Pre-service English language teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development: a case from Turkish higher education context

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how sustainable development (SD) is conceptualized by pre-service English language teachers in Turkey and design a specialized course syllabus on SD in English language teaching (ELT) in the light of the research findings. Design/methodology/approach The study used a mixed-methods sequential explanatory study design and investigated the case of a state university in Turkey with the involvement of 133 pre-service English language teachers. Findings The findings indicated that most pre-service English language teachers received no training or a course on SD in their whole education life and tended to associate SD mostly with the economic growth of a country, followed by education, social and ecological concepts. It was also found that the majority of the participants had a unidimensional view of SD. No direct links with ELT have been detected from participants’ responses. The findings also pointed to the eagerness of the participants to receive an ELT-specific course on SD providing that the course involves interactive teaching and learning activities with reference to contemporary sources focusing on global and local issues, as well as studying the methods facilitating the incorporation of such issues into teaching practice. Research limitations/implications This research is based on the experience of one Turkish university with limited quantitative and qualitative data. Practical implications Based on the participants’ knowledge, views and suggestions, this paper contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence obtained from a local context and suggests a practical framework for a field-specific course syllabus aiming to enhance teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills and values related to SD and its incorporation into ELT. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study seeking to explore pre-service ELT teachers’ conceptualization of SD in Turkish higher education, and drawing on the research findings, the authors attempted to design a course syllabus targeted at pre-service teachers in ELT departments.

I Want to Teach Sustainable Development in My English Classroom: A Case Study of Incorporating Sustainable Development Goals in English Teaching

“…The current studies showed that there were some attempts in implementing SDGs in education; however, it is far away from developing students' awareness on sustainable development [1][2][3]. First, most of the studies [4,5,14,[27][28][29][30][31] were posited on the implementation in SDGs at higher education level by analysing the relevancy of the course contents to the SDGs. A very few focussed on implementing SDGs in K-12 education [8][9][10][11][12][13][15][16][17][18]32].…”

“…Figure 1 summaries the challenges of implementing ESD in K-12 education. First, scholars [9][10][11][12]14,18] suggested that teachers' values and beliefs negatively influence their perception of ESD, which was reflected in their lack of interest in implementing sustainable development in their teaching. For instance, teachers felt that sustainability was a complicated concept with various definitions, and the interconnection between different aspects of sustainable development was hard to understand [18].…”

“…For instance, language teachers felt that language was a tool for reading and learning. They put greater emphasis on students' personal development and found that there was very little correlation between sustainable development and language acquisition [9,14]. Their limited experiences and knowledge of sustainable development hampered them from developing a holistic conception of sustainable development, thereby limiting their horizons in perceiving the possibilities of incorporating sustainable development in their language teaching [14].…”

“…They put greater emphasis on students' personal development and found that there was very little correlation between sustainable development and language acquisition [9,14]. Their limited experiences and knowledge of sustainable development hampered them from developing a holistic conception of sustainable development, thereby limiting their horizons in perceiving the possibilities of incorporating sustainable development in their language teaching [14]. As for STEM teachers, they believed that their professional role was to present factual information instead of addressing social or ethical issues or inviting students to evaluate or make a judgement [11,14,32].…”

“…Their limited experiences and knowledge of sustainable development hampered them from developing a holistic conception of sustainable development, thereby limiting their horizons in perceiving the possibilities of incorporating sustainable development in their language teaching [14]. As for STEM teachers, they believed that their professional role was to present factual information instead of addressing social or ethical issues or inviting students to evaluate or make a judgement [11,14,32]. Such personal beliefs on professional roles made them feel sustainable development was something beyond their main expertise areas and inhibits their interest in further incorporating SD in their teaching [9,29].…”