Education for sustainable development: Effects of sustainability education on English language learners’ empathy and reading comprehension

Abstract Developing a sustainable world requires more than a team of sustainable development experts. It involves the work of students, teachers, material designers, and policymakers, whose efforts contribute to a more sustainable world. Hence, the focus of the present study was to examine the impact of a sustainable education on the reading comprehension and empathy of English language learners. English is considered a foreign but promising language in Iran. So, the program was performed in an English reading comprehension course and the participants were 10-year-old children (N = 48). The current study was conducted at a private primary school in Kerman city, the center of Kerman province, Iran. Quantitative data were collected and presented using pre-and post-reading tests to track the potential changes in students’ reading comprehension. Self-reported questionnaires were also used to examine participants’ empathy at the beginning and end of the project. The results revealed that the sustainable education group outperformed the control group in the post-reading tests. It is also reported that learners’ levels of empathy increased after implementing sustainability-based instruction. In brief, integrating sustainable education strategies into English language reading instruction is beneficial to children’s personal and academic achievements.