Symposium on Climate Communication & Eco-Pedagogy

How do we communicate sustainability across languages, cultures, and communities?

This interdisciplinary symposium brings together researchers and practitioners from the UK, Brazil, China and Australia to explore climate communication and eco-pedagogy in multilingual and global contexts.

About the keynote presentation

This keynote presents emerging insights from the project entitled Eco-Pedagogy in the Amazon: Empowering English Teachers for Sustainable Futures, a Brazil–UK collaboration between the Federal University of Pará and the University of Birmingham.

The project investigates how English language education can support climate communication, ecological awareness and community engagement when teaching materials are grounded in Amazonian environmental and sociocultural realities.

Drawing on critical pedagogy, ecolinguistics and CLIL/content-based approaches, the initiative has involved the co-creation and classroom implementation of eco-pedagogical English lessons with teachers in Pará, Brazil. These lessons integrate themes such as biodiversity, climate justice, local communities, traditional knowledge and students’ lived experiences in the Amazon.

The presentation will discuss the project’s design, implementation process and emerging evidence from classroom observations, teacher reflections, student questionnaires and focus group data. Early insights suggest that locally grounded English lessons can help teachers move beyond decontextualised language practice and create spaces for critical reflection on sustainability, identity, community and environmental responsibility.

The keynote will also consider the implications of this work for climate communication, English language teacher education and the decolonisation of language curricula in multilingual and multicultural contexts.

Programme

• 10.00am - Keynote speech by English professors from UFPA - Prof Anderson Maia and Andre Lima on project findings of Brazil–UK collaboration on sustainability-focused English teaching
• 11.00am - Communication strategies on climate change - a comparative study between UK and Australia - Presentation by Dr Jenny Wong
• 11.30am - Coffee Break
• 11.45am - Relationship between Geodiversity and Well-being and how can this be embedded in classroom settings - Presentation by Ho-Chung Tam
• 12.30pm Lunch
• 1pm - Tour around Winterbourne Garden
• 1:30pm - Exploring Eco Translation - Case studies in the English translations of Story of Stone - Presentation by Zhou You
• 2.00pm Panel Discussions 
  
  

Symposium Organiser and for enquiries: Dr Jenny Wong (j.y.wong@bham.ac.uk)