Education
Education has had a special place in Panu’s heart. His mother did her life’s work as a teacher, and as a small boy, Panu used to run on the corridors of the local school. Some of Panu’s first work experiences came from being a substitute teacher, and his later duties have included education among people of various ages.
Panu has been involved in environmental education for a long time, and some of the roots of his eco-anxiety work come from this field. He has co-operated with experienced Finnish environmental educators such as Essi Aarnio-Linnanvuori and Anna Lehtonen, using a wide variety of methods. In Finland, he has been part of many networks and organizations in environmental education, and he was given a national environmental education award in 2018.
Panu is considered one of the leading scholars in relation to eco-emotions and (environmental) education, and he was invited to write an entry for the topic for the Oxford Bibliographies Online. His 2020 article “Eco-anxiety and Environmental Education” has been widely read and cited. It proposed a simple three-category model of engaging with eco-anxiety and other eco-emotions in education.
Two of the methods Panu has developed and used are Mind Map of Eco-emotions and the Spectrum Line of Eco-emotions. Both are available online and discussed in the recent volume on climate education, The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World (2024). Panu has been active in the related network led by Elin Kelsey, Jennifer Atkinson, and Sarah Jaquette Ray.
Articles by Panu and colleagues on education include, in addition to those mentioned above, the following:
* Lehtonen, A., & Pihkala, P. (2021). Encounters with climate change and its psychosocial aspects through performance making among young people. Environmental Education Research, 27(5), 743–761. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1923663
* Kurth, C., & Pihkala, P. (2024). Centering an Environmental Ethic in Climate Crisis. In S. Fraser-Burgess, J. Heybach, & D. Metro-Roland (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook on Ethics and Education (pp. 734–757). Cambridge University Press. Manuscript available here.