Designing A Sustainable Society Oriented Cultural Foreign Language Course: A Needs Analysis of Preservice English Teachers

Abstract

This study develops a sustainability-oriented, culture-integrated foreign language course design framework grounded in a needs analysis of preservice English teachers. Building on intercultural communicative competence and intercultural citizenship traditions in language education, the article argues that sustainability is not an “add-on topic” but a meaning-making domain that reconfigures what counts as communicative competence, cultural understanding, and ethical participation in multilingual societies (Byram, 1997; Byram, 2008; Baker, 2012; Adami, 2025). Conceptually, the study links education for sustainable development, ecological literacy, and critical pedagogy to the cultural and intercultural goals of ELT, proposing that preservice teachers’ course needs emerge at the intersection of three pressures: (1) curriculum demands to address global and local sustainability challenges, (2) learners’ lived cultural contexts and identity negotiation, and (3) the professional requirement to teach language as social action rather than only linguistic form (Andersson et al., 2013; Burmeister et al., 2013; Capra, 2007; Focho, 2010; Freire, 2016). Methodologically, the article outlines a qualitative needs analysis approach using interview and reflective narrative protocols complemented by document analysis of course requirements and artifacts. Thematic analysis procedures guide interpretation, enabling identification of preservice teachers’ perceived gaps in intercultural pedagogy, sustainability literacy, and pedagogical language for facilitating difficult conversations around crisis, responsibility, and justice (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Charalambous et al., 2025). Results are presented as a descriptive synthesis of likely needs patterns and course design implications drawn strictly from the provided research base, emphasizing culturally specific teaching realities, embodied and affective intercultural communication, service-learning potentials, readability demands for accessible materials, and project-based global issues pedagogy (Anas et al., 2025; Carstensen, 2025; Chung, 2025; Cates & Jacobs, 2006; DuBay, 2004; Flesch, 1948). The article concludes with a course architecture that aligns intercultural citizenship aims with sustainability education through critical literacy, locally situated cultural inquiry, and reflective assessment practices suitable for teacher education programs (Balıkcıoğlu Akkuş & Uysal, 2024; Arıkan & Zorba, 2024).