1 Introduction

Education for sustainable development is crucial for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Agbedahin, 2019) and must be empowering, participatory, and liberating (Sterling & Huckle, 2014). The importance of social justice and inclusiveness, the idea of leaving no one behind, is a strong theme running throughout all the SDGs, not just SDG10—Reduced Inequalities (United Nations [UN] Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.b), and it is the role of all nations, both developed and developing, to enable this (Leal Filho et al., 2018). With the SDGs, higher education has now been recognised as playing a key role for the achievement of SDG4: Quality Education (UN, n.d.a). This chapter considers the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and the learning of reading and writing literacy, with a focus on practical support for teachers and pre-service teachers to incorporate principles of sustainable development within their teaching. Language classes are an ideal place for discussing sustainability issues as they are well placed to facilitate globalised citizenship thinking and discourse (Tavakkoli & Rashidi, 2020). EFL teachers have been found to have low levels of sustainability literacy (Tavakkoli & Rashidi, 2020) and to require more support to incorporate sustainability into their English teaching (Nkwetisama, 2011). They have also registered concerns that their current curricula are not delivering on sustainability and internationalisation (Badawi, 2019). As dedicated professionals, EFL teachers want to contribute to this area. After all, English has a major influence in global discourse, and English teachers therefore play an important role in promoting sustainable action among societies (Nkwetisama, 2011) and in the nurturing of a peaceful world (Birch, 2009; Langlois & Vibulphol, 2019).

However, sustainability need not pose a great additional burden on English language teachers. Alongside Burns’ (2011) model of sustainable pedagogy, well-studied pedagogical models for English teaching exist already, which may be easily adapted to education for sustainability in the English language classroom. This chapter focuses on two of these, the content-driven model of genre-based education (Martin, 1993) and the collaborative model of Gradual Release of Responsibility (Fisher & Frey, 2014).

We therefore consider two of the SDGs in this chapter, which are of relevance to English language education: SDG4—Quality Education and SDG10—Reduced Inequalities. We consider these goals in reverse order, for we wish to discuss first what to teach, which may support the attainment of SDG10, and then how to teach it, which may contribute towards attaining SDG4.

First, SDG10 aims to reduce inequality for vulnerable groups and populations including women and girls, people with disability, and people living in poverty (UN, n.d.b). Among its targets are the empowerment and promotion of social, economic, and political inclusion of all, ensuring equal opportunities and reduced inequalities of income through changes to discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and adoption of positive and progressive alternatives, ensuring enhanced representation and voice of underrepresented developing countries in global institutions (UN, n.d.b). In order to achieve these elements of social justice, we argue that teachers of English and other disciplines can contribute through the incorporation of genre-based teaching. This pedagogy and its potential to address social inequality are explored in the first part of the chapter.

Second, SDG4 includes among its targets to ensure relevant and effective learning outcomes, to turn out learners with relevant employment-focused skills, to significantly improve literacy rates for adults and children, and to increase the supply of qualified teachers, especially in least developed countries (UN, n.d.a). We argue that these targets can be supported by the scaffolded integration of collaborative learning activities and the development of collaborative skills in the classroom. Sustainability in higher education should be experiential and include diverse and non-dominant perspectives (Burns, 2013). Collaborative learning models are ideal for including such perspectives and for bringing authentic problem-solving into the classroom at all levels. The pedagogical model that we suggest as the means to achieve this is the Gradual Release of Responsibility framework from Fisher and Frey (2014), which we explore in detail in the second half of the chapter.

Throughout the chapter, we provide examples from a recent study of a Japanese university English language class. Japan was selected because of its traditionally teacher-centred educational system in which students have little experience with collaborative work and tend to have poor attitudes towards it (Araki & Raphael, 2018; DeBoer, 2018). This disadvantages students, like those in this study, who wish to study in overseas universities where student-centred learning is the norm (Freimuth, 2016). In the study, collaborative, genre-based activities, scaffolded through the use of the Gradual Release of Responsibility framework (Fisher & Frey, 2014), helped students to improve their English language and collaborative skills and to develop an appreciation of collaboration for learning. Students were able to move past their initial concerns about group work and to recognise its benefits to their learning, and its enjoyability as an activity when well scaffolded. Attitudes towards learning have been shown to affect learning outcomes (Chen & Yu, 2019; Lai et al., 2016) and this has implications for the role of English learning as a driver for a sustainable future, such as when students’ attitudes towards English learning improved once they understood its benefits to sustainability (Elsakka, 2019; Langlois & Vibulphol, 2019). The study we use for our examples here also provided further evidence of the efficacy of the genre-based teaching model for improved English outcomes in writing persuasive genres, a text type that plays a vital role across society, including in politics, news, opinion, and academia (Crosswhite, 2012; Macken-Horarick et al., 2018) and is considered to be writing with power (Crosswhite, 2012).

2 Genre and Social Justice

A major aspect of sustainability is the development of equity among nations (Odum & Odum, 2001). Social justice and ecological sustainability must be integrated, and education can be the medium for change (Sterling, 2014b). However, education as an agent for transformation towards a more sustainable society must itself be transformed (Sterling, 2014b). Education for sustainability needs to be, among other things, contextual, holistic and human, systemic and connective, and critical (Sterling, 2014b). These characteristics will support learners in their journey towards becoming agents of change for a sustainable, empowered, and just global society. Educational change can promote sustainability through the public choices of “effective institutions of governance and a well-informed, democratically engaged citizenry” (Orr, 2002, p. 1459). New approaches are needed to ensure that education supports social justice, social equity, and a global mindset (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO], 2015). When these concepts are embedded into education, they can support the attainment of SDG4, the reduction of inequalities throughout the world. With this in mind, we recommend the genre-based teaching model as a practical method for embedding the principles of social justice to reduce inequalities within English teaching, one classroom and one curriculum at a time.

2.1 Genre-Based Teaching

Genre theory stems from systemic functional linguistics and considers all texts as staged, goal-oriented social processes (Martin & Rothery, 1993): staged, in that individual genres are comprised of stages that combine to create meaning; goal-oriented, in that texts from individual genres aim to achieve particular communicative goals; and social processes, in that communication is an interactive phenomenon, in which meaning is socially determined. Genre theory can be used to categorise all texts and text types (Martin, 2012), and can also be used to examine the stability and dynamic variation between texts, as well as concepts of power and interactive relationships (Kress, 1993). Genres evolve with their societies in order to remain functional and purposeful (Derewianka & Jones, 2016). Critical and systemic thinking skills are crucial for sustainability (Tilbury, 2007). Genre-based learning offers a pathway to develop these skills through a deep exploration of high-value genres of dominant cultures, and the content and systems within them.

In the context of education, genre-based education involves teaching students to identify the genre of a text by considering its communicative purpose or message (known as Field), its interpersonal purpose and relationships (known as Tenor), and its mode of transmission (known as Mode). Students discover the language features and structures that characterise typical texts of a particular genre, and through deconstructing these genres, learn how to interpret, create, and manipulate them to achieve specific communicative goals. For example, students may be introduced to the genre family of persuasive texts and learn how these texts achieve their persuasive purpose through the language features, moves, and structures they use. Teaching genres ensures that, regardless of social standing or disadvantage, all students are given the opportunity to become familiar with genres of power and dominant ways of expressions within their societies (Veel, 2006). The inability to write these genres excludes individuals from participating in social conversations and social change, and the inability to comprehend and analyse these genres ensures they cannot even understand what is happening in the first place (Martin, 1993). Fluency in genres of power provides individuals with the ability to engage in conversations of power and promotes social justice (Martin, 2012). Additionally, if we are to promote a sustainability culture within the media, we must develop an active and critical audience (Howson & Cleasby, 2014; Tilbury, 2007), who must be, fundamentally, an informed audience. If sustainability is to be reached through the actions of “governments acting with an informed public” (Orr, 2002, p. 1458), genre fluency offers a medium by which the public can be purposefully informed. “Sustainability, in short, is constituted by a series of public choices that require effective institutions of governance and a well-informed, democratically engaged citizenry” (Orr, 2002, p. 1459).

Since the earliest genre-based programmes in primary and secondary schools in Australia, the weight of evidence in support of genre-based education has grown consistently, across increasingly diverse educational contexts, including first language (L1) and foreign language (L2) English teaching across the age groups (e.g., Kerfoot & Van Heerden, 2015; Lee, 2012; Rose & Martin, 2012; Wang, 2013) to the extent that it is now embedded in national curricula in countries including Australia, Singapore, and the United States (Derewianka, 2015; Gebhard & Harman, 2011; Munandar, 2020). Genre-based teaching has brought social equality within the grasp of students in Australia and elsewhere by improving educational outcomes through ensuring students, regardless of background, are empowered confidently to write and read texts of importance in genres of power (Martin, 2012; Veel, 2006).

2.2 Genre-Based Teaching for Social Justice

The ecosocialist, or radical democratic, view of education for sustainability promotes the ideas of participation, social justice, and equity (Huckle, 2014; Sterling, 2014b), within which genre-based education plays an important role. Genre-based learning has the added advantage of being cross- or trans-disciplinary, in that genres often span multiple subjects, or disciplines, as the education system calls them. Persuasive texts and information report genres, for example, can be found in science journalism as often as in literature studies (contrast the “book report” with the “animal habitats report” or contrast an op-ed on the benefits of vaccination with an essay on the benefits of reading aloud to children). Genre-based teaching, then, has the opportunity to disrupt the “vertical fragmentation of knowledge into subjects and their associated defences” (Sterling, 2014b, p. 31).

Additionally, genre-based teaching can promote critical literacy. Advertisers and those who use the media for their own purposes (i.e., everyone from marketers to government) are experts at exploiting people’s weaknesses, particularly those who are most vulnerable, such as children and young people (Orr, 2016). If we take climate change, for example, it is clear that “attitudes and opinions about climate change reflect the distribution of power and wealth” (Orr, 2016, p. 41). A study of opinion pieces about the impacts of climate change written from a variety of perspectives and seen through the lenses of Field, Tenor, and Mode could offer students a valuable insight into how genre-specific features can have significant effects and ultimately promote significantly different messages when manipulated for different purposes. When students learn about how these texts are designed through their language features for these specific purposes, it decodes the mystery and opens up opportunities for critical discussion and understanding, leading to empowered engagement with these and other texts in the future (Tilbury, 2007).

Sterling (2014b) argues that education should be “process oriented and empowering rather than product oriented” (p. 23); however, we argue that learning to create and analyse the products of the dominant culture is the first step towards independent manipulation and creative evolution of these products: one cannot disrupt the status quo without first understanding it. This, we argue, is a path to empowerment. A problem from earlier conceptions of education as demonstrated in Australian schools in the 1980s (Martin, 2012) was the expectation of students to write nothing but “stories,” and for little or no instruction to be provided on how this might be successfully achieved. Genre-based teaching overcomes this problem by providing explicit explanations and examples of genres, and how the individual features of a genre act within it to achieve its purpose, appeal to its audience, and fit into its context. It then allows for a more critical and nuanced investigation into how genres change and evolve over time, just as their cultural contexts do, and how to appropriate genres and genre features for new purposes.

In a recent study at a Japanese university, students were taught two English persuasive genres, the exposition and discussion genres, to support students in their pursuit of high standardised test scores and future English-medium academic studies (Morgan, 2022). Students learned about the typical structure of these genres, including the stages and sub-stages they tended to include. For an exposition, the stages and sub-stages, following Martin and Rose (2008), included a Thesis stage, a series of Argument stages, and a Restatement of Position final stage, with accompanying sub-stages. This is illustrated using a student essay from the final week of our Japan study in Table 28.1.

Table 28.1 Student exposition essay with genre staging present (Morgan, 2022)
Full size table

This example represents a significant improvement in the overall structure of student essays following the teaching programme, with all main and sub-stages included, contributing to higher overall scores of coherence, logical structure, and task response. That is, the student’s text was more persuasive through its carefully structured arguments, such that this student was able to achieve a higher essay score and potentially a higher International English Language Testing System (IELTS) grade through a targeted look at structuring key genres for specific purposes. However, this student did not allow the modelled and taught structure to limit her creative writing choices, as we will see in a moment.

An example of how students need not be limited or constrained by the explicit teaching of genre characteristics was identified in this and other students’ essays. In both genres, a new sub-stage was identified, which was given the name “Solution,” and in which students, after giving their arguments and summing up their position, offered solutions to the problems outlined in their arguments, as a way of further consolidating their conclusions, or offered ways to implement their recommendation (Morgan et al., 2022). For example, the student whose essay is featured in Table 28.1, who was not in favour of a global language and was concerned at the disappearance of languages wrote after the Restatement of Position: “…and here is a solution: every countries [sic] should teach their mother tongue properly to children, rather than focusing on other language education” (Morgan, 2022). Another student discussed the pros and cons of a global language in her essay using a discussion genre format. She concluded that a global language was a good thing, which nonetheless had some negative points. Then she wrote: “To solve this problem, they should save other language. For example, they should learn and educate that there are a variety of languages and they should promote people to use other languages” (Morgan, 2022). Her argument did not require this information; she had already argued persuasively in favour of the global language. However, its inclusion added additional weight to her argument.

These examples demonstrate some critical thinking on the part of the students, and a willingness to consider the various consequences of a decision for those affected, even though the argument structure they had been taught did not mandate the inclusion of such considerations. The new sub-stage had not been taught or modelled, and yet it appeared. It is likely that the concept was familiar to students from earlier studies or other models of appropriate essay responses for the IELTS, for which all students were studying, but the point remains that they did not feel limited or constrained by the teaching of the genre structure but rather used it as a foundation or platform from which to make independent, informed decisions in their text creation. Their essays were more coherent and logically constructed, adding power to their arguments, and yet they were not carbon copies of each other or of the model texts included in the teaching programme. All language education should primarily ensure that students can take the knowledge and skills they have learned and transform that knowledge for new contexts and purposes (Mahboob, 2015). In this classroom, students were encouraged to consider carefully the question and identify the most appropriate genre and structure to address it. In cases such as these, where students structured their responses differently to the models they had seen during teaching, it helped them to improve the overall quality of their essays, through their improved understanding and manipulation of persuasive genre structures.

Genre-based teaching, then, has the potential to foster critical literacy, promote fluency in the comprehension and production of texts in the genres considered powerful or dominant, and support the development of an informed and critically aware and active public for sustainable change. The examples here come from the English classroom, either English as the first language or English as a foreign language, but genre-based teaching can encompass multiple disciplines and interdisciplinary education as well.

We can now move to the second question that this chapter seeks to address, which is how should we go about teaching genre? We next investigate SDG4, Quality Education, and how the Gradual Release of Responsibility framework may support the acquisition of this goal.

3 Collaboration and Quality Education

SDG4 focuses on access to education and equity of education rather than type, particularly as regards research into education and sustainability (Jickling & Sterling, 2017). One target speaks of ensuring students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development (UN, n.d.a); however, these are not explicitly identified. We argue that collaborative skills have a crucial place in any such skill set.

Transformative educational experiences are those in which students are exposed to influences and people who disrupt their mental status quo and promote fundamental changes in perspective, and ultimately, action (Jickling, 2017). Although many students in the same class will have many of the same experiences, the opportunity for transformative events and changes in thinking is still there; and the experience of this kind of collaborative work may make additional transformative experiences more available and accessible to students outside of the classroom.

Education has been and remains in many ways a market-driven entity in which students and parents are consumers and the main purpose of the institution is to improve the economy through jobs and profit-making expertise (Sterling, 2017). A change of fundamental purpose of education at all levels is needed (Sterling, 2017)—a belief echoed in UNESCO’s 2015 publication Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? (UNESCO, 2015)—and collaborative education offers a practical way forward for educators, while they wait for institutional and political processes to catch up. The systemic or radical ecologic view (Sterling, 2017) promotes the ideas of networks, interdependence, and connectedness, all of which are enabled through collaboration, and where better to begin than in education? Indeed, transformative, interconnected, and collaborative activities are very important for sustainable education (Frisk & Larson, 2011), and it need not take too great a shift in educators’ thinking. Dewey’s democratic, skills-based pedagogy, for example, remains a sound model for education for sustainability, with its emphasis on adaptive and integrated learning, and offers a way to approach the development of key skills for sustainability including critical and systems thinking skills, communication skills, and collaboration skills (Tarrant & Thiele, 2016). Collaborative work promotes the development of understanding, empathy, and compassion, characteristics that are needed to solve the problems presented by the transition to a sustainable world, problems described by Orr (2002) as divergent, forming from “the tensions between competing perspectives that cannot be solved but can be transcended” (p. 1459).

Children and young people have the potential to become social actors and to identify and collaborate to solve problems in their immediate environments and contexts (Sauvé, 2017). This can be enabled by educators who help to promote the concept of the common good, and cooperative co-construction of meaning and action (Sauvé, 2017). Teachers can and do facilitate bottom-up approaches and practical initiatives for sustainability, driving change from the classroom outward (Sauvé, 2017). Humanising education and focusing on the common good (UNESCO, 2015) includes bringing social learning to the fore and promoting collective, intentional agency (Lotz-Sisitka, 2017). This supports the argument for using and teaching collaboration in education. Collaborative activities in which the students lead in the creation and analysis of content can be truly inspiring and stimulating for students and teachers both. During a recent study in Japan, English language students worked together to create persuasive texts on topics of relevance to them, including why their university was the best or worst (the teacher offered “best” as the topic, but students overruled the teacher and created the text about why it was the “worst”!), and the creative process was educational and entertaining for all involved.

Social learning for sustainability encompasses three key ideas: the need to challenge mental models of unsustainability by questioning and reflecting on actions and social dispositions and rethinking and redesigning our actions; the need to develop new learning approaches and build skills that enable change such as facilitation, participative inquiry, and action learning; and the need to make use of pluralism and diversity in imagining sustainable actions (Tilbury, 2007; UNESCO, 2002). The promotion and development of productive group work and true collaborative skills are practical ways for teachers to incorporate these ideas into the classroom. Tilbury’s learning-based change approach to sustainability “encourages collaborative learning environments which [sic] do not merely impart knowledge but build capacity of the learner. Negotiation, evaluation and action are essential parts of this process” (Tilbury, 2007, p. 120). These concepts are fundamental to constructive or transformative models of education, which are essential to education for sustainable development (Sterling, 2014a). The acquisition of key competencies aligned with transformational learning, such as collaborative skills, will be required along with other knowledge and skills for education for sustainable development (Giangrande et al., 2019).

Collaboration, then, is a key skill that supports sustainable futures and is an important part of education for sustainable development. At the tertiary level, students are transitioning out of the education system and into the workforce, and it is here that collaborative skills become even more crucial. Additionally, language classrooms are an ideal environment for the development of these skills because of their focus on culture, global perspectives, and peer support in learning. Ver Steeg (2019) argues that education for sustainable development should be a specific focus area in university English as a Foreign Language courses, through the use of place-based education and collaborative action projects to develop the attitudes and skills critical to sustainability discourse. Engaging students by making connections between a local place and personal identity stimulates personal agency within a global sustainable development discourse and improves awareness and attitudes around global issues. When writing English short persuasive essays, Japanese university-level students were able to make local connections to global issues with little prompting from the teacher, when they discussed the potential advantages and disadvantages of a global language and considered the implications for themselves and their communities as well as for the wider world (Morgan, 2022). For example, one student looked at the wider global context before offering a local example.

Speaking the same global language implies a tremendous loss of diversity to the world’s culture. As languages have a strong link to how cultures and traditions function, people will lose their cultures and traditions along with the loss of language if they choose to speak the same language as the rest of the world does. Take an example of Japanese language. Imagine Japanese is no longer spoken and gradually disappears, instead Japanese people take up English as their native language, there is a high chance that their behaviour and attitude will also change with the change of spoken language. (Morgan, 2022)

One of the advantages of the language classroom is that students engage with a wide variety of topics that offers excellent opportunities for deeper and sustainable thinking. For example, in answer to the same question on a global language, another student considered the context of developing nations’ education systems.

Next, all children in the world can be offered good level education. Children in developing countries often do not have access to nice education. On the other hand, a lot of developed countries offer much better education than that of developing countries. Children from poor countries have less chances to have good job because of this difference. If children can use the same language, nicer education of rich countries become available to poor children by using internets. Then, they may get good job. (Morgan, 2022)

Universities need to be collaborative and act as models for their students for sustainable learning and sustainable futures (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Education for sustainability is, in its essence, reflecting on and taking action on types of political economy that would enable us to live sustainably with one another and the rest of nature (Huckle, 2014). The language classroom, shown in these student work examples, is an environment in which this type of thinking follows naturally from the diverse topics that students read, write, and talk about. One way in which teachers can support students to engage with sustainability principles is through group work. At the same time, students can discover how group work as an activity can help them learn about the effectiveness of collaboration for sustainability (Oxenswärdh & Persson-Fischier, 2020).

Let us now consider a pedagogical model that promotes the acquisition of collaborative skills, which has demonstrated success in English classes and is beginning to be recognised as beneficial across more diverse learning contexts. The Gradual Release of Responsibility framework offers a way to scaffold collaborative skills while also promoting content-specific knowledge and skills acquisition, not only for writing and literacy but also for all types of teaching.

3.1 The Gradual Release of Responsibility Framework

The Gradual Release of Responsibility framework (GRRF) is a pedagogical model for teaching that involves a gradual and staged move from teacher-focused to student-focused activities (Fisher & Frey, 2014). It is flexible, in that a class or group or individual can enter the framework at any stage and move between stages according to the level of scaffolding they need for a given learning topic. For example, in one lesson in our study in Japan, in which it was felt that some of the content may already be familiar to students, the teacher commenced the class with a group work activity, rather than a content delivery stage, to evaluate the students’ existing knowledge prior to adjusting the learning activities, to ensure students gained the most from the class time. Using the GRRF, teachers are able to work with whole classes, small groups, or individuals, while others are getting on with student-focused collaborative or independent activities, providing needs-based learning for each individual.

The GRRF has its foundations in the concepts of scaffolding (Wood et al., 1976) and sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), and was developed originally for teaching reading and comprehension in first language (L1) English classes (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). Since its early stages, it has evolved in complexity, and has begun to be used in many more contexts. Its efficacy for English teaching in L1 has been demonstrated in primary and secondary education (e.g.,Grant et al., 2012; Slater & Groff, 2017; Webb, et al., 2019) and some studies have begun to demonstrate its efficacy in second-language (L2) English contexts (e.g., Hu et al., 2018; Kim, 2010), as well as other disciplines (e.g., Grant et al., 2012, in science; McIntosh & Bowman, 2019, in teacher training; Nyachae et al., 2019, in social justice). In Fisher and Frey’s (2014) model, the intent of the GRRF is gradually to transfer responsibility for learning from the teacher to the students in systematic and scaffolded ways that ensure that students ultimately acquire the knowledge and skills they need to complete tasks independently, promoting student agency and responsibility for their own learning. The GRRF’s stages include teacher-focused Context-Setting and Focused Instruction stages, a teacher-facilitated Guided Instruction stage, and student-focused Collaborative Learning and Independent Work stages (Fig. 28.1). Collaborative work is scaffolded through teacher-facilitated activities in which the teacher assists students to work collaboratively on a task that they will later practice in small groups. This Guided Instruction stage has the advantage of allowing the teacher to evaluate students’ understanding and facilitate deeper acquisition of knowledge, while also providing a model for student-led group work that students can later attempt on their own, with the teacher taking a step back.

Fig. 28.1
A cyclic and bidirectional diagram of the G R R F stages. The stages are introduction or setting the context, focused instruction, guided instruction, collaborative learning, and independent work that have multiple entry points or multidirectional.

(Adapted from Fisher & Frey [2014])

The stages of the GRRF

Full size image

Throughout the course in Japan, students were asked about their perceptions of whole-class and small-group work (Morgan, 2022). Students expressed trepidation about group work prior to the course, and during the early weeks, their feedback was mixed, with many comments about their shyness and lack of fluency and their dislike of working with partners of lower skill. However, as the programme continued, students’ weekly reflections became increasingly positive. In the final week, students completed a questionnaire in which they were clear about the many benefits of group work, from networking and relationship-building to ideas and knowledge sharing and skills development. Here is a sample of student comments (Morgan, 2022).

  • Discussing and countering other groups' opinions are really helpful to improve my writing skills.

  • Throughout the group works, I often encountered the situations where I had to talk. I got used to it and felt more comfortable to speak.

  • I can keep the motivation of studying English by group work.

  • Friends show [sic] new points I've never thought of, so it inspired me a lot.

These comments suggest that the careful scaffolding of the overall programme and individual activities supported students to come to recognise and appreciate collaboration as a beneficial learning strategy that they could engage with successfully.

Additionally, students compared the teaching style to their accustomed educational system in a positive light:

The class style is quite different. In high school or university, lecture is very passive. So, during the majority of time, only a teacher is talking. Students hesitate to ask questions or state their opinions if they want to do so. To make matters worse, some students don’t listen to a teacher and they are looking at smartphones, sleeping, or doing other stuffs because all they need to do is to go to the class, sit down and pretend to listen the teacher. On the other hand, this teacher’s class is very interactive. She always asks questions and students have more opportunities to express themselves in English. (Morgan, 2022)

The emphasis on scaffolded collaboration and student-centred learning in this model offers a strong argument for its use in L2 English education, especially for students who are accustomed to an authority-driven, teacher-focused education system but wish to study or work in contexts where collaboration and student-centred learning are preferred. For example, students in many Asian countries are more likely to experience teacher-focused passive styles of learning (DeWaelsche, 2015) instead of the increasingly prevalent inquiry-based, student-focused pedagogies in Western settings. A lack of opportunity to develop collaboration skills may put students at a disadvantage in a globalised world in which they may seek to work in English-medium, Westernised companies, or study in Westernised universities (Freimuth, 2016; Ruegg, 2018). As the number of displaced people in the world grows (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.b), the ability to collaborate across cultures and contexts becomes increasingly important. Collaboration skills must also be explicitly taught in L1, and much investigation has looked into what effective collaboration looks like and what its diverse benefits to learning can be (e.g., Gillies, 2019; Johnson & Johnson, 2017; Slavin, 2020). The GRRF offers a model that can be used effectively across educational contexts, both to teach knowledge and skills and to scaffold and develop collaborative skills that students may use to advantage throughout their lives. This makes it an ideal model to promote SDG4, Quality Education.

4 Conclusion

The SDGs include a goal to reduce inequalities and a goal for quality education (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n.d.a). For quality education for sustainable development, Sterling advocates for “a learning-based breakthrough to a changed worldview which [sic] is both collective and connective” (Sterling, 2007, p. 64). He argues that first-order learning, which takes place within a consensually accepted framework and is effectively maintenance of a status quo of what is and is not right and true, needs to give way, and is gradually giving way, to second-order learning, in which a deep questioning of assumptions occurs such that the system in which the learners are embedded also changes. Genre-based learning offers this opportunity, from where learners can eventually aspire to third-order learning in which an individual’s consciousness, perceptions, and actions are permanently and drastically changed (Sterling, 2007). To promote social justice and reduce inequalities, it is essential that all individuals are given the opportunity to become fluent in the genres of power and dominance in their societies. Genre-based teaching, which teaches the key elements and structures of living and evolving genres within individual cultures and societies, is well-placed to support this.

The will of an informed public is essential to create stable and effective governments (Orr, 2016). Bottom-up, local-to-international approaches to sustainability are needed, which can be supported through genre-based teaching and collaborative learning in which students learn about, discuss and take action on local, regional, and state issues as a prelude to taking on greater national and ultimately international issues. Key competencies and skills such as collaborative skills, cooperation, and empathy are needed within education for sustainable development if we wish to develop a world that is durable and just, inclusive, and fair. The GRRF supports both content learning (such as the teaching of genres) and collaborative skills development and is flexible enough to be used across disciplines and age groups, supporting both new and experienced teachers to offer more sustainability-focused teaching. This chapter has offered some practical tools for teachers in the English language space to promote education for sustainable development within their classes, in the hopes of building momentum and change, one classroom at a time.