International Conference: language education for sustainable development

Syed Nitas, PhD, serves as the Director of Education Programs at Bard's Beijing Office for the Asia Pacific region. His career spans across various aspects of education policy development, teaching and research. As an 'aspiring' education changemaker, he is driven by a mission to create a positive and lasting impact on both humanity and the natural world. For that he continues to pursue and promote 'out of the box' education solutions that are innovative and impactful learning solutions that resonate and serve the youth of today globally - especially in China.

As the need for global citizens capable of addressing complex environmental challenges becomes increasingly apparent, a program curated and implemented in China for high school students exemplifies a transformative approach to education that marries ecological learning with global citizenship education in English.
Such a program moves beyond traditional educational paradigms by employing an integrative pedagogical model that emphasises global responsibility.

Central to the program’s methodology is its unique integration ecopedagogy with hands-on environmental projects in English, creating a dynamic learning environment that encourages students to connect deeply and critically with both their cultural heritage and the global ecological community as well as gain tangible benefits in terms of ESL learning. The curriculum engages students academically and emotionally, fostering a sense of global citizenship and responsibility. By participating in local ecological restoration projects, students experience firsthand the impact of their actions on the environment, gaining practical skills and a global perspective on ecological issues.

Carefully curated outcomes related to the program help to elevate the perceived importance of ecological education and motivate enrollment, addressing the challenge of making such programs appealing to a diverse student body.

We demonstrate through the design and implementation of education programs grounded in ecopedagogy, we can move towards ecological civilisation, in which an overarching Chinese principle of “Unity of Man and Nature” (天人合一) that everyone is taught but seldom knows how it can be achieved. Through this approach, we seek to counter the anthropocentric dominance in the current education system, which often deadens the intrinsic creativity of young people and mould them into effective producers and consumers of the global economic machine (Lent, 2022), thereby also pushing learners away from the true meanings of ecological civilisation and global citizenship.