From Periphery to Core: A Framework for Embedding Climate Change Education in University Curricula at Rivers State University

Ogbanga, Mina Margaret

doi:10.67007/ijsds-2026-6f21d4ff

Climate change content in Nigerian university curricula remains peripheral: confined, where it appears at all, to elective modules or specialist environmental science programmes, rather than embedded as a core dimension of academic training across disciplines. This paper develops a framework for understanding why this peripheral status persists and how it might be changed at Rivers State University, drawing on Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning, Bourdieu’s field theory and concept of academic capital, UNESCO’s key competencies framework for education for sustainable development, and Rogers’s theory of the diffusion of innovations. The paper argues that embedding climate change education as a core curricular dimension requires attention to four distinct dynamics: the transformative, perspective-shifting quality genuine climate change learning requires; the academic field’s own internal distribution of prestige and capital, which determines curricular authority; the specific, UNESCO-defined competencies climate change education should build; and the empirically documented pattern by which curricular innovations diffuse, or fail to diffuse, through academic institutions. The paper grounds its argument in confirmed Nigerian evidence spanning multiple scales, including a study of climate change teaching capacity across southeast Nigerian agriculture faculties, a related study on funding and policy constraints on universities’ climate-relevant programming, a national curriculum review, a recent 213-participant mixed-methods study across Nigerian tertiary institutions, and an international comparator on successful cross-disciplinary integration. The paper advances five testable propositions concerning curricular diffusion, academic field dynamics, and transformative pedagogy, and concludes with recommendations for moving climate change education from curricular periphery to curricular core at Rivers State University.

From Periphery to Core: A Framework for Embedding Climate Change Education in University Curricula at Rivers State University

Abstract