Sustainable development goals as a roadmap for rethinking the language curriculum

With sustainability considerations and the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 in mind, pockets of lecturers in Higher Education are increasingly taking initiatives to include sustainability issues in their curriculum. More recently, the TU Dublin Sustainable development goals (SDG) literacy Community of Practice, a project funded by the National Forum, has contributed to raising TUDublin’s commitment to sustainability from ‘Pockets of Practice’ to an ‘Emerging Agenda’ (Gwilliam and Perterbauer, 2021). It has activated channels for debate and given lecturers a new impetus to embrace education for sustainability and embed SDGs in the curriculum. This paper provides a reflective account of a language curriculum re-designed in light of the SDGs framework thus responding to the urgency of the global challenges encapsulated in Agenda 2030. The outcome at modular level is an increased coherence in content and assessments, a strong integration of content with the sustainability agenda, as well as a broader coverage, contextualization and understanding of the sustainability agenda for students than heretofore. Overall, this paper seeks to encourage practitioners to re-think their curriculum in light of the SDGs as a means of enhancing relevance and depth to students learning while also providing a new lease of life to lecturers’ practice. Reference: Gwilliam, J. And Peterbauer, H. (2021). Environmental sustainability of learning and teaching, EUA report, accessed at this link eua tpg report_environmental sustainability of learning and teaching.pdf