Raising Saudi Students’ (Energy) Sustainability Awareness through ESL – Teachers’ Thoughts

This inaugural qualitative study solicited English as Second Language (ESL) teachers’ thoughts about using ESL to teach Saudi Arabian (SA) university foundation year students about and raise their awareness of energy and sustainability issues. Fourteen participants from three higher education institutions in the Eastern Province of SA prepared typed responses in a word office document to 15 questions pertaining to ESL teachers’ perceptions, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and values of using ESL to teach sustainability. Data returned by email were iteratively read and insights culled to provide an inaugural profile of ESL teachers’ thoughts about this pedagogical innovation in SA higher education preparatory-year programs. The findings indicated a positive picture towards incorporating sustainability topics into Saudi Arabian ESL curriculum. Participants were enthusiastic about such tasks and about seeking knowledge related to sustainability by various means to augment lack of knowledge. They were of the opinion that this is a legitimate role for ESL teachers and believed that they would be effective and bring value to students’ learning. They readily suggested rich ideas about what a sustainability-infused ESL curriculum would look like. This study was an original one in that it solicited and shared the voices of ESL teachers in SA about the idea of concurrently teaching language and sustainability. Nominal research addresses this pedagogical approach meaning the findings are valuable to ESL training schools, SA university foundation program planners, SA higher education curriculum developers and higher education human resource managers who recruit and hire ESL instructors.