, youth, water crisis

What can sermons dealing with climate change contribute to public climate discourse? This paper offers an exemplary response to this question by comparing the findings of three single case studies of German-language sermons (delivered in 2021/22) with a synthesis of broader developments in German public climate discourse. The presentation focuses on potentials identifiable in the three sermons that are at the same time underrepresented in public discourse: allowing oneself to be shaped, 2) introducing into emotional topographies, 3) rendering in/equality visible, 4) stimulating a forward-looking sense of possibility. The paper sketches these potentials by drawing on the analyses of the sermons and bringing them into conversation with homiletical and sociological literature.