No tragedies before grade four? Expert opinion on teaching climate change to childre

One response to solving global climate change is the education of the next generation. The goal is to ensure they mature as responsible environmental citizens. This research explores expert opinion across disciplines to determine when children should learn about climate change. David Sobel (1996) asserts that there should be no tragedies taught before grade four and many have followed his guideline. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five participants to garner their views regarding Sobel's conjecture; a thought-piece was circulated to the participants to further elicit their opinions. This study indicates that Sobel's benchmark is not applicable across all contexts and that a critical appraisal by educators is necessary to determine what children need to know about climate change given their circumstances. A set of guidelines and guiding principles emerged from the data to help provide insight to educators about teaching climate change.