Sustainability goals in the classroom
What can I do about it? - Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

ESD Goals

A new UNESCO programme entitled “Education for Sustainable Development: Towards achieving the Global Sustainable Development Goals - ESD for 2030“ was launched in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to be implemented worldwide over the course of the present decade. And schools are to play a central transformative role in implementing those goals, with the help of educational guidelines on how to approach the three “ESD pillars” in the classroom:
 
1. Transformative action of individuals
2. Structural change
3. Technological future
 
“Transformative action” means responsible social action, to be promoted in the classroom by developing compassionate awareness and empathy, and by boosting self-efficacy in suitable projects. The second focus is on structural causes and complex connections e.g. between economic growth, industrial production and consumption on the one hand and uncontrollable amounts of waste and rising temperatures on the other. Values like sufficiency, fairness and solidarity represent key correctives to unmindful consumption. The third focus is on how our technological future will look in 2030, pointing up in particular the importance of technologies and the impact of media on our lives. How does media use influence our everyday lives? How is artificial intelligence changing education and work in our society? Is a networked world a safe world? The Sustainable Development Goals are being effectively integrated into school curricula and educational work around the globe, including classes in German as a foreign language.

Didactic methodical approaches

The CLIL method (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is widely used to address ESD issues in German language classes. CLIL is a popular concept that involves subjects like history or geography in a foreign language some or all of the time. Germany, on the other hand, employs a method known as Sprachsensibler Fachunterricht or “language-sensitive subject teaching”. Both approaches enable language learners to engage in autonomous language activities using collaborative communication methods (methodological tools) in order to discuss such complex questions as the difference between relative and absolute poverty.

For starters, you should decide which approach to take: “soft” or “hard” CLIL. “Soft” CLIL (known in German as Fachsensibler Sprachunterricht, i.e. “subject-sensitive language teaching”) involves using ESD content as a framework either for work on grammar skills (e.g. use of the passive voice: Der Müll wird getrennt. Jede Sekunde werden in Deutschland 313 kg Lebensmittel weggeworfen. (The trash is sorted. Every second, 313 kg of food gets thrown away in Germany.)) or for language-learning activities (e.g. Describe the picture. Which people are poverty-stricken?. “Hard” CLIL (in German: Sprachsensibler Fachunterricht, i.e. language-sensitive subject teaching) focuses on content – with integrated language support. Ideally, language teachers and specialist subject teachers should work together on integrating ESD content. In practice, however, foreign language instruction is often criticized for imparting language skills at the expense of content. Foregrounding content instead, however, may prove too demanding for many language learners. Generally speaking, there is a shortage of subject teachers who are sufficiently competent in foreign languages, whereas language teachers, on the other hand, tend not to be ESD experts. Which makes it all the more important to work together towards achieving progress in both domains.

What can I do?

The ESD goals are integrative and interdependent, so they can be used at different levels of language proficiency. The first few years of language learning (A1-A2 level) lend themselves to discussion of social issues along the lines of the first ESD pillar. Topics that are directly related to everyday life and that build on their previous knowledge and language skills are particularly motivating for beginners and elementary-level language learners. Dealing with subjects like compassion for worsening poverty during the Covid-19 era or researching solidarity projects in their own region can help learners develop empathy and experience self-efficacy. Once they get personally involved, learners want to participate and share their thoughts and feelings, which makes for more effective learning. An animated short film can serve as a conversation starter, for example, providing important language tools through leading questions: How does the man in the film change? He becomes more helpful, nicer, friendlier, more empathetic and thus more humane. Elementary-level learners stand to gain a lot from this kind of audio-visual material because it speaks to several different learning channels and boosts visual and listening comprehension.
 
At advanced levels, structural connections and the causes of social, economic and environmental phenomena can be discussed in German classes and explored in great depth in subject teaching. Exercises and methods drawn from STEM-subject teaching are often used in hard CLIL: e.g. the “Mystery Method”, in which learners are asked to solve a mystery (Why is Maya going hungry?) by piecing evidence together. To this end, they analyse a small quantity of jumbled information about a given case and look for cause-and-effect relationships. Then again, a simple illustration (Fig. 1) may be enough to start a discussion about the causes and effects of hunger and poverty and about compassionate concern.
© Stefan Roth Learners’ vocabulary can be broadened, e.g. with agile verbs (etw. spenden (donate), sich engagieren (commit/get involved), j-n unterstützen (help/aid/support someone)) to provide them with the language tools they need to describe the picture and answer the question “What can I do about it?” Agustín-Llach and Canga Alonso (2016) have shown that CLIL has positive effects on building vocabulary.

ESD teaching material

You need to show a special kind of (cultural) sensitivity in your choice of ESD topics and appropriate material. Topics like hunger and poverty are all too often viewed from a Eurocentric perspective and presented in stereotypical terms. You should take up learners’ ideas and take regional and country-specific factors into account by emphasizing certain ESD topics accordingly. Whether it’s a matter of the destruction of rainforests or the use of organic cosmetics, you can hold an ideas contest and reinforce shared ideas using a video, podcast or blog. Tried and tested methods include quizzes and Mentimeter-type questionnaires, in which learners answer or even come up with their own questions about e.g. emergency aid and development work to fight poverty and hunger. In addition to standard CLIL materials, you’ll find plenty of teaching material on the websites of various non-profit initiatives (Welthungerhilfe, OroVerde) as well as German-language scholastic platforms and media libraries, some of which even provide ESD material for home schooling (Portal Globales Lernen).