Towards sustainable bilingual-CLIL education through the three gifts of teaching

Abstract

In recent decades, the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015), and the importance of education for reimagining the future (UNESCO, 2021) have increasingly gained attention. While the importance of sustainability has been recognised in recent CLIL publications (Dalton-Puffer et al., 2022; Nikula et al., 2022), what sustainability means as part of CLIL education is yet to be addressed. We begin by outlining the connection between CLIL and bilingual teaching in Finland, then using Biesta's theory of World-Centred Education (2022) we use the three gifts of teaching to consider the importance of teaching in the development of sustainable bilingual education. The key question we seek to address is how students in bilingual education can grow up to be at home in the world, aware of the limits and limitations on what humans can desire from and can do with the natural and social world. This question draws attention to the crucial role of teachers and teaching in the development of sustainable bilingual-CLIL education.