Nurturing Global Citizenship Through English: A Pilot Study

The international community has pledged that, by 2030, all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including global citizenship (UN 2030 Framework). Educational institutions have been charged with the responsibility to promote global citizenship by teaching their students to be contributing members of the larger global community with their skills and education (United Nations Academic Impact, 2022). This presentation will report on a pilot study of the effectiveness of the project “Nurturing Global Citizenship through English (NGCE)”, which puts English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learning and practice in the context of global themes including environment, intercultural communication, equality and technology. With a focus on the pragmatic demands of language and multimodal communication in the effort to achieve sustainable development goals, the project is distinct from other forms of second language education (Master, 2005). Pre-course and post-course student performance evaluation and pre- and post-course questionnaire survey indicated noticeable impact in some areas of global citizenship education and English language competency.