Raechel Portelli (@raportelli.bsky.social)

Using sense of place to communicate actionable environmental and climate justice in interdisciplinary classrooms - Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences As global environmental changes disproportionately impact disadvantaged communities, critical research documents subsequent environmental and climate injustices. Communicating these injustices in higher education university classrooms grows increasingly urgent as students are eager to engage with justice issues in professional and personal settings. We identify major challenges for teaching environmental and climate justice within interdisciplinary fields and propose a pedagogical framework based on relational scales of “sense of place” to communicate meaningful and culturally relevant environmental justice topics in university classrooms with multiple dimensions of student diversity. In response to a lack of accessible and tangible pedagogical environmental justice tools across all environmental fields, we highlight practical classroom applications situated at the intersection of individual, community, and place scales. Doing so shows that engaging pedagogical exercises in the sense of place scales can communicate an environmental and climate justice that is not just another academic term, but also an actionable opportunity for students within and beyond classrooms. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13412-025-01062-z