Mainstreaming Education
for Sustainable Development in English
as a Foreign Language: An Analysis
of the Image-Text Interplay Found
in EFL Textbooks in Japanese Higher
Education
Joshua Jodoin and Jane Singer
Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals recognize climate action, sustainability, and quality education as critical issues, with Education for Sustainable Development regarded as a central approach for promoting the attitudes and behaviours
needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Education for Sustainable
Development efforts at the university level include mainstreaming environmental
content in all curriculum, including in requisite courses like English as a Foreign Language at Japanese universities. Although environmental topics and themes are popular content for English textbooks, there has been little research examining whether
this content is being used effectively to educate university students and promote environmental behavior. This paper presents an analysis of a corpus built from sample
texts with environmental themes found in English as a Foreign Language textbooks
commonly used at Japanese universities, employing codification and corpus analysis
techniques. The research offers a novel approach to mapping image-text interplay
within a corpus using the KPV-model (Scientific Knowledge, Social Practices, and
Values). The results suggest that the image-text interplay found in the corpus often
do little to further the attitudes, values, and practices considered central to effective Education for Sustainable Development and there appears to be little thematic
interconnectedness between topics, images, and texts. The results also suggest that
textbook creators are paying little regard to the inherent aims of including environmental content, either in terms of promoting Sustainable Development Goals or
promoting ESD-linked sustainability competencies. To improve the efficacy of environmental content in English as a Foreign Language curriculum the authors introduce
a holistic framework for English as a Foreign Language content creators.
J. Jodoin (B) · J. Singer
Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies (GSGES),
Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
e-mail: jodoin.john.65m@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp
J. Singer
e-mail: singer.jane.6e@kyoto-u.ac.jp
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Universities as Living Labs for Sustainable Development,
World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15604-6_34
545
for Sustainable Development in English
as a Foreign Language: An Analysis
of the Image-Text Interplay Found
in EFL Textbooks in Japanese Higher
Education
Joshua Jodoin and Jane Singer
Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals recognize climate action, sustainability, and quality education as critical issues, with Education for Sustainable Development regarded as a central approach for promoting the attitudes and behaviours
needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Education for Sustainable
Development efforts at the university level include mainstreaming environmental
content in all curriculum, including in requisite courses like English as a Foreign Language at Japanese universities. Although environmental topics and themes are popular content for English textbooks, there has been little research examining whether
this content is being used effectively to educate university students and promote environmental behavior. This paper presents an analysis of a corpus built from sample
texts with environmental themes found in English as a Foreign Language textbooks
commonly used at Japanese universities, employing codification and corpus analysis
techniques. The research offers a novel approach to mapping image-text interplay
within a corpus using the KPV-model (Scientific Knowledge, Social Practices, and
Values). The results suggest that the image-text interplay found in the corpus often
do little to further the attitudes, values, and practices considered central to effective Education for Sustainable Development and there appears to be little thematic
interconnectedness between topics, images, and texts. The results also suggest that
textbook creators are paying little regard to the inherent aims of including environmental content, either in terms of promoting Sustainable Development Goals or
promoting ESD-linked sustainability competencies. To improve the efficacy of environmental content in English as a Foreign Language curriculum the authors introduce
a holistic framework for English as a Foreign Language content creators.
J. Jodoin (B) · J. Singer
Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies (GSGES),
Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
e-mail: jodoin.john.65m@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp
J. Singer
e-mail: singer.jane.6e@kyoto-u.ac.jp
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Universities as Living Labs for Sustainable Development,
World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15604-6_34
545