Sustainable education: responding to diversity inside and outside the Spanish classroom

by Marián Arribas-Tomé, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom;

m.arribas-tome@uea.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1838-0315

This article has been included on this web page to facilitate access to its content thanks to the available online translator. For this reason, this text can be read in more than 130 languages.

SUMMARY

To address the challenges in teaching Spanish and other languages ​​in the UK, we argue that it is very important that teachers aim to develop open access educational resources. Creating our own materials and sharing them with other teachers would facilitate an agile, collaborative and supportive response to the needs of the classroom. It would also allow for a greater quantity and variety of materials to promote learning and reflection on sustainability and decolonization in the context of language teaching. These are premises derived from the experience working with Spanish students at a UK university, a challenge that implies an opportunity to learn from and about diversity and respond to it.

Anti-racist pedagogies that support diversity require an inclusive, creative and adaptive approach and a wide collection of regularly updated material. Language teaching contexts need to be able to quickly capture everyday social, political, scientific and environmental debates and events beyond the conventional boundaries often set by the textbooks used. Language teachers can be vectors of transformation, making it possible to better represent certain communities and their problems, which are normally barely visible. With adequate instruments, that teaching that values ​​sustainability and decolonization can go beyond our classrooms.

Spanish Bytes, an open digital platform with a flexible and inclusive agenda, created by the author of this work, is proposed as an adequate space for the development of content that responds in a timely manner to diversity in the classroom and in the Spanish-speaking world. In order to illustrate its usefulness and relevance, some examples of content redesign are presented, derived from reflections and readings that explore diversity in its multiple dimensions, with resources in which decolonization, sustainability, and student contributions are important dimensions of the job. We will use these examples as a basis to outline a language teaching that can truly be considered sustainable.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper presents a case study built with an autoethnographic approach. It includes references to some teaching interventions designed from a perspective aimed at responding to diversity in the classroom and making it visible outside of it, in the context of teaching Spanish as a foreign language at the University of East Anglia, in the United Kingdom.

This case is presented as an example of what can be understood in practice by "sustainable education" in the context of language teaching. It is inserted within the existing debate about how higher education can contribute to sustainability and induce competences related to sustainability (Sánchez-Carrillo, Cadarso and Tobarra, 2021). It also responds to a wake-up call: education for sustainable development has disproportionately focused on two spheres of interest, the economic and the environmental, leaving the sociocultural sphere of sustainability relegated to the background, which generates an imbalance that exists to solve (Zygmunt, 2016). In addition, this case also represents a valuable contribution to studies dealing with the various ways in which language learning materials are written (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2011).

For all these reasons, it seems necessary to explore the concept of "sustainable" in relation to language teaching. We will outline this concept as the result of a personal evolution within a specific teaching practice. There are works (University of Duisburg-Essen, 2020, p. 10) that indicate that "each institution must determine its own definition of sustainability according to its specific situation, taking into account its geographical location, its social constitution and its scientific orientation." However, we propose that if such an institutional definition does not exist, is not clear, or is not fully shared, it is possible to work with a provisional and personal definition that emerges from the intersection of practice with theory, as is the case in this work, inspired by Vogt et al. (2018, pp. 16-17). This evolution is the result of the reflection process of a Spanish teacher who, after facing different challenges in her teaching context, decides to start creating her own materials published online and open access (Spanish Bytes). This process, which initially seeks to solve challenges related to classroom management, generates awareness of the role that language teachers can play in building more sustainable, anti-racist societies that are committed to decolonization processes. This awareness will be reflected in the materials produced.

 

2. AUTOETNOGRAPHY AND THE CASE STUDY AS METHODS

The work method for the elaboration of this text is based on material of an autoethnographic reflexive nature and is constructed as a case study. According to the academic literature (Rebolj, 2013), case studies “have been widely used in the social sciences and are especially valuable in practice-oriented fields (such as education)” (p. 29). The phenomenological and constructivist approaches characteristic of the case study are adapted to the qualitative nature of the work presented here.

Autoethnography has "been used in language classrooms to learn about the identity, self-concept, and motivation of future teachers (Kumazawa, 2013; Macalister, 2012; Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2013)", as reported by Méndez ( 2013, p.280). In this case, and from the 'reflective diaries' (Moon, 2004) generated by the author over a period of five years as a pedagogical tool for self-assessment and critical analysis, the work context and significant materials created by the teacher and the reflection that accompanies them will be presented. These will help to understand the process of incorporating the concept of 'sustainability' in its different facets over time in the author's teaching practice.

Taking as a starting point a form of discourse that can be understood as emancipatory (Richards, 2008) seems adequate to communicate experiences of emancipation within the educational practice itself. On the other hand, and following Méndez (2013), an important advantage of autoethnography is that it helps others reflect and empathize with what is presented. And indeed, one of the aspirations when writing this work is to turn it into an invitation to reflection for other teachers on the subject in question here.

Within the teaching context on which the reflective diaries deal, and which we will discuss below, the concept of diversity appears centrally, explicitly or implicitly, from very early on. It is from this concept that one arrives at decolonization and sustainability.

 

3. TEACHING CONTEXT AND FIRST PHASE OF THE INTERVENTION

The specific context of language teaching in which this pedagogical intervention is framed is very particular and is located in a field that has been exceptionally little studied. Only recently have some publications appeared that are tangentially relevant (Pountain, 2019) or that deal with this context without going into the details and its implications for teaching (Critchley, Illingworth, & Wright, 2021). At the University of East Anglia, as at other universities in the UK, students of any degree can choose to learn a language as an optional component to their studies [1] . The term used in English to refer to these courses, subsidiary language modules or "subsidiary language courses", indicates that they are subordinate or supplementary [2] . Focusing on this context will reveal that some of the challenges it presents are also opportunities and offer fertile ground for teachers to develop and improve the quality of language teaching with a positive effect beyond the subsidiary language courses.

Teaching Spanish as an elective usually involves teaching large groups of up to 20 students, with a variable number of international students, sometimes with little English proficiency. These are also students who are doing a variety of grades and are at different stages of their learning cycle. In short, these are very heterogeneous groups with mixed abilities and with different levels of experience in language learning.

The elective language courses last twelve weeks, three of which are dedicated to formative and summative tests and to review content in light of the results of the formative tests. Contact time with the teacher is a total of two and a half hours a week, of which 50 minutes are devoted to oral practice. Students are expected to work autonomously at least 4-5 hours per week.

The time constraints in this type of course present problems when choosing an appropriate manual, since it is barely possible to make use of 50% of the material. Considerations such as those indicated in Zhadko and Ko (2020) must also be taken into account: ensuring educational equity involves keeping costs for students at zero. This therefore entails questioning the expectation that students pay for resources that we know we are not going to fully use and considering the option of making use of open access educational resources, which are a way of contributing to social justice.

In this context of work, initially several aspects in need of improvement were also identified, which could be called technical. These were the ones that led to decisions that culminated in the development of the Spanish Bytes platform. The creation of a web page facilitates solutions to problems of groups with such diversity: giving access to relevant material before seminars, for example, especially helps students with dyslexia, or those who find it more difficult to follow the class for other reasons . The tutorials and podcasts created are very useful for this purpose and respond well to the need for flexibility, repetition and autonomy of some students. In this first phase, the content produced had a predominantly linguistic orientation focused on providing clarity, practice and permanent access to grammatical and communicative aspects that were going to be examined by means of tests (see Figure 1). For those who cannot attend class regularly for various reasons, it is also important to have access to the teacher's explanations, and not just to documents used in class. Already at this stage, it is possible to establish that teaching somehow became more sustainable [3] .

Figure 1. Example of student support material for their autonomous practice (Arribas-Tomé, 2016)

“Sustainable” (Merriam-Webster [4] ) is defined as “capable of being sustained or capable of lasting or continuing for a long time”, also “capable of being used without being completely exhausted or destroyed” and “related to a style of life that implies the use of sustainable methods”. Lexico Dictionaries [5] supplements these definitions with “capable of maintaining a certain pace or level” and “capable of being defended”. We can start by assessing whether language teaching could be called 'sustainable' using these criteria. For that, we need to focus on specific teaching practices.

In the case at hand, the fact that students could access the contents outside of the seminars, when it was convenient for them, in a flexible way, without the need to meet with the professor to catch up, was clear support for their independence and autonomy and showed respect for the pace of learning of the students and their personal circumstances. This was something 'capable of maintaining or lasting or continuing for a long time', since the website is an open space that can be accessed even after students finish their course and continue, or not, with their language studies, unlike closed virtual learning environments. Zhadko and Ko (2020, p. 3) point out how Open Educational Resources (OER) "serve as a catalyst for fostering innovation in education" and note that "studies examining the impact of OER on student learning also report increased student interest in OER compared to traditional textbooks and, consequently, improved learning outcomes" (Zhadko and Ko, 2020, p. 7).

Creating something that was 'capable of being used without being exhausted or completely destroyed', as is the case with Spanish Bytes, is something that could be 'defended', starting with the practical reasons given above. As regards the strategy of creating a website, it can therefore be said that it facilitates 'the use of sustainable methods'. Although it was initially demanding, “it may require a considerable amount of time just to develop the content” and also to maintain it (Zhadko and Ko, 2020, p. 41) it was feasible to maintain it 'at a certain pace or level'. The fact that the community at large could access the website, and not be excluded, as is often the case when using closed virtual learning spaces, opened up the walls of the classroom and added another dimension of inclusion to the work carried out (UNESCO, 2021, p.111). So, the cognitive surplus (Shirky, 2011) generated by this teaching activity, and permanently captured in a public virtual space, is reusable and recyclable. All these aspects make it possible to resist a growing trend towards the commodification of education (UNESCO, 2015, p. 82) and point to a type of sustainability that UNESCO (2020, p. 6) also associates with an education supported by open educational resources and open access digital tools.

3.1. Lean and agile strategies

Problem solving, a student-centered approach, reflection, and a desire for efficiency and effectiveness initially drove teaching changes that are well explained by two methods from the world of project management. These methods help to achieve process improvement by generating rapid and, above all, as we have tried to explain, sustainable results.

Only recently have agile and lean concepts been discussed in relation to education (Maccallum & Parsons, 2019). However, these concepts have shaped many decisions regarding the creation of Spanish Bytes, even before that connection to education was made explicit. For example, the space created with the website required continuous evaluation, resulting in an iterative cycle of material production, where resources were repeatedly reviewed and refined as they were used. This triggered adaptive learning, generating a progressive improvement in the teacher's skills and the integration of technology in a significant way, to respond to both the needs of the students and the new needs of the teacher. From this perspective, agile (focused on the rapid delivery of something of value to the learner that allows access to valuable feedback to improve the material) and lean (with an emphasis on quality and efficiency) support a sustainability that is practical but, in the long run, it also facilitates another of a theoretical-critical nature.

By questioning the quality and value of educational resources from the lean and agile perspectives, and also with the quality criteria proposed by authors such as Green and Brown (2017), the inevitable partial use of manuals in the educational context of teaching subsidiary languages, is conceptualized as 'residue'. “Inefficiencies or waste” (Maccallum and Parsons, 2019, p. 74) can take many forms and eliminating them is an improvement. To do this, you also need to have a clear idea of ​​what is valuable. In the case at hand, it is valuable to maximize the opportunity to teach relevant content in limited time, for example. The basis of the lean methodology is Kaizen thinking, change for the better, continuous improvement, and Imai (1997) establishes 7 types of waste, which also exist in educational institutions, one of which is overproduction.

3.2. A critical look at language teaching books

The processes briefly described that connect with lean and agile strategies in the creation of materials, in addition to the social justice aspects mentioned above, necessarily lead to questioning the textbooks. The constant need to reform the content, or to supplement, eliminate or transform the material available in certain books, contrasts with the satisfaction of creating efficient, appropriate content designed with a certain group of students in mind. Although it has been argued that there is potential for working with imperfect materials to develop intercultural competencies if the cultural representations contained in language textbooks are problematic (McConachy, 2018), it is almost inevitable that a point will be reached in the creation of OER, where in which the limitations are less and less negotiable, not only because of the discrepancy with the specific needs in the classroom, but also because textbooks are similar to a straitjacket compared to the agility with which more useful materials can be produced and adjusted to a certain student profile and a growing awareness of the decision-making power of the teacher. The CEFR publication [6], also marks a turning point by not ascribing any specific method for language teaching; “There is currently no consensus on how students learn that is so consolidated by research that justifies the Framework to be based on a specific learning theory” (Council of Europe, 2002, p. 139). It can be argued that this position facilitates the opening to a post-method era, where what is truly central is the teaching context and the characteristics and needs of the students. Kumaravadivelu already pointed out in 1994 how the post-method situation "can reshape the character and content of L2 teaching, teacher training and classroom research" and "motivates the search for an open and coherent framework based on current theoretical, empirical and pedagogical proposals that will allow teachers to theorize from practice and practice from theory” (p. 1). Language teaching books, under the apparently beneficial and generally accepted premise of saving time for teachers, they also consume and shape our time and our practice, imposing certain methods. Furthermore, as hooks (1994) points out, it is "necessary to remind everyone that no education is politically neutral". (p. 30), and by extension neither are textbooks politically neutral. What is included in a textbook, or what is left out, is certainly political, and therefore it is very necessary to consider them critically, also for this reason. A good example of the need for a critical position towards Spanish materials in LE/L2 textbooks is the work of Morales-Vidal and Cassany (2020).

What Apple (1985) argued over 35 years ago is still relevant today. Textbooks belong to the “political economy of culture” (p. 147), they must satisfy a target group of consumers, they have to be competitive, and they have to be for profit. In 2020, the total export of books aimed at teaching Spanish reached the figure of 10.69 million euros, as well as more than 1.60 million copies (FEDECALI, 2020). According to Jobrack (2017), publishers focus on producing materials for those teachers who are not interested in changing, because the materials that could have more impact in terms of encouraging innovations are only of interest to a minority and therefore are not profitable. You cannot ignore the 'tyranny of the textbook', the title that gives Jobrack's (2017) book its name, nor the existence of the market, when considering the role of language books in learning. They are largely "oriented to what is going to sell and not necessarily to what is most important to know" (Apple, 1985, p. 154). Kramsch and Vinall (2015, p. 16) have also denounced how the construction and representation of Spanish-speaking cultures are the object of an ideology of consumption and the commodification of identity, which feeds the global tourism industry. Also of interest is the analysis by Bruzos and Méndez Marassa (2016) of the institutional discourse on the economic value of Spanish and linguistic tourism. This dominant vision of ELE (Spanish as a foreign language) and of the student as a cultural consumer “is reflected in the cultural issues represented in the textbooks (literary and artistic landmarks, tourist sites, popular dishes, festivals, celebrations)', in the way they are dealt with and in the construction of the identity of the ELE teacher as 'a kind of cultural entertainer/facilitator' (Bruzos and Méndez Marassa, 2016, p.13).

Taking into account the annotations in the reflective diaries in which the specific teaching experience referred to in this work is collected, it should be noted that it is at the moment of creating didactic resources for a web page and becoming familiar with the tools necessary when one becomes aware of the freedom that is given up when using language teaching books. Sometimes this resignation is imposed, in cases where decision-making about textbooks, for example, is not in the hands of the teacher. However, a situation like this does not exclude the possibility of looking for ways to exercise freedom as a teacher and create your own materials in your own spaces, such as a web page. Recovering the creative space of teaching, creating one if necessary, and with it, to redefine the identity as an ELE teacher, is a political activity. This facilitates the production of material beyond the purely problem-solving position, trying to adequately integrate the content to be taught, the teacher-student relationship beyond the physical classroom, and an emancipated teaching identity, partly thanks to the creation of an autonomous space.

Without textbooks the opportunity to make pedagogical decisions increases. Not only can we be scriptwriters for our classes, but we must also decide which images and visual elements generate rich and coherent resources.

It is at the moment of making decisions about the images when the issue of representation and voice becomes a critical issue. As Gerald (2020) suggests, “hegemonic whiteness controls our institutions, our curricula, and our pedagogy unless we, as members of this camp, consciously seek to counter their influence” (p. 44). This new role, more holistic and free, leads to exploring "questions of justice, values, ethics and power" and moves away from "pedagogy modes that embrace an instrumental rationality" (Giroux, 2011, p. 26).

 

4. DECOLONIZING AWARENESS AND SECOND PHASE OF THE INTERVENTION

It is necessary to highlight the evolutionary aspect involved in expanding the capacity for teaching action and its implications in terms of decision-making in didactic and theoretical aspects simply driven by the awareness of being a freer language educator. The relationship with a new workspace, such as Spanish Bytes, is also prone to evolve over time given its flexibility and adaptability. In this evolution, after a first phase of motivation of a practical nature (responding to a series of recurring limitations and challenges that a teacher perceives in her classes), a second phase is reached that could be called experimental and decolonizing (TU Delft, 2021). . We will therefore present below

The examples in Figure 2 and Figure 3 belong to that second phase of the change process. They capture the awareness that arises around the importance of decisions about what type of speaker is visible. In these two cases in relation to the questioned and controversial notion of native speaker (Dewaele, 2018; Espinoza Alvarado, 2015). In Figure 2 we see an L2 user in a reference position and in a place that defies assumptions of where L2 is spoken and by whom. The Spanish speaker in the video is German and is explaining how to find a certain church in her small town in northern Germany. With this example we want to illustrate the possibilities of going beyond a pedagogy focused on the purely linguistic. It is usual to cover the topic of giving directions to get to a place in an A1-A2 level Spanish elective course, but it is not usual to turn the notion of the native speaker into a topic of conversation in that context, nor to locate the use of Spanish in a territory where the official language is not Spanish, as Cook (1999) says, bringing "the situations and roles of L2 users to the classroom, deliberately using students' L1 in teaching activities , and looking for descriptions of L2 users or L2 learners instead of descriptions of native speakers as a source of information” (p. 185). This provides the opportunity to question in class the concept of the native speaker as a model and the usual association of nation and language, which obscures the reality of multilingualism and complex identities.

Figure 2. The native speaker in class as a point of reflection (Arribas-Tomé, 2018)

Similarly, Figure 3, with another non-native speaker, illustrates the possibilities of broadening the range of voices, experiences and topics, in this case bringing students closer to the possibility of thinking of themselves as migrants in the future. This leads the Spanish learner to a territory that Spivak (2012) calls "transnational literacy" (p. 152), which implies learning and unlearning, where we can explore with students how the notion of emigrant is affected by sociohistorical and political influences. A transnational critical literacy that ultimately consists of becoming aware of the power relations that operate in the production of knowledge in intercultural contexts.

Figure 3. Opportunities to reflect on emigration and on the learner as a potential future emigrant (Arribas-Tomé, 2020a)

This progressively decolonizing dimension very soon led to the development of materials where decolonization and sustainability were interconnected. Wanting to make visible people and places that are not present in the textbooks, or that are, but in a folklorized or distorted way, and getting closer to them helps to understand their problems. And these problems have a lot to do with the concept of sustainability. This is not to say that until then the issues relevant to sustainability had been absent from the horizon of pedagogical possibilities.

 

5. SUSTAINABILITY AS THE COMMON THREAD AND THE DECOLONIZATION OF SUSTAINABILITY: THIRD PHASE OF THE INTERVENTION

There is a growing body of work offering different perspectives on how education can contribute to sustainability (Price et al., 2021), but none focuses explicitly on how language teaching can contribute to sustainable education. This could be interpreted in at least two ways. It may be too early to have evidence to show the link between language teaching and sustainability, or it just has not been a discipline that sees any potential for change that can be linked to concepts of sustainability. If there is resistance within the language teaching community when arguing for its link to teaching about sustainability, it seems natural that it is much more difficult to find understanding outside this discipline. There is a wealth of literature illustrating how the concept of sustainability has become largely associated with the so-called hard sciences, Echendu (2021) and Lundquist et al. (2021) are just two recent examples. Over time, disciplines such as law have carved out a space and a voice in relation to sustainability, as for example in the emblematic case of the late Polly Higgins (2016), Scottish lawyer and author, turned environmental activist, and known for her work on Ecocide Law.

Starkey and Osler (2001) propose that language teaching may be too important to be left to linguists alone. This would seem to suggest that language teachers should seek collaboration beyond their discipline or develop as interdisciplinary educators. These are two compatible options, and it would seem that both make an implicit reference to a CLIL approach [7], normally associated with school contexts. Language-for-specific-purposes approach exists at university level in the UK, but at least in the context of Spanish language teaching, as Díaz-Bravo (2021) points out, there is a strict distinction between language courses and content courses, which is inappropriate and counterproductive. Consequently, it would be necessary to question not only the content we teach, but also ourselves as educators, taking into account the social and historical context in which we find ourselves. Given the global challenges derived, among others, from the impact of industrial societies on the environment, one of the pressing questions is how to transform them into sustainable societies, and how to train ourselves as teachers in a world that also needs our intervention. Promoting reflection and knowledge seems to be a task within the reach of language teachers. Therefore, the subsequent question is not whether it is possible to integrate language teaching with content that facilitates learning about sustainability, but how to do it optimally. Language courses, even at an initial level, are not incompatible with content that focuses students' attention on sustainability. Synthetically we present some examples that illustrate this possibility (Figure 4).

The example in Figure 5 concerns Chiapas and issues of access to water and health problems due to the high consumption of Coca-Cola in the region among the indigenous population. This is part of a collection of new teaching materials covering topics such as sustainable consumption and production, sustainable cities and communities, climate action, quality education, good health and well-being and gender equality for A1-A2 and B1-B2 level learners studying a degree in Spanish. This also illustrates how the development of materials in a subsidiarity context, according to the principles mentioned above, benefits other learning contexts.

Figure 4. Sustainable life: Sustainable eating is a topic that can be worked on at different levels and that encourages reflection on personal consumption habits as well as its impact beyond our immediate environment (Arribas-Tomé, 2021).

 

 

Figure 5 shows the names of the students who, by using the materials, developed knowledge and skills to address social challenges through reflection and writing. They generated texts and other contributions that were added to the initial material. Following the work of Mercer-Mapstone et al. (2017) "the roles of students and faculty in the learning process are repositioned on the basis of a values-based ethic" and "academics report a transformation of sense of self and self-awareness for both students and teachers" (p. 2). Students' participation thus turns into collaboration, and their work becomes co-creation of content; it is made visible and acquires a value that is not associated with a numerical test result. The web page thus becomes a space where the relationships of power and subordination, teacher-student, are eliminated and replaced by another, more experimental and egalitarian relationship. Student activity generates a cognitive surplus that is not lost but enriches a constantly changing virtual space accessible to all.

Figure 5. Making students and their contributions visible (Arribas- Tomé, 2020b)

The students expressed how they had broadened their knowledge about current issues in our world along with their language learning. They valued the group work on the presentations as being very useful for exchanging ideas and the topics on Spanish-speaking countries in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Their positive comments validate the way in which this development of materials is generated as seen, with Maley (1995), "as a form of operationalised tacit knowledge" that involves "drawing on our intuitions and beliefs" (p. 221). Maley (2013) also speculates on the possibility of a new paradigm shift in language teaching. One of the factors responsible for such a shift would, in his opinion, be "increased awareness of global issues, and the importance of educating a new generation in greater respect for the planet's limited resources " (Maley, 2013, p. 183).

 

6. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we have outlined the context of teaching Spanish as an optional or 'subsidiary' language as the site where the creation of materials and the critical consciousness of a university teacher developed over time.

The summary of this trajectory explains that it was the responses to the challenges presented by diversity in the classroom that led to the learning of tools to facilitate change, including the development of a website. Lean and agile methodologies help to understand the development of this practice as a process initially aimed at improving a product with minimum waste, especially of time, but also of content. This last aspect, characteristic of the lean strategy, is connected to a conceptualisation of education as a generator of cognitive surplus that poses an ethical challenge (to recycle it or waste it) and to a conceptualisation of sustainability as something that implies an optimised use of resources. These considerations led to a critical look at textbooks.

It was through rapidly prototyping learning objects for a website, revising them and refining the materials as they were used in the classroom, that the focus shifted from the learning objects to the underlying assumptions and rationale for decisions. With the help of reflexive diaries, issues of representation and visibilisation were delved into. These issues found a conceptual framework in the decolonising project and later a reference in the SDGs, especially in the context of the Spanish-speaking world.

The distancing from and questioning of textbooks and the production of an alternative space accessible to all allowed the visibility of subjects and people normally absent in the teaching of Spanish, the students as collaborators in the creation of content, and the teacher with greater decision-making power.


A search for technical solutions made it possible for the action and voice of the teacher and student to grow in presence, at the same time as new content grew in presence, linked firstly to a decolonising interest that in turn also became intertwined with questions of sustainability. Sustainability requires further thinking about decolonisation because it is a concept susceptible to critique from a pluriversal position (Masaquiza-Jerez, 2021), with implications for the future evolution of the work presented here.

 

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NOTES

[1] In many cases, at the University of East Anglia, students only take these courses for one semester.

[2] It is difficult to say with any certainty that this terminology used for this type of language teaching context is responsible for the lack of attention given to it in the academic literature, but the fact is that the specific characteristics of this context and the implications of working on it have not been widely investigated. Part of the additional interest of this work is, therefore, to focus on this little-studied context.

[3] This concept will be discussed below, based on its definition. Here it is understood as something that can be maintained on its own, in the sense that it does not require teacher intervention beyond the production of the educational resources themselves. The production of this content online saves, in the long term, time and energy, since it is not necessary to repeat it individually during student service hours. The optimization of time can be interpreted as an element that contributes to the "responsible production and consumption" of the content taught.

[4] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustainable

[5] https://www.lexico.com/definition/sustainable

[6] Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

[7] Content-Integrated Learning and Foreign Languages.



The source text for this translation was initially published as a book chapter, these are the details of that publication:

Arribas-Tome, M. (2022). Sustainable education: responding to diversity inside and outside the Spanish classroom. In C. Soler Montes, R. Díaz-Bravo, & V. Colomer i Domínguez (Eds.), Investigative and pedagogical advances on the teaching of Spanish: contributions from the British university context (pp. 129-153). research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2022.58.1403

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