STEM education for transformative hazard literacy: from technological fixes to slow learning

Abstract

While education is widely recognized as a key component of disaster prevention and response, the broader educational visions that underpin disaster education have received limited attention. This article critiques prevailing approaches to disaster and hazard education, which are frequently shaped by economic and technocratic values. Although minimizing economic loss and ensuring personal safety are undeniably important, when driven by these values, education tends to prioritize short- and mid-term outcomes, obscuring the sociopolitical and systemic factors that enable hazards to escalate into disasters. Focusing on disaster vulnerability and justice-centered science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, I examine how learning about disasters can serve the transformative goals of STEM education by empowering students to recognize, analyze, and critically engage with issues of equity and justice in the context of disasters. Drawing on the case of the 2023 Türkiye-Syria earthquakes that claimed over 55,000 lives and left millions homeless, I argue for a shift in the purpose of disaster and hazard education: from minimising economic losses to cultivating democratic citizens who understand the social roots of disasters and actively work to challenge injustice and transform society.

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ORCID for Wonyong Park: orcid.org/0000-0002-8911-5968

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