My Services – ELT and Sustainability
ELT and sustainability, the story so far …
I began working on the interface between English language teaching and sustainability in 2019, and since then I have given a large number of talks and webinars, written extensively around the subject in the form of books, chapters and articles, participated in and chaired forums, appeared on podcasts and been in a team undertaking a large scale climate action research project for the British Council. I was in the team that won an ELTon for ELT Footprint, that I co-founded, and also sit on the volunteer committee for Green Action ELT. As the current President of IATEFL (2025-27), I have been instrumental in developing the Green IATEFL initiative.
A fuller list of activities that I have been involved in around sustainability can be found below.
Things have changed considerably over the years, as teachers in all sorts of institutions around the world, teaching all ages from primary to university students now regularly integrating sustainability topics both into their classroom work but also through projects in the communities that they work in. There's also greater awareness in institutions both of their responsibilities in terms of the fuel they use to heat or cool their schools, how staff and students travel to the institution and the way they use paper and other resources and so on. Stakeholders such as publishers and examination providers are also factoring sustainability policies and opportunities for educational engagement with sustainability into the way that they work.
However, the problem in terms of maintaining and developing our relationship with sustainability is that the efforts people make, regardless their stakeholder group seem to be quite piecemeal in that there's no sense of connectivity or unity in terms of addressing some of the greatest challenges that humanities ever had to deal with.
The thinking and reading, and discussions with stakeholders that I do suggest that the way to really embed sustainability into the way we work is to create a culture of sustainability across the ELT community and its stakeholders. While cultural change very often comes from the ‘bottom upwards’, in our case from students and teachers suggesting innovations and changes around how their institutions are run in terms of sustainability, and creating materials around sustainability topics, ultimately the changes have to be institution-driven in order to become permanently embedded into the way we work.
My new initiative, the culture of sustainability, brings together my now several years of experience of working around sustainability in ELT both on the academic or classroom side, but also on the side of supporting institutions to make change, and ensure the longevity that culture of sustainability. Every institution is different, And of course cultural change needs to be context-specific so all the work I do in this area is needs-driven so please take some time to read the ideas below and if you'd like to discuss working with me on creating this culture of sustainability in your institution, please contact me. You will see my specific services and proposals in the section below, but the starting point for all these things is as ever a conversation so please don't hesitate to get in touch.
My sustainability initiatives
Books around sustainability themes
Sustainability in English Language Teaching, Balkan University Press. Contributing editor with Xerri, D and Popovski, A. Chapter on Sustainability Education in initial ELT teacher training. Due Q4 2025
50 Ways to be a Greener Teacher. Wayzgoose Press, 2022.
Climate action in language education. Activities for low resource classrooms. With Bilsborough, K, Barber D and Kral, T, British Council, 2022.
Articles around sustainability themes
Should we be angry about not being angry? A reflection on climate change education. IATEFL Voices, 2024.
The Thunberg effect – lower and upper secondary learners, ELT and sustainability. IATEFL Young Learners and Teenagers Special Interest Group 2024
After the Plague - the post-Covid greening of ELT. ELT Footprint, 2020
Blinded by the light - understanding and reducing the environmental impact of ELT. Oxford TEFL, 2019.
Recent sustainability-related consultancy, speaking and advocacy projects include:
For the British Council:
British Council, Armenia, face-to-face plenary talks and workshops around ELT, sustainability and how the 21st century skills are important to our classroom approaches to this;
British Council, Egypt. Designing and delivering a short course around climate change education for COP Ambassadors from Sub-Saharan Africa attending COP-27 in Egypt;
British Council podcast around ELT and the climate crisis;
joining British Council panels for the ‘Climate Connection: Conversation for Change’ and ‘Going Global’ conference;
chairing a forum around ELT Assessment and Climate Change at British Council ‘New Directions Southeast Asia 2021’.
For teacher associations, institutions and publishers as part of the cross-stakeholder moves towards a culture of sustainability.
ACPI (Costa Rica) 2025
AISLI (Italy) 2021
AzETA (Azerbaijan) 2025
EAQUALS (Global) 2022
English UK 2021
FAAPI (Argentina) 2024
Global English Education China Assembly 2025
IATEFL Business English Special Interest Group 2025
IATEFL Learning Technology Special Interest Group 2025
IATEFL Teacher Training and Education Special Interest Group 2025
International House World Organization (Global) 2021
NATESOL (UK) 2022
Oxford University Press (Global) 2022
TESOL (Global) 2021
TESOL Thrace Macedonia (Greece) 2024
Trinity College, London 2023
What is a culture of sustainability in an ELT educational institution?
My story in sustainability has made me increasingly realise that the approach of the ELT community to sustainability is piecemeal. What is needed is a ‘joined up’ approach to all the key elements in creating a culture of sustainability for educational institutions.
This culture will put sustainability at the forefront with alignment of activities, educational operational, financial to the SDGs and other suitable national frameworks. These alignments need support from the whole range of stakeholders in the educational institution; this support ideally embedded from the inception of the cultural changes.
My work on creating a culture of sustainability attempts to brings together a lot of elements under one umbrella- a continuum that involves all the stakeholders and all the institutional processes and outputs.
So what can I do to support you? My services.
For institutions
I have a range of support options available based upon the fact that most ELT institutions whether they're private or state founded are likely to already have at least a certain degree of sustainability already built into their culture and may be working on integrating other elements.
The best starting point is usually an informal conversation with no cost or commitment, to understand a little bit more where, in terms of sustainability, the institution is, where it wants to be and what some of the barriers might be.
This initial conversation would then lead to a formal needs analysis survey to get an in-depth understanding of the elements of sustainability built into the institution’s culture. This generally involves structured interviews across the stakeholder range, one or two focus groups, and an online survey. Based upon this we are able to discuss areas where interventions, from an outside party and in what form, might be effective in order to create or maintain the momentum towards the creation of a culture of sustainability. At this point a Theory of Change may be developed.
The interventions generally involve consultancy and professional development that builds real capacity, sometimes across the institution, or sometimes with particular specific groups of stakeholders. Before any professional or consultancy takes place, a baseline analysis is done and the whole rollout process is subject to constant monitoring and evaluation to see where progress is being made where resource may need to be directed, and to try to identify challenges before they become significant. Inbuilt into this is a deep awareness of the challenges around the management of change.
The many typical areas for institutional consultancy and professional development might include:
What makes up your school culture – around and beyond sustainability? Who are your stakeholders?
Intro workshop – whole institution or admin and then teaching – needs driven
Support for sustainable teaching
Green skills and careers
Resource use
Managing the change
Joining up the initiatives
SDG integration and alignment
The institutional continuum of sustainability
Stakeholder engagement
Sustainable leadership
Wellbeing as part of sustainability
Monitoring and evaluation
Developing outreach
Creating a structure to embed and maintain sustainability in the institution
Professional development themes around sustainability for teachers might include:
being part of the sustainability culture of the institution;
integrating sustainability content and perspectives into existing materials;
originating content with sustainability content and perspectives;
the challenges and barriers around using sustainability content in class;
project based learning;
sustainability and methodology;
21st century skills;
integrating the SDGs;
understanding greenwashing;
integrating sustainability into teacher development.
You find more about ELT and sustainability in terms of the backgrounds and contexts here and you can contact me here.