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Who’s striking, and who’s not? Avoiding and acknowledging bias in youth climate activism research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2022

Hannah R. Feldman Open the ORCID record for Hannah R. Feldman [Opens in a new window]
Hannah R. Feldman*
Affiliation:
The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia Institute for Water Futures, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia 3A Institute, School of Cybernetics, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: hannah.feldman@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

The School Strike 4 Climate is a timely opportunity for education and research sectors to support youth stories in climate change policy, and foster impactful relationships between researchers, teachers and students. But much research in this space has inherent selection biases where youth representation in research is limited by place (such as attendance at a protest), snowball sampling (often within already engaged groups) or through education channels (such as private or independent schools), ultimately leading to unrepresentative response samples. This comment explores the challenges and opportunities for equitable inclusion of teenage voices in environmental research, including some practical approaches (such as inclusion of public schools) to ensure more diverse samples are represented. Implications for how the existing body of research should be viewed is discussed, highlighting an existing lack of representation of students that do not overtly engage with climate activism or School Strikes.

Keywords

public schoolresearch methodsschool strikeschoolyouth

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Type
Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 38 , Special Issue 1: School Strike for Climate , March 2022 , pp. 112 - 118
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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