Our methodology

Our thinking on heat literacy emerged from personal experiences of heat fuelled perils and our knowledge that future perils will be faced as we age and become more vulnerable. Hilary lives adjacent to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in Cairns, far north Queensland, and has experienced a number of cyclones including the big ones, Cyclone Larry in March 2006, Cyclone Yasi in January 2011 and Cyclone Jasper in December 2023. Her unequivocal, shock point was in November 2018, when she witnessed the trauma of mass, Spectacled Flying Fox deaths from a heat stress event in the Cairns CBD. That first day, at noon, katabatic winds drove up temperature to 43 degrees Celsius in the shade. This is what she encountered:

For Larri and Angela, their unequivocal reckonings came a year later during the Black Summer bushfires that occurred between December 2019 and January 2020. Larri lives on the New South Wales (NSW) south coast. She, her partner, and their two dogs, were forced to flee their home in Manyana during a terrible bushfire as their safety could not be assured. They first went to a friend’s home in Nowra, but as these massive fires continued, they fled a second time and sought refuge in Sydney where the air over Australia’s most famous city was filled with smoke and the corridors of hospitals overflowed with residents suffering respiratory ailments. That same summer, Angela was living on a rural property in Wamboin, NSW. When wild flames approached, she evacuated her desperately ill husband and their dog to a hotel in Canberra and then returned to her property to fight the fire. It was a close run thing. After her husband’s death, Angela moved to Adelaide, where, she has recently lived the Meta-crisis through bitter drought and the massive algal bloom death event in South Australian coastal waters (see an account by Barrera, Reference Barrera2025).

Our heat thinking began from personal knowledge of thermal stress. Being affected by heat, we then thought on our “response-abilities” as environmental educators. Our inquiry turned to addressing the real-world consequences excessive heat is presenting to human and more-than-human communities. We found we were “thinking with” heat in alignment with Isabelle Stengers’ (Reference Stengers and Muecke2018) methodology. We were allowing thermal phenomena to shape our own inquiry. Stengers’ concepts of slow science, speculative pragmatism, and “thinking with” reverse a priori models of investigating physical phenomena. Heat has long been a phenomenon to be measured and explained (see our Table 1). In the Meta-crisis, heat grows in noticeability and importance. Heat intrudes into and shapes our actions and decisions. We can no longer afford to be deluded. Another small irony is that when humans experience extreme heat, our mental processes slow (Carias et al., Reference Carias, Johnston, Knott and Sweeney2024). So, methodologically, when we were “thinking with” the phenomenon of heat, in reality we were “thinking with” by “thinking within” our air-conditioned offices.

Table 1.

Scientific concepts for a curriculum of heat

In seeking to conceptualise heat literacy as a survival literacy for the 21^st century, we employed a desktop, document study method. We sought and examined published literature, not to conduct a systematic review, but to collect an idiographic set of materials with which to more fully understand the challenges of heat education. Starting with a suite of key words that included “heat,” “literacy,” “climate” and “education,” we searched for contemporary reports, peer reviewed studies, curriculum documents and policy documents. In this article, we draw from research and grey literature in the fields of climate science, heat science, health science, science education, environmental education, state and national Australian curriculum, education policies, and public information, where scientific knowledge is re-interpreted for a general audience.

In “thinking with,” we take seriously the prediction that within 25 years, all children on Earth will be regularly experiencing heatwaves and dangerous heat conditions (UNICEF, 2024). We have come to understand how heat education is necessary across formal education sectors (early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary), at all community levels (where heat learning may take the form of health promotion and risk management) and in informal education settings where we see potential for ad hoc heat learning in preparing for heat-related perils. Research shows the value of education in helping people interpret frequent and extreme weather events. In one study, Cologna et al. (Reference Cologna, Meiler, Kropf, Lüthi, Mede, Bresch, Lecuona, Berger, Besley, Brick, Joubert, Maibach, Mihelj, Oreskes, Schäfer, Linden, Abdulsalam, Shamsi and Aczel2025) found that “subjective attribution” of the perception of perils linked to global heating was predictive of greater support for climate action policy.

Heat literacy as a survival literacy for C21

Heat literacy is a 21^st century literacy precisely because we find ourselves in a thermodynamic mess. Heat literacy = heat learning + knowledge + capabilities to act for safety and survival in the face of life threatening conditions in a warming world. Inventive educators can create literacies to address the threatening materialities caused by relentless and careless pollutions - the externalities of global, hyper-capitalism. Creating new literacies and adapting curriculum, pedagogy and practices indicates a responsive, 21^st century environmental education. As an adaptative response to global warming, there is need for people of all ages, locations, professions and lifestyles to be heat literate. What we propose in this article is applicable across all levels of formal, informal and community-based education.

We came define heat literacy as including heat numeracy through,

1. i. being able to understand (as best as possible in context) the scientific, health, social, cultural and place-based dimensions of extreme heat in conditions of global heating,

2. ii. being able to interpret credible information on heat risks,

3. iii. being able to keep oneself and others safe during extreme heat events; and

4. iv. being able to make informed, equitable, and adaptive decisions to reduce vulnerability to heat-related harm to oneself, one’s human and non-human kin in the short, medium and longer term.

Place-based, functional literacy is a participatory literacy crucial for promoting better means, designs, practices and policies for desired political, social, cultural and environmental transformations. Writing in terms of “eco-literacy” – an older creative literacy developed by environmental educators – Julie Singleton (Reference Singleton2024, np) asks: What do our students need to know to live quality lives not only in a global economy but also in their local communities? What is needed to learn to achieve sustainability? How can people learn to live well in their own places?

Heat literacy is a functional literacy that maps readily into Agenda 2030 and to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The purpose is to enable individuals and groups to make informed decisions and undertake actions. The term “functional” signifies the ability to understand, evaluate, and use knowledge to make informed decisions and take protective action. In addition to reading, writing and data interpretation skills, is the capacity to critically scrutinise the meanings of data, to recognise risk, to understand the safety warnings from trusted sources, and to be able to act on one’s knowledge. Ideally the heat learning leads to constructive conversations, participatory actions, activism, and advocacy.

We conceive heat literacy within environmental education as sitting within or proximate to current conceptions of climate change education, climate justice education, climate literacy education, ocean (+ cryosphere) literacy education, and carbon literacy education, which can be collectively named as climate crisis education. Heat literacy as a proximate form of climate literacy is also a health literacy The first reason heat literacy is proximate is because heat doesn’t only happen to other people. The phenomenon of excessive and prolonged heat is an embodied experience carrying known health risks, and for which the amelioration factors are well studied. Direct impacts include heat-related illnesses (e.g., heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heatstroke) with a high risk of dehydration and mortality. Indirect impacts include exacerbations of other perils, such as drought, fire, and higher levels of air pollution (VanderMolen & Hatchett, Reference VanderMolen and Hatchett2024).

The second reason for proximation is that heat education does not necessarily require personal acceptance of the fossil-fuelled causes of global warming. Heat is a topic that can be judiciously introduced to a classroom on science learning and/or health and safety grounds alone. Learning the direct causes of extreme heating does lead to higher measured levels of climate literacy in schools (Kumar et al., Reference Kumar, Sahani, Rawat, Debele, Tiwari, Mendes Emygdio, Abhijith, Kukadia, Holmes and Pfautsch2023), However, educators can find themselves working in highly politicised settings where open talk of the climate crisis is socially unsafe. Heat literacy is a less contentious term for educators to use when seeking ways to teach about the burgeoning perils of global warming

In developing specific competencies, capacities and capabilities, heat learning starts with developing knowledge of heat-related concepts, including the science of heat and its effects on health on human and on more-than-human bodies. We include an extensive list of science curriculum concepts in Table 1 along with a brief explanation of each of those terms. Heat learning starts with the Sun and includes the four laws of thermodynamics, and a consideration of entropy, the underlying principle that accounts for why we all get hot in hot weather. Literacy implies knowing what do with heat knowledge and knowing how to take up appropriate action including strategies for managing heat exposure and heat stress for humans and our biosphere companions. This is why our list of scientific concepts in the next section includes the recent innovations trying to measure and communicate thermal safety.

Climate literacy has been instrumentally defined as one’s “understanding of how the climate system works, how human actions influence climate, and how climate influences people and other parts of the Earth system” (USGCRP, 2024, 2). In seeking a more values-based definition, the Center for Climate Literacy defines climate literacy as “Earth civics” –recognising the opportunity to harmonise “multiple ways of knowing … into a lived, emotionally charged, and personally felt understanding of the mess we are in.” Climate literacy is an individual and collective responsibility and a call to action “to stand up for everyone’s biospheric inheritance” (CCL, 2025, np). The Carbon Literacy project promotes “awareness of the carbon costs and impacts of everyday activities and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis” (CLP, 2025). Carbon molecule pollution drives air and ocean heating as the Sun’s infrared energy is excessively trapped in the biosphere.

All the climate crisis literacies are related, and we don’t favour one type over another. Our argument to educators, is that because excessive heat affects metabolic function, and the Earth’s measured heat imbalance is accelerating, scientific literacy, numeracy and adaptive safe behaviours must form core components of heat education.

Concepts for heat literacy – it’s not only physics

Science literacy is described in the Australian Curriculum 9.0 as, “being able to use critical and creative thinking skills … to ask questions and draw evidence-based conclusions using scientific knowledge and practices.” Importantly, literacy includes the ability to “engage meaningfully with contemporary issues, evaluate different points of view and make informed decisions” (ACARA, 2025a). Our systematic search of formal Australian state curriculums for heat related concepts revealed many opportunities for integrating heat learning into primary and secondary schools. Understanding how heat affects the environment, communities and individuals can be addressed by teachers in Science, HASS especially Geography, and English, HPE, and in the Australian Curriculum v 9.0 Design and Technologies Learning Area where students are encouraged to be discerning decision-makers, and “apply design and systems thinking and design processes to investigate, generate, evaluate, iterate and improve design ideas, processes and solutions” (ACARA, 2025b).

Within the Science Learning Area, heat constructs are introduced in Year 3, then developed across the Year levels particularly in Physics. The core knowledges are the science of heat, its effects on health and the environment, and key strategies for managing heat exposure (e.g. knowing how heat is generated and measured; recognising the risks of heat exposure, heat exhaustion and heat stroke; and knowing how to mitigate these risks where possible). Rapidly changing environmental conditions are partially recognised in formal curriculums either directly or indirectly.

There are few impediments to educators delivering heat literacy programmes in schools. The core physical concepts (see Table 1) are readily integrated into science, health and sports programmes and sit underneath occupational health and safety policies. Examples of this practice include the Queensland state government full policy on managing heat in schools (Queensland Education, 2024) and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology national heatwave service (BOM, 2026).

The scientific content presented in Table 1 identifies a suite of heat concepts. The list is indicative, not definitive. What we hoped to achieve was a starting place. We have not mapped these concepts to state curriculums. The concepts are appropriately modifiable from Year 3 to Year 12 and can be covered in adult education settings. It may be only a few years before school systems are forced to mandate heat learning as an adaptation strategy as we cannot escape the four laws of thermodynamics.

Ecosystems and heat literacy

Heat is an ecosystem issue. Excessive heat degrades the sustainability of biodiversity in critical ways. Revegetation consultant, Glenn Christie (of Succession Ecology) points out the optimum heat range for most human and more-than-human life on Earth is within the thermal limits of 25°C to 32°C. This is commonly known as the “third Goldilocks zone” of recent history (King & Sherwood, Reference King and Sherwood2023) where the temperatures are not too hot and not too cold for successful human habitation. Glenn advises that going beyond these limits, either lower or higher affects the interdependencies of ecological systems critical to planetary life (personal communication 2025). Thus, the capacity of agriculture, aquaculture, and “wild” places are threatened.

In a world of increasing climatic extremes, we need to consider how farming practices can accommodate the changed conditions and what educative processes are most useful. Food quality and quantity production is likely to decline. Increased temperatures affect grazing systems through complex interactions that effect plant growth, grazing management, vegetation, animal production (QDNRM, 2004). Vital soil microbes can stop functioning in soil temperatures greater than 60°C. Protein production in grains such as wheat is dependent on optimum moisture and temperature. For example, Australian wheat is high in protein, lower in yield and therefore more expensive compared to cooler climate Scottish wheat. Seeds germinate at optimum temperatures between 21°C to 24 °C. We know that bees and bats, critical for pollination, are heat sensitive. The optimal temperature range for honeybee survival is between 34.5°C and 35.5°C. Flying foxes, Australia’s great forest pollinators at landscape scale are susceptible to extreme heat events having no sweat glands (Diengdoh et al., Reference Diengdoh, Ondei, Hunt and Brook2022). Heat literacy is (or will be) a factor in ongoing agricultural and primary production education; wildlife and wild places education; and environmental education.

Safety as an aspect of heat literacy

The scientific modelling predicts that extreme heat will shape our education practices decades into the future (ACF, 2025; Grant et al., Reference Grant, Vanderkelen, Gudmundsson, Fischer, Seneviratne and Thiery2025). The medical literature on heat illness education informs much of what we already know about heat as a biophysical threat. Heat is the number one weather-related killer event worldwide even in developed nations (Ballester & Turrubiates, Reference Ballester, Quijal-Zamorano, Méndez Turrubiates, Pegenaute, Herrmann, Robine, Basagaña, Tonne, Antó and Achebak2023). In Australia, extreme heat is the number one cause of weather-related death in all parts of the mainland continent, with older, poorer and sicker people being the most vulnerable (Le et al., Reference Le, Adhikari and Harrington2024). In less rich nations, infants are at the highest risk if they also suffer poor nutrition. Heat exposure is associated with negative developmental growth (“wasting” in medical terms) as well as higher mortality (Bonell et al., Reference Bonell, Vicedo-Cabrera, Moirano, Sonko, Jeffries, Moore, Haines, Prentice and Murray2024).

Responsible governments and health advisory agencies have developed codified responses to try to keep populations safer (Powder, Reference Powder2024) as heat stress can affect anybody spending time in hot environments. In Australia, heat risk communications are found in schools; local, state and federal government offices; within employer organisations; emergency services organisations; wildlife care and community volunteer groups (etc.) and the dangers of excessive heat and prolonged heatwaves are recognised within standard occupational health and safety (OHS) policies and procedures. For safety’s sake, the Queensland Government (2025) advises that “everybody is at risk of heat-related health problems, and it’s important to know the risks of heat, who is at risk, how to prepare, and how to protect yourself and others.” This is a sensible policy approach given serious problems arise when higher humidity is thrown into the mix.

Heathy, fully grown adults can be at similar risk levels to sicker and older adults when the calculated wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) exceeds 31° in low wind conditions (Vecellio et al., Reference Vecellio, Wolf, Cottle and Kenney2022). To reiterate these findings - the well-publicised, theoretical 35°C WBGT limit for healthy humans in extreme environments may be wrong (subject to further verification). Metabolically un-compensable heat stress in humid environments can occur in young, healthy adults at wet-bulb temperatures significantly lower than 35°C. Severely intolerable stress occurs at different WBGT’s depending on ambient vapour pressure – the partial pressure exerted by water vapour in air at a given temperature and location (Vercellio et al., Reference Vecellio, Wolf, Cottle and Kenney2022). The rationale for always using wet bulb temperature as a more accurate measure of bodily comfort and risk (rather than only ambient air temperature) underpins the extreme heat policy published by Sports Medicine Australia (2021). Sports is a cornerstone of Australia life and extreme heat is a real threat to the pursuit of sports activities for active participants and observers alike. Understanding how and why to stay safe may be a generalised in relation to the science of heat, however being able to stay safe is locally specific (Johar et al., Reference Johar, Abdulsalam, Guo, Baernighausen, Jahan, Watterson, Leder, Gouwanda, Letchuman Ramanathan, Lee, Mohamed, Barteit and Su2025). Place-based learning is acceptable for persons of every age (Singleton, Reference Singleton2024), and primary school children are perfectly capable of agency and of shaping their learning and responses to localised climate perils (Duhn et al., Reference Duhn, McPherson, Kirkwood, Beasy, Maguire, te Riele and Towers2024).

Care, justice and heat literacy

Experiences of extreme heat are disabling and certainly disordering. Our bodies maintain stable internal temperature by sweating, a physiological process known as thermoregulation. But thermoregulation is challenged by heatwave perils. This is why heat literacy encompasses learning heat concepts and then knowing what to do in heat emergencies (short term actions); how to prepare for heat emergencies (medium term actions); and how to lower the risk of suffering and death in extreme heat events. Longer-term actions can involve considerations of sustainability visions and justice values and may include political activism as well as practical planning.

In arguing for greater educational attention to heat, we know there are powerful corporate, financial and political forces across the globe devoted to publicly denying the laws of physics in the pursuit of even greater levels of commercial profit. This does not make bio/physical nor financial sense – a fact recognised by actuaries and insurance companies, who are the risk assessment professionals paying close attention to thermodynamic reality. The most recent Institute and Faculties of Actuaries report (Trust et al., Reference rust, Saye, Bettis, Bedenham, Hampshire, Lenton and Abrams2025, 9) cautions that, “our dominant economic model doesn’t recognise a dependence on the Earth system, viewing climate and nature risks as externalities” and advises that, “Our current market-led approach to mitigating climate and nature risks is not delivering.” The inevitable outcomes are that vulnerable people, animals and plants are the most badly affected by the climate crisis (Lenton et al., Reference Lenton, Milkoreit, Willcock, Abrams, Mc Kay, Buxton, Donges, Loriani, Wunderling, Alkemade and Barrett2025; Trott et al., Reference Trott, Lam, Roncker, Gray, Courtney and Even2023).

Heatwaves expose existing inequalities while also giving rise to new ones (Le et al., Reference Le, Adhikari and Harrington2024). Not everyone faces the consequences of heat equally; there are “many shades of heat inequality” (Mani, Reference Mani2024, np). Gender, as a determinant of access to resources, is a globalised source of heat injustice. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by extreme heat in terms of work, pay and, access to healthcare. Protracted heatwaves exacerbate unequal education and economic opportunities (Mani, Reference Mani2024). Additional factors that increase vulnerability for women and their families include access to safe and effective hydration; access to cooling (including vegetation cover and shade); age and health status; access to healthcare facilities; food security status; access to and level of educational attainment; immigration status or being a refugee; being an outdoor worker; belonging to a supportive and cohesive community; and the overall type of political and financial governance in place. In an actual heatwave, these are what Hansen et al. (Reference Hansen, Bi, Saniotis and Nitschke2013) call non-modifiable risk factors. One modifiable factor to minimise risk over the medium and longer term is properly funded heat education and risk communication across all sections of the community (Johar et al., Reference Johar, Abdulsalam, Guo, Baernighausen, Jahan, Watterson, Leder, Gouwanda, Letchuman Ramanathan, Lee, Mohamed, Barteit and Su2025).

Caring is an ethical inclusion because caring for everybody in heatwaves is vitally important to reducing mortality – this includes caring for wild and domesticated animals and plants. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke contribute to increased human population mortality (Ballester et al., Reference Ballester, Quijal-Zamorano, Méndez Turrubiates, Pegenaute, Herrmann, Robine, Basagaña, Tonne, Antó and Achebak2023). However, these maladies are not confined to humans. Extreme heat compromises every bodies’ ability to thermoregulate. Heatwaves damage the thermoregulatory capacities of wildlife, who cope (or not) with the increased frequency, intensity, and duration of heat often without adequate access to fresh water (Diengdoh et al., Reference Diengdoh, Ondei, Hunt and Brook2022; Walker et al., Reference Walker, Wellbergen, Meade, Boardman, Reardon, Martin, McKeown and Turbill2025). Ecological strategies such as green cities, vertical gardens, large parks and urban wild areas ameliorate the extremes of heat (Heaviside et al., Reference Heaviside, Macintyre and Vardoulakis2017) for humans and urban wildlife. Restoration of tree and vegetative cover in rural landscapes increases shade and food resources. Rewilding programmes often have heat amelioration as well as anti-extinction benefits. Protecting and restoring the natural world is a foundation for human health (WHO 2024).

Four examples of hot learning for action

The Australian Conservation Foundation (2025, 4) reminds that, “the effects of extreme heat are deeply felt in daily life”. At local scale, the educational response can be a curriculum component, a pedagogical practice and, given heat’s extraordinary disordering effects on living bodies, an impetus for action. Here are four examples of Australian community and school based responses to increasing heat. Our present stance is, that given the work of many educators and health communicators around the world, an intending heat literacy educator will be able to find knowledge, education resources, ideas for engaging pedagogy and practical support from local and regional educational, charitable and/or government organisations.

The first, national Extreme Heat Awareness Day was launched February 5^th, 2025, by Sweltering Cities, an advocacy not-for-profit (NFP) organisation founded in the aftermath of a dreadful heatwave in Western Sydney early in 2020. Sweltering Cities’ data-driven priorities are cooler suburbs, inclusive justice, heat safe homes and community learning. As they point out, “people are struggling in hot homes, hot suburbs and hot workplaces. It’s time we tell the full story of rising temperatures” (Sweltering Cities, Reference Cities2025). Recent research reports reveal the mental, physical and emotional tolls heat-related perils are extracting from Australia’s people, plants and animals (see ACF, 2025; Climate Change Authority, 2025; Parents for Climate, 2025).

An example of education research work on comes from the Cool Schools Initiative of Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW. An excellent pedagogical and infrastructure resource for schools by Pfautsch et al. (Reference Pfautsch, Rouillard, Wujeska-Krause, Bae, Vu, Manea, Tabassum, Staas, Ossola, Holmes and Leishman2020) is titled School Microclimates. The researchers first unpack the negative effects of heat on learning before moving through a detailed set of procedures on how to cool schools across school grounds, both indoors and outdoors. This report provides more than 20 practical recommendations on how to reduce the impacts of outdoor heat, including how to redesign infrastructure. This work aims to assist principals, school managers, and teachers “to increase resilience and health of school children during increasingly hot summers and provide planners and architects with options that can improve the thermal performance of new and existing school infrastructure” (ibid. 10).

Another effective way to develop community-based skills for cooling urban environments is “Seeds for Change,” an initiative hosted by the South Australian Chapter of the Australian Association for Environmental Education and funded by Green Adelaide. This initiative helps residents affordably reduce heat on their streets and homes by planting endemic drought tolerant species gardens, verges and parklands. Community connection grows through propagation and planting events, local biodiversity increases, councils spend less on roadside maintenance, and microclimates get cooler.

In terms of whole-school practice, the South Australian Cowandilla Primary School and Children’s Centre is a Climate Change Specialist School. From 2015, staff have been integrating climate change education and action into curriculum and daily operations. The school purpose is to equip students with the knowledge and skills to address climate change and foster optimism about the future. As stated on the website,

The school has a student group who lead activities to mitigate the effects of climate change, and the school shares its practices with other schools and educational leaders. The school deliberately focusses on conservation ethics and on the importance of care and caring. Climate change learning is woven into their science, mathematics, arts, technology, and humanities learning areas.

In summary

We publish our “speculative proposal” to urge environment educators and researchers to think more on heat within their own praxis. Heat literacy is a matter of care; an existential knowledge; and a set of survival skills for rapidly warming climate conditions. In this contribution on educating for and in the Meta-crisis, we have set out heat literacy emerging from our interpretation of a selection of recent published literature on extreme heat, thermal science education and environmental education. In the process of developing our thinking for this article, we have tested our concerns with many people who have added their anecdotal and professional insights. This has made us realise that heat literacy and numeracy is truly transdisciplinary and broadly implicated in fundamentally affecting life as we know it. We hope this article will contribute to a much wider, kinetic conversation among and between educators and researchers on the matter of heat and how best to foster the implementation of heat literacy education across our communities.