Intercultural Competence in a Rapidly Changing World: Supporting Sustainable Futures for All

In 2015, 191 United Nations (UN) member states adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets to improve life on our shared planet by 2030. Goal 4 calls for quality education for all, and Target 4.7 calls for increased education in two key areas: global citizenship and sustainable development, which have recently received increased attention in language education.

We ask: What role might intercultural communicative language education play in promoting a more sustainable world for all? What might an intercultural communicative language education for a more sustainable world look like? What might be the implications for teachers and learners of moving towards intercultural communicative language education for sustainability?

With these issues and questions in mind, CERCLL invites language educators to reflect on how they could re-envision what they teach and how they teach it to meaningfully address these crises with the goal of building a sustainable world for all.