Pedagogies for disaster and climate risk reduction

Credit: 24Novembers via Adobe Stock.

20 February 2025

By Kaori Kitagawa

As climate change accelerates, regions worldwide are grappling with increased flooding, droughts and wildfires. Areas prone to seismic activity frequently face large-scale earthquakes. Such catastrophic events disrupt lives and have fatal consequences. We need ‘education’ – formal, informal and lifelong learning – to help citizens navigate them. In this series of blog posts, I and my colleague Hans Svennevig discuss pedagogical approaches to education for reducing disaster and climate risk. This post explores the range of pedagogies used, and in the second I look in particular at ‘co-learning’ approaches in this field. In the third post Hans shares practical examples.

We refer to this area of study as ‘disaster and climate education’ (DCE), incorporating synonyms such as ‘disaster education’, ‘preparedness education’ and ‘disaster risk reduction education’. DCE is mainly about ‘education of and for disaster’, focusing on preparing for probable disaster events. This then excludes ‘education in emergencies’, which aims to re-establish education or provide forms of education in a conflict or disaster zone.

DCE activities involve learning as they aim to change individual behaviours and perceptions concerning disasters. Historically, fields such as civil engineering, environmental studies and risk management have provided DCE initiatives in target contexts. More generally, in school curricula subjects such as Geography and Social Studies usually cover topics related to ‘disaster’ and ‘climate’. Those subjects may include content such as preparedness in disaster-prone countries, but that is more common outside the formal classroom, which is our focus in this series.

In DCE, there is a need to strengthen pedagogy by considering the learning process. John Preston was one of the first education experts to connect the theory and practice of disaster risk reduction and education. Following Preston’s work, we can identify four groups of pedagogies and their utility within DCE. Those groups, outlined below, are not ranked in terms of which is better or worse. Each DCE project has to decide on its pedagogy and methodology based on contextual factors such as risk profile, available resources and residents’ needs.

The first group of pedagogies sits under the heading of ‘knowledge-transmission’, where experts as teachers provide DCE knowledge and skills to non-expert learners. This pedagogy can be identified in many DCE projects, which develop programmes focusing on ‘what should be taught’, deliver the programmes and evaluate their outcomes. The division of expert/non-expert and teacher/learner is clear in such cases. Seminars and lectures are examples of this pedagogical approach.

The second group adopts community-based or participatory approaches. This is now common within DCE. It has been largely prompted by the ‘all-of-society engagement’ emphasised in the UN’s Sendai Framework. In this group, though, there are DCE initiatives that refer to learning theories without clear pedagogical analysis. For example, many studies use ‘social learning’ as a synonym for ‘participation’ without examining whether social learning occurred. Mark Reed et al have critiqued what they see as a ‘lack of conceptual clarity’ in the application of the theory.

The third group of pedagogies deals with such a critique by adopting a ‘collaborative learning’ approach based on social constructivist perspectives. Action research and ethnographic approaches are often chosen as the methodology. Experts and non-experts work together in planning and decision-making of DCE activities. This allows non-expert learners’ proactive participation in the activities and fosters among them a sense of ownership of the activities – and, consequently, their preparedness. In some cases, both experts and non-experts form ‘a community of practice’, in which non-experts’ ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ allows them to exercise agency and move towards full participation with experts’ support. Collaborative learning is a relational model which requires trust building.

Building on collaborative learning, some DCE pedagogies – and research – take the form of activism in pursuing disaster and climate justice. Despite some overlaps with collaborative learning, this fourth group of pedagogies, which I term ‘co-learning’, diverges in its political purposes of societal transformation, influenced by emancipatory theorists such as Paulo Freire. Participants are ‘co-learners and co-producers’ of knowledge leading to action. I look in more detail at this approach in the second blog post in this series.