There are two more limitations which may be worth addressing in connection with the questionnaire studies. One of them is in connection with the distinction between global, local, and intercultural issues: as I pointed out in the review of the literature, defining global, local, and intercultural issues is no mean feat, there are some overlaps, and the participants may have had difficulties understanding the difference between these three types of issues. Even though I attempted to level off this problem by providing them with examples of each type in the first section of the questionnaires (see Appendices F and G), it is by no means certain that the participants had the same ideas about these categories as I had. Consequently, it may be worth repeating the studies using a questionnaire containing more clear-cut definitions and examples of global, local, and intercultural issues at the beginning of the instrument. The second limitation concerns one of the findings of the questionnaire, namely that there seems to be a significant difference between secondary grammar school and secondary technical and vocational school teachers’ topic choices, and secondary technical and vocational school teachers seem to be less likely to choose controversial content for their classes. This is a most interesting finding; however, it is difficult to interpret given that this is an under-researched area, and no previous research was found which would corroborate these findings. In the future, it would be worth enquiring into this issue using interviews and case studies to explore whether research in other contexts with other participants would yield similar results and to reveal the possible reasons for the difference between teachers in the two types of school.

To successfully implement GCED in EFL teacher training programmes, further research would be necessary. It would be beneficial to gain insight into teacher trainees’ views on global education and examine their courses with the aim of developing their global competence. More classroom research would be needed to see how students react to similar materials taught by different teachers, or at other universities. It would also be useful to examine methodology and language practice tutors’ lesson plans and the materials they use and observe their lessons to see what content they integrate into their lessons and in what ways. Finally, in the teacher training context, it would be useful to set up a series of continuous professional development workshops to familiarise teacher trainers with global education and investigate their perceptions on the workshop series and how it can contribute to changing their practices.

In the secondary school context, it would be also advisable to conduct more research. Given that two constructs did not work properly in the questionnaire study, it would be beneficial to replicate the study, with more items exploring those two constructs (students’ interest and topicality) and with a larger sample size, to get a fuller picture of how different aspects influence teachers’ decisions to incorporate the global content. To encourage more teachers to bring global content into their classes, it may be useful to provide them with practice-oriented professional development workshops in their own schools and examine how they implement what they learn in these workshops.