Eight out of ten teachers said that there are no taboo topics in their lessons: either because they like discussing everything with their groups or because they believe that there should not be any taboos in school, and they should talk about anything their students are interested in. Nevertheless, after a while, they revealed that they prefer not talking about politics or sex with their groups. The reasons they mentioned for avoiding politics coincide with what Hunyadi and Wessenauer (2016) suggest: teachers tend to avoid this topic because they are afraid of being accused of having a hidden political agenda. Therefore, even if they think their students should be able to address political issues, they will rather not encourage them to talk about politics in class. The teachers explained their reasons for not discussing sex (and also sexual identities) by stating that they are afraid of losing control in the classroom: they are afraid of inappropriate jokes and not having the capacity to deal with heated moments (Warren, 2007; Yoshihara, 2013). Apart from these reasons, both politics and sex belong to the PARSNIPs topics, so there is no mention of them in coursebooks either, therefore, teachers are not even encouraged to bring up these potentially upsetting issues in their classes.

 

Secondary school teachers almost rated the same topics the highest as university tutors (education, unemployment), except for the topic of crime, which almost always features in upper-intermediate or advanced coursebooks. Considering the topics they are least likely to include, there are observable overlaps as well, except for the topic of LGBTQ rights. Given that in the interview study the teachers mentioned that the relevance and topicality of issues are important for them in the topic choice, this finding is rather controversial: on the one hand, LGBTQ rights is rather a relevant and timely hot-button topic in Hungarian society, so teachers should choose it for discussions, but on the other hand, the Hungarian government banned dealing with LGBTQ-related content in school with students under the age of 18 in 2021. The European Parliament criticised this act for being highly discriminative and called it a “serious breach […] of the values” on which the Union is founded (Text adopted P9_TA(2021)0362, para 1). Studies (Cossu & Brun, 2020; Evripidou & Çavuşoglu, 2014; Merse, 2015; Nelson, 2015; Tekin, 2011; Yoshihara, 2013) show that students are interested in topics related to gender and sexuality, they would like to learn more about them, and they also believe that discussing such issues in EFL class helps them in language learning. Nevertheless, by making this issue a taboo in schools, students are robbed of the valuable opportunities to discuss such an important matter under teachers’ guidance and acquire the necessary language to address the issue politely and respectfully.

Age-related differences were found in how likely teachers are to include certain local topics: mental health, minorities, emigration, health care, and LGBTQ rights (see in 5.2.2.1.2). Based on the results, it seems that the youngest generation of teachers (under the age of 35) is more likely to deal with these relevant and timely issues than their more experienced colleagues, which may have positive repercussions in the future, but it would also be important to encourage experienced teachers not to steer away from discussing these matters. Evripidou and Çavuşoglu (2014) also had similar findings of younger teachers’ willingness to incorporate LGBTQ issues. Significant differences were also found in teachers’ likeliness to deal with the topics of minorities, immigration, emigration, the state of the health care system in Hungary and the state of education in Hungary based on the type of school they teach in: it was found that teachers from secondary technical and vocational schools are less likely to deal with these highly controversial matters in their classes. To enquire into the differences in how likely teachers are to deal with local issues based on the type of town they teach in, another ANOVA test was performed, and it was found that teachers from small towns (between 5000 and 20000 inhabitants) are significantly less likely to deal with issues such as minorities, population decline and suicide than teachers teaching in the capital. These findings concerning technical and vocational school teachers and teachers from small towns may be interesting because they show that they are less likely to deal with controversial and sensitive issues, which they may even be more directly affected by than their colleagues teaching in different contexts.

Secondary school teachers’ most preferred intercultural issues can be explained by coursebook use: many ELT coursebooks abound in references to celebrations, generational differences, and stereotypes. The topics they are the least likely to deal with mostly overlap with the ones university tutors admitted to avoiding too (class differences, ethnocentrism), except the topic of political correctness. Given the timeliness and omnipresence of the issue, this finding is somewhat surprising, nevertheless, it may be regarded as a controversial topic, which may account for its low scores in the study. To find differences in how likely teachers are to include intercultural topics based on their age, gender, location, or the type of school they teach in, a One-Way ANOVA test was performed, with the help of which age, gender, location, and school type-related differences were found. Out of these, the most interesting finding was that the younger generation of teachers seems less likely to deal with the topic of celebrations (which is a less controversial topic) than their more experienced colleagues, and more likely to address the topic of identity or racism than the other two age groups. The implications are forward-looking: to implement GCED in schools, it is necessary to have young teachers who are brave enough to address complex, controversial topics in their lessons (Bauermeister & Diefenbacher, 2015; Guo, 2014).

Similar to the respondents of Studies 1, 2 and 4, a fifth of the participants of this study also claimed that there are no taboo topics in their classes, and they would be happy to discuss anything that the students bring up. Nevertheless, those teachers who claimed that there should be taboos added that there are some topics they would rather not discuss as generally, during their English lessons, they try to create a joyful space that should not be tainted with discussions about heavier, depressive topics. This claim is quite similar to what one of the participants said in Study 1: he wants the students to come to his lessons to have fun and not to complain about problems in our world. For the taboos, the participants mostly enumerated the PARSNIP topics (e.g., politics, sexuality), but it is interesting to note that religion was only mentioned by four respondents (2%).

 

Although it is applaudable that teachers deal with a wide range of global issues, based on the results of Studies 3 and 4, they deal with the same ones at the university level as at the secondary level. Arguably, it is advantageous to observe topics from different perspectives and to build upon already existing knowledge, but it is important to ensure that students encounter similar content through engaging, student-centred activities so that they do not have an overload. Based on the results of the studies, it would be advisable to encourage both teacher trainers and EFL teachers to deal with more issues of local interest in their classes. As local issues and global issues are usually interconnected, teachers could encourage their students to think globally and act locally in the framework of GCED, nonetheless, this would necessitate knowing more about the students’ immediate surroundings and discussing local issues. The studies highlighted that tutors and teachers tend to avoid topics that are too controversial or considered to be hot buttons in Hungarian society. It would be desirable thus to first prepare teachers how to handle such controversial issues and how to manage conflict in their classes so that they could provide their students with opportunities to discuss real-life issues in school, under the guidance of teachers. This preparation could take place during university methodology- or language development-related courses, where the participants could discuss what makes fruitful discussions, come up with participation guidelines and also engage in discussions about controversial issues facilitated by teacher trainers.