The Effect of Teachers’ Thoughts and Perceptions on Raising Iranian EFL Learners'(Energy)Sustainability Awareness

The present study aimed at investigating Iranian EFL teachers’ attitudes and perceptionsabout raising students’ awareness about issues of sustainability and energy. To this end, anumber of 27 EFL professors teaching at four universities in Isfahan, Iran were investigatedusing a questionnaire. The questionnaire was adopted from Alghamdi and El-Hassan (2019)and consisted of seven questions probing into the respondent teachers’ opinions about theissues of sustainable development and energy. The results of data analysis revealed aprimary profile of Iranian EFL teachers’ thoughts about teaching sustainability and energyissues while teaching English to university students. The respondent teachers believed that itwould be invaluable to teach sustainability to university students in English languagecourses. In addition, it was shown that EFL teachers can play a role in teachingsustainability. Furthermore, it was revealed that there are a number of reasons why thelanguage teachers would be asked to do so. The findings of this study have implications forcurriculum developers as well as language teachers teaching at universities, so as to plan toraise language learners’ awareness about sustainable development and energy issues.