Systematic review of the effects of climate change education on cognition, attitude, and behavior of schoolchildren and their entourage

Climate change education (CCE) is increasingly recognized as one critical aspect in coping with the climate crisis. One major area of debate is the ‘knowledge-behavior gap’ which expresses the concern that increased climate understanding does not necessarily lead to behavioral change. Thus, there is an urgent need for identifying interventions that are more effective to foster societal change. Using a rigorous search strategy informed by the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses statement, we identified 146 articles evaluating effects of pedagogical interventions on cognition, attitude or behavior on schoolchildren or their entourage. Most analyzed documents (80%) claimed positive effects of the interventions on the searched outcomes. However, few studies explicitly focused on behavior as the outcome variable (18%), on adaptation to climate change consequences (3%), on the Global South (18%) or on rural areas (5%). Despite these shortcomings, we were able to identify some emerging themes in the literature concerning climate action through education. Alternative innovative pedagogical approaches, different to the classical teacher-centered classroom model tend to obtain better results. Similarly, since emotions act as mediators of all CCE outcomes, pedagogical interventions that harness them appear essential. Finally, we offer four critical recommendations: (i) strengthening CCE community practices, (ii) promoting non-classical, cross-curricular pedagogies grounded in locally and personally relevant contexts and stronger connections to nature, (iii) reporting context-specific educational intervention results more systematically, and (iv) building a common interdisciplinary language and methodological framework. Overall, our analysis sheds light on the highly dynamic climate education literature, global inequalities in the field, and emergent practices supporting effective intervention design and bridging the knowledge-action gap.