From awareness to action: strengthening ELT’s role in climate education 

Article first published: Downes, C. (2025). From awareness to action: strengthening ELT’s role in climate education. IATEFL Voices, 308, 5-6. 

Critically evaluating materials: what’s in the coursebook matters

In the chapter, ‘Environmental fragility and English language education’, Appleby (2017) highlights the influence of English language coursebooks and how their reach can shape learners’ understanding of environmental issues. She notes Akçesme’s observation that, given the widespread use of ELT coursebooks, they may have the ‘widest readership among academic publications’ and therefore represent an ideal forum for ‘bringing into focus environmental issues and problems’ (Appleby, 2017, p. 51).

In addition, compared to other subject teachers, English teachers often have greater levels of freedom when selecting lesson topics and themes (Mercer et al., 2022). This relative freedom of choice presents another opportunity, and a strong argument, for environmental issues to be embedded in language curricula.

However, despite this tremendous opportunity, Appleby (2017) rightly calls attention to several current risks and shortcomings in the way environmental topics are often covered in ELT coursebooks, starting with the simple fact that the majority of ELT textbooks are usually produced by Western companies that embrace Western values. As Forman (2014, p. 72) points out, for many teachers and students of English across the globe, ‘the textbook is the curriculum’, and many of the textbooks used, both in the developed and developing world, are of Western origin.

These concerns, echoed by eco-linguist Arran Stibbe, are that coursebooks have the potential to spread Western centric viewpoints: ‘environmental education has the potential to be a Trojan horse for spreading the values which lead to environmental destruction in the first place’ (Stibbe, 2012, p. 413).

This tension between freedom and dependence highlights why critical evaluation of materials matters. As educators, we may have the freedom to choose, but we also have the responsibility to question what we choose, whose voices are represented, whose are missing, and what environmental stories our learners are being told.

Arran Stibbe’s work Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By (Stibbe, 2021), and its companion online course The Stories We Live By, offer a useful guide: to look closely at the stories, metaphors and values our texts and visuals communicate. We can keep what encourages empathy, care and responsibility, and rework what reinforces inequality, consumerism or detachment. Every image, caption and classroom task shapes how learners see the world and their place in it. As teachers, trainers, writers and publishers, our shared challenge is to ensure those choices support more just, inclusive and sustainable ways of thinking and learning.

Bring the climate crisis home: localisation and personalisation

Another recurring problem in ELT materials is distance. Learners are often asked to read about melting ice caps, disappearing rainforests or droughts in faraway countries, what some call ‘the polar bear problem’. Such examples can make the crisis feel abstract and remote.

Localising and personalising climate content helps learners connect the climate crisis to their own lives and communities. The crisis is intensifying year by year, with rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, air pollution, and higher food and energy costs already disrupting daily life. Its impacts are felt most acutely in the Global South, often in developing countries least responsible for the emissions that have caused the crisis. When lessons link to these realities, learning becomes more meaningful and relevant.

Learners can analyse local news stories, interview community members, map sustainability initiatives or propose small changes at school. Educators should also review visuals and media to ensure they resonate with learners’ contexts and represent people and places authentically.

Localisation doesn’t limit understanding of global issues; it deepens it. By bridging the local and the global, we help learners see how the climate crisis connects their lives to wider systems, and how their voices and choices can shape a fairer, more sustainable future.

Move beyond shallow environmentalism: build agency and action

Alongside the challenge of distance lies a broader limitation in how climate education is often framed. Many materials focus on individual actions, such as turning off lights, recycling or using public transport, which are important but insufficient. This focus on personal behaviour (mitigation) can obscure the bigger picture: the policies, industries and systems that continue to drive rising emissions, including our dependence on fossil fuels.

We should not be afraid to explore these wider dimensions. Learners are capable of engaging critically with complex ideas such as climate justice: who causes emissions, who suffers most, and who decides what happens next. We can also discuss adaptation: how communities are adjusting to new realities, and how language, communication and collaboration support those efforts. Just as importantly, we can explore green skills and green jobs, helping students imagine new forms of work and contribution in a sustainable economy.

Christina Kwauk, a leading voice in climate change education, argues that, as a ‘bare minimum’, the target for education leaders, policymakers and advocates must be the mandatory teaching of climate change, including its causes, impacts and solutions, across all disciplinary areas (Kwauk, 2022, p. 26).

However, with reference to a useful continuum of education approaches toward climate justice, Kwauk contends that this bare minimum approach offers ‘reformative, if not merely confirmative, change’ (Kwauk, 2022, p. 26) and that achieving climate justice will require systems transformation. She writes: ‘We must radically reorient our education systems so that climate action and climate justice become the main pillars of the educational endeavour’ (Kwauk, 2022, p. 26).

If climate education is to meet the urgency of the moment, it must move beyond awareness to help learners see themselves as active participants in building a fairer, more sustainable future. Learners should be supported to see themselves as informed participants in collective change: people who can analyse complex issues, express informed opinions and propose solutions.

In ELT, this means using the strengths of language teaching: communication, analysis, empathy and collaboration, to give learners the skills and confidence to engage with these ideas. Our classrooms can help learners use English to analyse complex issues, express informed opinions, and participate in dialogue and action that matter.

This is not about turning every lesson into advocacy, but about using English for what it does best: connecting people, perspectives and purpose. Lessons that invite discussion, problem solving or project work can help learners use English not just to describe the world, but to imagine and shape it.

Looking ahead

Appleby (2017), Stibbe (2021), and Kwauk (2022) offer a shared challenge: to look closely at what our materials say, how we teach, and what kind of engagement we promote. Together, they remind us that ELT has extraordinary reach, and that with this reach comes responsibility.

We have made genuine progress. The next step is to go further: to critically review what we teach, to localise and personalise learning, and to build learners’ sense of agency, justice and hope. If we do, the stories we teach and the language our learners use can help build a more just and sustainable world.

Three questions I’m asking myself (and invite you to ask yourself too):

1. Materials: Do my lessons and visuals reflect learners’ realities and promote diverse perspectives, or do they repeat familiar global clichés?

2. Local relevance: How can I connect the climate crisis to my learners’ own context, to the places, challenges and solutions they understand best?

3. Beyond awareness: Does this lesson or course help learners explore climate action, adaptation and justice, and see themselves as active participants rather than observers?

I often ask myself these questions. They help me stay focused, motivated and hopeful about the role ELT can play in building a more just and sustainable future.

References

Appleby, R. (2017). Environmental fragility and English language education. In E. J. Erling (Ed.), English across the fracture lines (pp. 151–167). British Council. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/Pub_English_Across_Fracture_Lines.pdf

Forman, R. (2014). How local teachers respond to the culture and language of a global English as a foreign language textbook. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 27(1), 72–88.

Kwauk, C. T. (2022). Towards climate justice: Lessons from girls’ education. NORRAG Special Issue 7 – Education in Times of Climate Change, 23–27. https://inee.org/sites/default/files/resources/norrag-special-issue-07-english.pdf

Mercer, S., Correia Ibrahim, N., Bilsborough, K., Jones, C., & Potzinger, C. (2022). Teacher perspectives on addressing environmental issues in ELT. ELT Journal, 76(4), 517–527.

Stibbe, A. (2012). Ecolinguistics and globalization. In N. Coupland (Ed.), The handbook of language and globalization (pp. 406–425). Wiley-Blackwell.

Stibbe, A. (2021). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by (2nd ed.). Routledge.