Curriculum As Assemblage: Responding To Climate Change Through Education

Abstract

The accelerating impacts of climate change present profound challenges for education systems, exposing limitations in dominant curriculum models that prioritise stability, standardisation, and linear progression. While education is widely positioned as a critical response to the climate crisis, prevailing curricula often struggle to engage the complexity, uncertainty, and ethical dimensions that climate change demands. This paper examines curriculum as assemblage as a conceptual response to climate change through education, arguing that meaningful engagement requires a fundamental reconceptualisation of curriculum itself rather than the addition of new content within existing structures. Drawing on assemblage theory and contemporary curriculum scholarship, the study employs a systematic literature review to synthesise research across curriculum studies, climate change education, and sustainability-oriented design. The analysis is structured around three objectives: critically interrogating traditional curriculum approaches through an assemblage lens; examining how conceptualising curriculum as assemblage enables flexibility and responsiveness in school-based climate change education; and exploring the implications of an assemblage approach for sustainability-oriented curriculum design. The findings indicate that traditional curriculum frameworks are poorly aligned with the relational, affective, and socio-ecological nature of climate change, often constraining teachers’ professional judgement and limiting context-sensitive learning. In contrast, assemblage theory reframes curriculum as a dynamic, relational process emerging through interactions among human and more-than-human actors, institutional conditions, and material environments. This perspective supports flexible, transdisciplinary and ethically grounded approaches to climate change education, while also revealing tensions related to policy constraints, teacher capacity, and curriculum coherence. The paper contributes to curriculum theory by advancing curriculum as assemblage as a generative framework for reimagining education in an era of climate uncertainty, offering conceptual insights for curriculum design, policy, and future research oriented toward sustainable educational futures.