A Discursive Analysis of Pre-Service EFL Teachers’ Views on Climate Change
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is associated with a strong focus on the
environment and climate change. Within the context of ESD studies, there is a growing
line of research, which demonstrates that the issue of climate change forms an integral
part of the ESD teaching and learning process. Accordingly, it is of critical importance to
acquire a thorough and nuanced understanding of how pre-service teachers view the
issue of climate change. In this light, the present article introduces a study that analyses
how a group of Ukrainian pre-service teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
(hereinafter referred to as participants) views the issue of climate change. To that end, the
participants were requested to write a reflective essay titled “My View on Climate Change
before and during the War in Ukraine”. The discursive analysis of the participants’ essays
focused on the following two aspects: (i) the participants’ descriptors of climate change
manifested by adjectives and (ii) the participants’ emotional states associated with
climate change. The results of the unpaired t-test indicated that there was a statistically
significant difference between the adjectives that described the participants’ views on
climate change before the war in Ukraine and those of the ongoing war. It followed from
the unpaired t-test that there was no statistically significant difference between the
means of emotive lexica associated with climate change before and during the war. The
findings and their implications to the fields of EFL and ESD, respectively, are further
described in the article.
environment and climate change. Within the context of ESD studies, there is a growing
line of research, which demonstrates that the issue of climate change forms an integral
part of the ESD teaching and learning process. Accordingly, it is of critical importance to
acquire a thorough and nuanced understanding of how pre-service teachers view the
issue of climate change. In this light, the present article introduces a study that analyses
how a group of Ukrainian pre-service teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
(hereinafter referred to as participants) views the issue of climate change. To that end, the
participants were requested to write a reflective essay titled “My View on Climate Change
before and during the War in Ukraine”. The discursive analysis of the participants’ essays
focused on the following two aspects: (i) the participants’ descriptors of climate change
manifested by adjectives and (ii) the participants’ emotional states associated with
climate change. The results of the unpaired t-test indicated that there was a statistically
significant difference between the adjectives that described the participants’ views on
climate change before the war in Ukraine and those of the ongoing war. It followed from
the unpaired t-test that there was no statistically significant difference between the
means of emotive lexica associated with climate change before and during the war. The
findings and their implications to the fields of EFL and ESD, respectively, are further
described in the article.
Published in Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, 2026
Read the article here