Introduction
Climate change is an increasingly political topic (Maeseele, Reference Maeseele2009; Pechar, Bernauer & Mayer, Reference Pechar, Bernauer and Mayer2018) and as with many other political millstones in history (see Bessant, Reference Bessant2020), young people are caught in the crossfire as victims of climate change inaction, and of circumstances which they have not created. But ‘issues’ are what bring democratic publics into existence: ‘implication in an affair is what sparks public involvement in politics’ (Marres, Reference Marres, Latour and Weibel2005, p. 14). The School Strike 4 Climate movement (A.K.A. Skolstrejk för Klimatet or Fridays for Future) is a prime example of a bottom-up public of youth finding pathways to engagement with polity, through an issue that will affect them deeply and personally in decades to come.
In their movement, School Strikers face a complex ecosystem where agency is afforded to them by people in positions of power, and political engagement is seen as something that is acquired in a top-down fashion from parents, schools or ‘more knowledgeable’ adults (Andersson, Reference Andersson2015). These same young people are often dismissed as too inexperienced to participate in politics (Bessant, Reference Bessant2020b), or further criticised for their perceived inability to engage with climate policy, specifically (Feldman, Reference Feldman2020). By classic measures of political engagement, they are often seen as ‘disengaged’ from polity, not participating in forms of political behaviour that previous generations would easily identify (such as campaigning or joining unions) (Delli Carpini, Reference Delli Carpini2000), despite youth political behaviours simply evolving over time (Norris, Reference Norris2003; Pickard, Reference Pickard2019).
With this patchwork of adult governance and stereotypes, it fast becomes clear that young people are not a homogeneous group, and many factors can influence how young people engage with climate change or environmental activism. These include: parental influences (Mead et al., Reference Mead, Roser-Renouf, Rimal, Flora, Maibach and Leiserowitz2012); practical barriers such as transportation issues, particularly for regional or remote students (Stuart, Thomas & Donaghue, Reference Stuart, Thomas and Donaghue2018); structural barriers such as school administrations themselves (Vromen & Collin, Reference Vromen and Collin2010); or a lack of efficacy when it comes to their engagement (see, e.g. Stuart et al., Reference Stuart, Thomas and Donaghue2018). Each of these adult structures plays a role in enabling or disabling youth voice in the School Strike, and thus, in research about the School Strike.
Investigators of the School Strike have an obligation to act deliberately and persistently to ensure young people are a key part of any research that looks to tell the story of student-led climate change narratives. As Mayes (Reference Mayes2019) states, ‘agency is not possessed by speaking subjects, but is materially assembled, and ethical responsibility is immanent’ (p. 1192), and researchers are the ones with this responsibility in the academy. But, as explored here, connecting with these students can be exceptionally challenging. Therefore, the research community must also keep in mind the inherent biases that may exist within the body of work forming with a School Strike focus, and be sure to not over represent particularly engaged young people as a normative standard within our work. Without these considerations, we are not only at risk of creating an overly romantic understanding of youth political engagement, but also entrenching marginalisation of underrepresented groups and perpetuating intergenerational inequalities.
This piece explores some of the present sampling challenges when it comes to engaging with young people on the School Strike 4 Climate, and how the research community might consider their practice and interpretation of new research moving forward in light of these biases.
Present Challenges
A key challenge with School Strike research arises when climate change engagement (such as at School Strike events) is centralised and framed as ubiquitous among young people: how can we ensure nonparticipants or other diverse groups are equally represented in research? Often, research describing nonactivist behaviours and beliefs extrapolate from those who do attend protest events (Stuart et al., Reference Stuart, Thomas and Donaghue2018). That is, attendance-enabling factors are explored, and the absence of these taken as reasons for non-attendance at a protest. But there may be any number of reasons why publics (including young people) may disengage from scientific issues, which are distinct and different from either apathy (see Burns & Medvecky, Reference Burns and Medvecky2018) or protest attendance (see Feldman, Reference Feldman2021). Despite this, much international and local research on the School Strike 4 Climate movement has taken advantage of convenience sampling through School Strike events themselves. Wahlström et al. (Reference Wahlström, Sommer, Kocyba, de Vydt, De Moor, Davies and Buzogany2019), for example, surveyed European protest attendees (aged 14–19) at the global School Strike event on 15 March, 2019, to gain a better understanding of protestors’ motivations for attending. Expanding further afield, the same researchers also explored the September 2019 Strikes across the globe, including Australia (de Moor, Uba, Wahlström, Wennerhag, & de Vydt, Reference de Moor, Uba, Wahlström, Wennerhag and de Vydt2020). These studies are some of the largest we have seen to date on the School Strike movement, with over 5000 participants across 18 nations (collectively). Such research projects prioritise the perspectives of young people present at events or already engaged with the School Strike movement. Given the many and varied reasons why a young person may not engage with a School Strike event, however, research that focuses on event participation misses key exploration areas such as barriers to attendance, motivators to attend for those that were unable to, or even how young people are engaging with climate change in their own diverse communities. With events alone, it’s impossible to get a full picture of how and why teenagers would engage with public climate change discourse (or not), as non-participant voices are inherently left out.
Stepping away from event-centric research, School Strike researchers may look to online platforms to connect with young people on climate change issues. But online spaces also rely on group membership (see, e.g. Conroy, Feezell, & Guerrero, Reference Conroy, Feezell and Guerrero2012), and spaces occupied by teenage students are unlikely to cross over with networks occupied by research staff. To work with teenagers for School Strike research, it is possible to rely on existing networks (political groups on Facebook, academic networks on Twitter, via direct email to colleagues, etc.) for recruitment, but adult social media habits are not reflective of teenage habits. Only 6% of regular Facebook users, for example, are aged 13–17 (Social Media News, 2020). Ultimately, the crossover between our academic online group membership, and those of teens, is scarce. On platforms where algorithms are largely responsible for the content we consume, such as Instagram (Agung & Darma, Reference Agung and Darma2019; Instagram, 2021), connecting with young people outside of our own curated (adult-focused) networks is a difficult task. Both online or event-focused pathways highlight the risk of recurrently engaging with the same groups of students—keen participants, or those already in our online communities—and potentially misrepresenting them as a dominant view of how young people engage (or do not) with climate change activism.
To examine a phenomenon so intrinsically linked to education as the School Strike 4 Climate, it would also stand to reason that schools present an opportunity for research to connect with students to conduct research on youth climate activism. Public schools, however, can be notoriously taxing to access for academic research projects (Renes, Ringwalt, Clark & Hanley, Reference Renes, Ringwalt, Clark and Hanley2007). For example regional jurisdictions can require lengthy ethical vetting processes that can cost research projects months or even years of precious time (both in Australia and abroad). This can lead to an over reliance on Catholic and Independent institutions for study participants, and while not a matter of simply ‘lesser or better’ educational outcomes between public (government-funded) and non-government schools, non-government schools tend to serve more advantaged populations (Flack, Walker, Bickerstaff & Margetts, Reference Flack, Walker, Bickerstaff and Margetts2020). At the same time, anecdotally, restricting access to the broader, more diverse pool of schools can lead to some non-government schools being overwhelmed by requests to engage their students, with several requests per week not uncommon. Not only does this put excess strain on non-government school administrators, but repeatedly engaging with school students from non-government schools faces the same risk as online or event-sampling: that an unrepresentative group of students is presented as normative. Factors such as socio-economic status will influence the school life of a student, and individual schools cannot be expected to simply ameliorate this influence on their own (Smith, Parr, & Muhidin, Reference Smith, Parr and Muhidin2019).
In sum, selection biases may be influencing the voices presented in youth and School Strike research, as connecting with young people that are disengaged from climate activism or discourse are unlikely to be readily approached to participate in research. With these in mind, there are several considerations for researchers in youth activism fields to take on board, both for best practice in methods moving forward, and for our collective interpretation of the emerging body of work.Footnote 1
Implications: Methods and Practice
These selection biases may be pervasive, but not unavoidable, and there are several steps that researchers can take to ensure diversity in represented students. For example, researchers would be well placed to ensure resourcing for relationship and application development to undertake research in state run public schools. In Australia, 65.7% of all students in 2019 were enrolled in public schooling (compared to 19.5% Catholic and 14.8% Independent schools) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020). In March of 2019, over 150,000 Australian students participated in more than 60 strikes across Australia, many of which were in regional or remote areas (SS4C Australia, 2020), where remote and regional students also predominantly attend government schools, with lower numbers of very remote (13.3%), remote (21.8%) and outer regional (25.8%) students enrolled in Catholic or Independent non-government schooling than their major city counterparts (36.4%) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020). Similarly, 83.7% of all First Nations students also attend government schooling (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020). This means that inclusion of public schools in School Strike research likely means higher contributions from regional or First Nations students, as well as other students from diverse (socio-economic, linguistic, cultural) backgrounds.
Working with students in the public sector, however, is only possible if regulators also enable relationships between academia and government schools to flourish. Critics of ‘student voice’ work have argued that ‘student engagement’ can turn into another mechanism for controlling young people’s body and speech (Mayes, Reference Mayes2020). We see this in the School Strike 4 Climate case, where parental or academic control may be influencing participation in a Strike (see, e.g. Feldman, Reference Feldman2021). For example, many state-level administrators currently only enable youth participation in research via parental consent, even with older, upper high school students in the public system. Policies such as these tightly govern which young people can have a ‘voice’ and which cannot, as (for example) those that return permission forms are proportionally more likely to be female and from higher income families, and less likely to be from minority backgrounds (Esbensen, Melde, Taylor & Peterson, Reference Esbensen, Melde, Taylor and Peterson2008). On a pragmatic level, policies such as these also contravene the federal-level National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2015), which advocates for participation in research according to understanding and maturity level, rather than age. Though just a small example of bureaucratic process, steps such as removing the need for parental consent forms can signal more agency being handed to young people (despite it being at the hands of a governing body).
Investigating the School Strike 4 Climate in government schools may put state education departments in a delicate position of enabling research into dissent from the very systems they support. But withholding access further solidifies the exact power young people are rebelling against. Departmental administrators hold great gate-keeping power in School Strike research, and endorsement of government school inclusion can add a rich diversity in student engagement that cannot be fully captured through events, online, Independent or Catholic schools in isolation.
If researchers are enabled to connect with students via schools, there are further considerations for minimising sampling bias among participants. For example, surveys or focus groups should be conducted in ‘neutral’ classrooms, such as English or ‘home room’ classes, rather than in classes where students may already be engaged with the research topics, such as in Science or Political and Legal studies. Precedent for eliminating this form of bias includes Bostrom et al. (Reference Bostrom, O’Connor, Böhm, Hanss, Bodi, Ekström and Sælensminde2012), who undertook survey research with 644 undergraduate business students from universities across Austria, Bangladesh, Finland, Germany, Norway and the United States, on support for climate change policy. Their study specifically noted that business school students were selected as an attempt to control a level of cultural influence that may have arisen from choosing students in disciplines heavily associated with climate change engagement. Similarly, there may emerge in these settings a ‘social desirability bias’ (see, e.g. Krumpal, Reference Krumpal2013) where students restrict their responses so as to not deviate from social norms of their peers. Tools such as Most People Projection Questioning, where respondents are provided an opportunity to share potentially undesirable opinions as though they were an estimate of others’ feelings or behaviours (Ostapczuk & Musch, Reference Ostapczuk and Musch2011) can also prove useful in these scenarios.
Implications: Beyond the Practicalities
It’s important to highlight that such complex systems of research take time and resourcing that other pathways may not. Imperatively, researchers should acknowledge that any outside influence on a school can detract from an already overloaded curriculum (Renes, Ringwalt, Clark, & Hanley, Reference Renes, Ringwalt, Clark and Hanley2007). School staff are an absolutely essential part of school-based research (Alibali & Nathan, Reference Alibali and Nathan2010), so ensuring that there is adequate time in the research project to support and account for school-based disruptions will result in smoother research for all. This is especially the case when endorsements of truancy to attend a Strike could come with considerable risk to teaching staff as well as students themselves. As part of this, researchers must also be comfortable with varying their approach school-to-school, as no two institutions are exactly the same (Wagner, Tubman & Gil, Reference Wagner, Tubman and Gil2004), and may come with different approaches to building and maintaining genuine research partnerships. Similarly, engaging teachers authentically during early stages of a project can allow for external input on the study design (Alibali & Nathan, Reference Alibali and Nathan2010) and lead to better project outcomes for all parties.
There is a danger, however, that these relationships can be to the detriment of young voices in research. Aside from young people themselves, many actors exist in the process of public education research, including the investigator, university administration and ethics committees, school teaching staff, and departmental administrators. Each of these actors exists within, and benefits from, power structures that can influence how young people are enabled to share their School Strike story. Each has a role to play in ensuring productive, inclusive, and ethical research is undertaken with (not ‘on’) teenagers in study of the School Strike, as well as development of projects that can be mutually beneficial for both research and school systems. Mayes (Reference Mayes2020) in their work on ‘voice’ and its role in youth-centred research, reflects that inclusion of students in school reform can push young people to the expected norms of a well-behaved pupil. That is to say, structures of governance within a school can lead to ‘“no pedagogically acceptable language” to contest school practices’ (Mayes, Reference Mayes2020, p. 460). For example, in my own research, positive relationships with school executives have led to ‘nominations’ of exemplar students to be the face of their school in our discussions of the School Strike (Feldman, Reference Feldman2021). This governmentality may limit opportunities for students (whether cognisant or not) to freely criticise the powers that influence their daily lives and choices around the School Strike.
Non-empowered students in these structures may be labelled as ‘disengaged’ from the research or from School Strikes more broadly. Science education often champions that publics (such as young people) should be ‘engaged with’ scientific issues (such as climate change) in order to make democratic decisions on scientific topics (see, e.g. Stocklmayer, Bryant & Gore, Reference Stocklmayer, Bryant and Gore2002). But there is a danger here that alignment with normative scientific positions becomes directly associated with exercising political agency (by ‘understanding’ and therefore acting on ‘the science’) (Burns & Medvecky, Reference Burns and Medvecky2018). Following this logic, those expressing a different view are criticised as antiscience and hence ‘anti-democratic’ (p. 122). It is crucial, then, that these perspectives and biases are acknowledged in the framing or hearing of youth voices that may choose not to participate in the School Strike, climate discourse, or science education. Given the positioning of the School Strike as inherently ‘good’ among many research participants (including those in my own work), it can be easy to dismiss those who may hold oppositional views to the Strikes.
Therefore, when interpreting published youth research, it is imperative that the academic community not gloss over these biases that may have been created in observing, documenting, or working with school and youth communities. An awareness of those voices that may have been governed out of our conversations regarding the School Strike needs to be at the front of mind. It is important, too, to hold this awareness alongside claims of ‘disengaged’ students when compared to ‘engaged’ or keen research participants: there are many experiences and perspectives that have been left out of present research, and its yet unknown what these are. Without these perspectives, it’s impossible to get a better understanding of youth participation in (or abstention from) the movement, as well as how the School Strike has shaped discourse and engagement with climate change among school aged people.
Conclusion
The School Strike 4 Climate movement is a case study in young people rebelling against abstract and powerful actors (Holmberg & Alvinius, Reference Holmberg and Alvinius2019). It also has the potential to model equitable inclusion of young people in research. However, without multiple avenues for connecting with students, this may not be possible: Explicit and implicit biases exist via the many sampling methods and power structures exercised to engage with young people in research. As a community of practice, it is crucial that these biases are openly and continually discussed, to mitigate the risk of overglamourising participation in Strikes as normative and pervasive. While School Strike research is a new and evolving area, avoiding perpetuation of bias within the same privileged groups can ensure a rich, diverse, and empowered voice for Strikers and other youth research partners. Climate change effects all young people, regardless of their location, socio-economic status or cultural background. The least we can do is try to reach them.
Acknowledgements
Great thanks to the issue editors Blanche Verlie and Alicia Flynn, who’s rich and insightful input shaped not only this piece but how I will approach my work going forward. Thanks, too, to the anonymous reviewers for their considered and encouraging critiques.
Financial Support
The author receives funding from the Australian Government under the Australian Government Research Training Program (AGRTP).
Conflicts of Interest
None.
Originality statement
This manuscript is an original work that has not been submitted to nor published anywhere else. All nonoriginal work is cited.
Hannah R. Feldman is a science communicator by education and training, Hannah has spent much of her career travelling Australia, working with educators and high school students to upskill in hands-on STEM and design thinking. She is currently a Research Fellow investigating the School Strike 4 Climate movement, and working with teenagers at the intersection of activism, politics, environment and technology.
