Introducing Global Citizenship in Language Teacher Education through the UN's Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The present chapter describes a pedagogical intervention administered in an undergraduate ESL teacher training program. The purpose of this pedagogical innovation was to train future language teachers to incorporate Global Citizenship related objectives into their future practice by using the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) as reference. Pre-service teachers (N = 10) taking part in this study participated in a three-phase training in which they were first introduced to the topic, then, asked to apply the discussed approach to the design of language learning materials, and finally, they completed a reflection task. The analysis of the last task provided valuable insights into the cognition of future language teachers. Overall, participants demonstrated very positive views of this approach after being exposed to training and to applied forms of Global Citizenship in language teaching. There was modest evidence of the evolution of attitudes from more negative towards more positive. Furthermore, participants highlighted the transformative potential of this approach. I conclude that the incorporation of the SDGs into teacher education can serve as a successful first step to enhance transformational Global Citizenship practices in the language classroom.