Humanity is living in a climate emergency where climate change should be significantly mitigated; additionally, greater efforts should be made to adapt to it. To date, relatively little research has been carried out on young people’s skills in terms of them mitigating and, in particular, adapting to the changes caused by climate change. The complex climate change issues of mitigation and adaptation are conceptually difficult for children because climate change is not directly evidenced in their daily lives. This study focuses on looking at mitigation and adaptation from the perspective of children. Meaning-making coping strategies enable the maintenance of constructive hope regarding climate change. In the present study, elementary and secondary students (n = 950) responded to an online questionnaire. Statistical methods were used to gather data on how students’ general knowledge of climate change and their mitigation and adaptation knowledge predicted their constructive hope regarding climate change. This study reveals that the students had a relatively high level of constructive hope and that general climate change knowledge predicted students’ constructive hope well.

Education for sustainable development is needed at all school levels. The aim of this systematic literature review is to increase knowledge on sustainability competences in the context of primary school education for sustainable development. The sustainability competences considered in this study are systems thinking competence, futures thinking competence, values thinking competence, collaboration competence and action-oriented competence. The systematic search was based on PRISMA guidelines, and it was conducted using following databases: ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science and the LUC Finna international e-materials database. The search yielded 14 of 93 articles. The research findings show that systems thinking competence and collaboration competence were the most common of the sustainability competences studied, followed by action-oriented competence and values thinking competence, leaving futures thinking competence less investigated. Furthermore, the findings show that the learning of sustainability competences is based on children’s dialogue and collaboration with other pupils and teachers using their imagination to achieve common environmental goals in their daily lives.

Climate change is a global concern, and the need to address it is urgent. Therefore, climate change education has been developed in recent years. Meaning making, coping strategies, and solution-oriented climate education tasks enable and maintain hope for positive results with regard to climate change. However, there is still uncertainty as to how students’ knowledge of climate change mitigation measures affects their attitudes. In the present study, elementary and secondary students in Finland (n = 950) responded to an online questionnaire. A principal component analysis, a hierarchical regression analysis, a correlation coefficients, a t-test, and a Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance were used for the analysis to understand what kind of hope students had towards climate change and how their knowledge and optimism regarding climate change affected their hope. The data revealed that the students had a relatively high constructive hope rather than denial hope when it comes to climate change. Additionally, this hope was not built on a minimisation of climate change. The results indicated that the significant predictors for climate change mitigation were gender, climate change knowledge, and constructive hope. A typology of student positions with regard to climate change is introduced as conclusions.

A reformed national curriculum has introduced transformative and sociocultural learning elements to the Finnish education system. In addition, sustainability and outdoor education remain pressing issues for Finnish educators. We conducted a content analysis of the views of outdoor education held by student teachers enrolled in first-year sustainability and outdoor education courses in Finland (n = 46). The goal was to identify the learning environments and pedagogical ideas of student teachers. The student teachers emphasised the role of nature in outdoor education and identified locality as an important learning environment. Their surrounding environments included both built and unbuilt environments. The teaching methods they wrote were appropriate outdoor education, active learning, participatory learning, making observations and multidisciplinary learning especially for sustainability issues. Notably, technology and digitalisation were not emphasised in the results. Overall, the student teachers had a strong preliminary knowledge of outdoor learning spaces and clear visions for conducting outdoor education.