International Conference: language education for sustainable development

Küchler, Uwe. 2025. Environmental Literacy and the Teaching of English. (Narr Studienbücher). Tübingen: Narr Verlag.

Dr. Uwe Küchler has been a University Professor for Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, since 2016. Before his current appointments, he has researched and taught at the universities in Bonn, Halle-Wittenberg, and Dortmund. Küchler studied at Berlin’s Humboldt-Universität (Germany), the University of London’s Goldsmiths’ College (Great Britain), and Georgetown University in Washington DC (USA). Currently, Uwe Küchler is finalizing the student handbook Environmental Literacy and the Teaching of English to be published with Narr Publishers in 2025.

I propose spotlighting an academic textbook that aims to expand environmental perspectives on foreign language education. The book thoroughly explores the role of environmental issues in the context of foreign language pedagogy. It provides practical insights and strategies for incorporating matters related to nature, environment, and sustainability into foreign language education. This comprehensive humanities approach to environmental literacy nurtures more hopeful paths and emphasizes the valuable possibilities and unique opportunities that the study of languages, literatures, and cultures can bring to the environmental discussion and the exploration of additional or foreign languages.

The academic textbook fulfills this promise by scrutinizing language pedagogy and the teaching of English—its goals, principles, and tasks—as an academic discipline and a school subject. Unlike German Fremdsprachendidaktik, most related disciplines have developed a pertinent research field focusing on the relationship between humans and their non-human environment, considering the role that such discipline can play in environmental constellations. Chapters will be dedicated to ecolinguistics, ecocriticism, environmental education, and education for sustainable development, ecomedia, and environmental humanities, scrutinizing the insights of each new research field, the perspectives, and intriguing content available for research and classroom teaching.

After examining the specific areas of environmental knowledge and detailing the questions, perspectives, and findings of the academic discourse within them, the focus on teaching English leads to an important section that explores various discussions on literacy and presents a framework for environmental literacy, particularly in the context of teaching foreign languages. This framework emphasizes the significance of teaching languages, literature, and cultures rather than solely using language for communicating scientific and social concepts. With this model and the example of environmental issues in foreign language teaching, the book reconfirms the significance of a strong focus on language, literature, and culture in the context of environmental humanities.