Mainstreaming Education for Sustainable Development …
563
4.5 Future Research
The corpus will continue to grow as more sample texts are transcribed, coded, and
analyzed, with the hope that the results can offer better insight for EFL content
writers using environmental content. As mentioned in the discussion, it is often not
clear why images were chosen for the textbooks, so collecting data from publishers
as well as content creators would be a useful next step to understand the motivations
behind content choice. Lastly, lessons learned from the analysis of the corpus could
benefit future materials development, which could then be utilized and studied with
university students as a living laboratory. At present, there is very little research about
how environmental content used in EFL materials could be improved or how this
content impacts university students in Japan and other countries.
5 Conclusion
Research on environmental content used in EFL is rather limited so this research initiated investigation aimed at identifying more effective approaches that will improve
ESD knowledge, values, and social practices in this field. Using a corpus built from
environmental content found in EFL, the image-text interplay was analysed and
assessed for usefulness in promoting ESD concepts. The results suggest that the
image-text interplay found in the sample texts of the corpus often do little to further
attitudes, values, and practices inherent in ESD. Furthermore, there appears to be
little interconnectedness between topics, images, and texts. Lastly, there appears to
be a clear gap between the decisions that textbook creators make and what the
SDGs promote in mainstreaming ESD, so more holistic approaches are recommended. Although EFL is primarily concerned with increasing English ability rather
than increasing ESD competencies, the discipline would benefit tremendously from
exploring how to mainstream ESD and use the SDGs as a rich source for content and
topic ideas.
As the findings suggest, a more holistic framework to mainstreaming ESD (Fig. 7)
is possible not only for Japanese higher education but as a model for more broadly
applying ESD principles in English language teaching. Moreover, as many textbooks
already feature helpful, scientifically accurate environmental content and educators
are increasingly aware of the importance of the SDGs, there should be interest in
improving students’ understanding of sustainable development. Clear steps can be
taken to improve the way that images and environmental content are presented in
EFL textbooks to further ESD outcomes as well as advance the SDG agenda.
Acknowledgements Please contact Joshua Jodoin (jodoin.john.65m@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp) to gain
access to the corpus. The researchers ask that they are acknowledged in any publications that
makes use of corpus material.
563
4.5 Future Research
The corpus will continue to grow as more sample texts are transcribed, coded, and
analyzed, with the hope that the results can offer better insight for EFL content
writers using environmental content. As mentioned in the discussion, it is often not
clear why images were chosen for the textbooks, so collecting data from publishers
as well as content creators would be a useful next step to understand the motivations
behind content choice. Lastly, lessons learned from the analysis of the corpus could
benefit future materials development, which could then be utilized and studied with
university students as a living laboratory. At present, there is very little research about
how environmental content used in EFL materials could be improved or how this
content impacts university students in Japan and other countries.
5 Conclusion
Research on environmental content used in EFL is rather limited so this research initiated investigation aimed at identifying more effective approaches that will improve
ESD knowledge, values, and social practices in this field. Using a corpus built from
environmental content found in EFL, the image-text interplay was analysed and
assessed for usefulness in promoting ESD concepts. The results suggest that the
image-text interplay found in the sample texts of the corpus often do little to further
attitudes, values, and practices inherent in ESD. Furthermore, there appears to be
little interconnectedness between topics, images, and texts. Lastly, there appears to
be a clear gap between the decisions that textbook creators make and what the
SDGs promote in mainstreaming ESD, so more holistic approaches are recommended. Although EFL is primarily concerned with increasing English ability rather
than increasing ESD competencies, the discipline would benefit tremendously from
exploring how to mainstream ESD and use the SDGs as a rich source for content and
topic ideas.
As the findings suggest, a more holistic framework to mainstreaming ESD (Fig. 7)
is possible not only for Japanese higher education but as a model for more broadly
applying ESD principles in English language teaching. Moreover, as many textbooks
already feature helpful, scientifically accurate environmental content and educators
are increasingly aware of the importance of the SDGs, there should be interest in
improving students’ understanding of sustainable development. Clear steps can be
taken to improve the way that images and environmental content are presented in
EFL textbooks to further ESD outcomes as well as advance the SDG agenda.
Acknowledgements Please contact Joshua Jodoin (jodoin.john.65m@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp) to gain
access to the corpus. The researchers ask that they are acknowledged in any publications that
makes use of corpus material.