Improving EU Undergraduates’ Climate Change Awareness, Sense of Responsibility and Psychological Well-Being
ClimateTeach2025 is a 30-month Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership in Higher Education that aims to enhance European undergraduates’ awareness of climate change, their sense of responsibility, and their psychological well-being in this context. The coordinating institution is Kırşehir Ahi Evran University (Türkiye) and the project partners are Piriteknoloji (Çanakkale, Türkiye), Polygonal North oy (Raisio, Finland), University of Bucharest (Bucharest, Romania) and Webster Vienna Private University (Vienna, Austria).

Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue; it is a multidimensional crisis that directly affects individuals’ emotional world, hopes for the future and mental health. Among young people, increasing levels of eco-anxiety, climate grief and uncertainty about the future highlight the need for educational programmes that are not only knowledge-based but also supportive in terms of psychological well-being. ClimateTeach2025 addresses this need by going beyond a purely informational approach and adopting a holistic framework that integrates the dimensions of knowledge, emotion, behaviour and well-being.

Within the project, a multidimensional, valid and reliable Climate Change Awareness Assessment Tool will be developed for university students. This tool will measure climate change awareness across knowledge, emotional responses, behavioural tendencies and psychological well-being. It will not only reveal the current level of awareness in partner countries, but also identify the areas in which students need further support and development, thus providing a solid scientific basis for the subsequent training activities.

Based on the needs analysis and the findings from this tool, partners will collaboratively design a digital, modular Climate Change Training Programme. The core of the programme will consist of four main modules, addressing the scientific background of climate change, emotional reactions and coping, environmentally responsible behaviours, and resilience and well-being. The modules will be designed to be accessible, flexible and sustainable, offering an engaging learning experience for undergraduates. To this end, an online learning platform, interactive e-content and learning materials, guides for students and educators, hands-on activities and assessment tools will be developed.

The training programme will be piloted at the partner universities with diverse groups of students. Through pre- and post-tests, changes in students’ climate change awareness as well as their satisfaction with the programme will be evaluated. The results will guide the revision and improvement of the training modules and will help to shape a model that can be integrated into different study programmes and higher education institutions across Europe.

ClimateTeach2025 seeks not only to empower individual students, but also to contribute to the educational policies and practices of higher education institutions. The final outputs – including the assessment tool, country reports on climate change awareness, innovative digital training programme, guides for teaching staff and counsellors, and the online learning environment – will be made available for wider use, supporting the long-term integration of climate change and well-being oriented education into university curricula.

By bringing together expertise from environmental education, psychology, educational sciences, educational technology and digital content development, this multinational and multidisciplinary partnership creates a strong framework for impactful action. ClimateTeach2025 ultimately aims to support university students in becoming more knowledgeable, more sensitive, more responsible and more resilient in the face of the climate crisis, and to contribute to the emergence of a climate-conscious, psychologically robust and hopeful young generation across Europe.