How to Integrate Sustainable Development in English Lessons: Reflections from Teachers, Students and Academicians

Abstract

This qualitative descriptive study as one small part of a big project sought to examine the opinions and recommendations of different stakeholders (i.e. students, teachers and academicians) as to the basic characteristics of a middle school English language course integrating sustainable development content. Three different interview schedules for each group of participants were developed by the researchers to elicit participants’ ideas about a sustainable development-oriented English course to be developed. Qualitative data were analyzed by means of content analysis and the main components of a course, that is, course aims, course content, learning-teaching experiences and course evaluation practices were utilized as themes to analyze the data. The results from this analysis indicated that the participants from each of these different stakeholder groups all appeared to appreciate and support the education for sustainable development. Their recommendations often pertained to course content that would include real-life videos and materials centering on the reallife issues already put forth by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The utilization of technology and collaborative activities were recommended by all participants as an important dimension of teaching-learning experiences of this course. All stakeholders also emphasized the dominance or popularity of ecological dimension of sustainable development framework within their current experiences pointing out the lack or insufficiency in terms of including the economic and social dimensions of sustainable development for the teaching of English. Teachers and academicians mentioned some psychological conditions like students’ developing ecophobia and losing hope for future and they warned that these should be seriously taken into consideration in the course design process. Several constraints were also reported by teachers and students against the optimal utilization of foreign language teaching irrespective of the integration of sustainable development content.