Despite a growing effort to integrate students’ civic action projects into science and engineering curricula that address climate change and environmental justice, there are few frameworks that guide teachers and students to make well-informed decisions and actions towards a more just and sustainable future. This article presents a tool, Civic Action Matrix, that characterizes different types of students’ civic action projects. The tool attends to two dimensions of activities that capture important aspects of learning–the development of student agency and understanding the complexity of climate and environmental issues. Using two illustrative cases, we demonstrate how students, teachers, and teacher educators utilize this tool to expand the range of possibilities for civic action projects, moving beyond one-time, unidirectional activity aimed at individual-level changes toward collective action aimed at system-level changes. This article concludes with key takeaways for educators and curriculum developers.
Lieu, D., Tsai, N., Yett, J., & Kang, H. (2025). Individual awareness to systemic action: Expanding students’ project with Civic Action Matrix. The Science Teacher, 92(2), 65–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/00368555.2024.2446569