6.2.2.2.1 The Interview Study (Study 2). The ten participants of the interview study also reported reasonably positive attitudes towards dealing with global content. Many of the respondents have positive feelings towards these issues: they look forward to the lessons when they can discuss such complex topics. Nevertheless, they admitted that they need to prepare considerably more for such lessons (similar to the teachers involved in Macfarlane’s (2015) and Skinner’s (2012) studies) and they constantly have to develop themselves to seem credible in their role. The teachers’ answers varied about how frequently they deal with such content in their classes: as they put it, it largely depends on the coursebook they follow, the relevance of the topic and whether the students would like to deal with an issue. Some of them also admitted that they do not incorporate global content into their classes in a planned manner. Nonetheless, they did agree that it is important to infuse their lessons with the global perspective to develop their students’ global skills.

6.2.2.2.2 The Questionnaire Study (Study 3). The results of the statistical tests inquiring into teachers’ attitudes towards dealing with global content were remarkably similar to the results of the tests in the university context, even if the secondary school teachers awarded lower scores altogether to each item. Secondary school teachers seem to have positive feelings towards the incorporation of global content, nevertheless, they rated the extent to which they like dealing with local issues significantly lower than their preferences of intercultural or global issues. Significant differences were found in how frequently they deal with local or global and intercultural content and the statistical test clearly shows that their least often included topics are local issues. Another interesting finding, which has already been revealed in the Cypriot context (Evripidou & Çavuşoglu, 2014), is that younger teachers (under the age of 35) tend to incorporate controversial issues significantly more frequently in their lessons than their more experienced colleagues. It has also been confirmed by teachers’ answers to the question of how important they think it is to deal with global, local, intercultural, and controversial issues in their classes: the youngest generation of teachers rated the importance of dealing with intercultural and controversial topics significantly higher than the older generation. These results are noteworthy because, in some contexts, it was the novice teachers who reported being afraid of dealing with global content in their classes due to their inexperience, lack of knowledge about the issues and the fear of unexpected situations (Guo, 2014; Gürsoy & Saglam, 2011; Macfarlane, 2015), which has also been confirmed by some younger teachers in the two interview studies.

6.2.2.3 Conclusion and Implications. The four studies attempted to gain insight into teachers’ attitudes towards the integration of global content into their lessons by examining their feelings towards these topics, their frequency of inclusion and the importance teachers attribute to incorporating these topics in their classes. Based on the four studies, it seems that Hungarian secondary school teachers and teacher trainers have a reasonably positive attitude towards the integration of global content into their classes: they have positive feelings mostly towards global and intercultural issues, they regularly include such content, and they think that it is important to address complex issues in their classes. Nevertheless, they prefer integrating local content less than global or intercultural content. The reasons for neglecting local issues may be manifold, but what the data implies is that the controversial, often political nature of such topics accounts for teachers’ decision not to deal with them in their classes. As GCED by definition aims to “empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally” (UNESCO, 2014, p. 15), local issues cannot be neglected from a lesson infused by the global perspective. Students need to see the local and global connections to feel that global problems are relevant in their lives and become proactive contributors to making their immediate surroundings more “just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable” (UNESCO, 2014, p. 15). To this end, it would be paramount to help teachers facilitate discussions about local issues and encourage their learners to take action in their local contexts. Teacher education programs could play an important role in this by involving teacher trainees in service-learning activities and by raising their awareness of the importance of the inclusion of local issues in their future lessons. In addition to the world-changing gains, activities, such as service-learning, could help the students improve their foreign language communication skills by engaging them in active and meaningful language use.