English language teachers’ beliefs and perceptions on sustainability

English language teachers’ beliefs and perceptions

Abstract

Sustainability and sustainable development (SD) are often used interchangeably and sustainable development goals (SDGs) and education for sustainable development (ESD) are important issues for sustainability. ESD also provides learners with knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to ensure a sustainability at present and future. This paper reports the English language teachers’ beliefs and perceptions on sustainability concepts as SD, SDGs and ESD using both quantitative and qualitative approaches utilizing a questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Our findings showed that the majority of the teachers hold particular perception on environmental aspects but did not consider societal and economic matters to be aspects of SD. Furthermore, the most perceived SDGs are quality of education, no poverty and zero hunger.  Most of the teachers rarely had training on ESD during their formal education. Our findings also depict that teachers hold positive beliefs that SD and ESD are important issues and ESD should be included in the curricula and developing knowledge and skills on EDS would develop their ability to integrate ESD into their teaching