In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are a call for action by all member states to tackle the global challenges by 2030. Goal number 4 is quality education, as it is widely believed that education is the most powerful tool to challenge inequalities. According to Goal 4, education “must develop the skills, values and attitudes that enable citizens to lead healthy and fulfilling lives, make informed decisions, and respond to local and global challenges through Global Citizenship Education to achieve the United Nations Educations 2030 agenda” (UNESCO, 2018, p. 1). The importance of global education is further supported by the fact that in 2018, OECD PISA started to assess students’ global competence apart from their reading, mathematics, and science literacy (OECD, 2018). The concept of global competence seeks to find answers to this new demand to react to global challenges as “it includes the acquisition of in-depth knowledge and understanding of global and intercultural issues, the ability to learn from and live with people from diverse backgrounds, and the attitudes and values necessary to interact respectfully with others” (OECD, 2020, p. 5).

The concept of global education has been on the agenda in English language teaching (ELT) for more than three decades (Cates, 2002) as several authors have been advocating the inclusion of real-world issues in the language classroom to provide students with meaningful content while also developing their language skills (Cates, 2002; Maley, 2004, Sampedro & Hillyard, 2004, Ruas, 2017). The reason behind this, as Starkey (1988) puts it, is that “if there is one set of skills that the global citizen ought to possess it is the ability to communicate in languages other than one’s own (p. 239)”. Foreign language education has thus become instrumental in the preparation of global citizens, people “who are aware of and understand the wider world and [their] place in it”, and who “take an active role in their community and work with others to make our planet more equal, fair and sustainable” (Oxfam, n.d.).

Several factors have contributed to making the incorporation of the global dimension in ELT imperative (Cates, 2002; Gimenez & Sheehan, 2008, Sampedro & Hillyard, 2004). Firstly, English has gained considerable importance in our increasingly interconnected and globalized world, as there is greater contact between people from various parts of the globe (Byram, 2008; Modern Language Association, 2007). As a result, one of the most important reasons for teaching the language now is preparing students for intercultural dialogue (Byram, 2008; Gimenez & Sheehan, 2008). Secondly, to prepare learners for an unpredictable job market, teachers now also have to develop their students’ 21st-century skills, such as creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking (NEA, n.d.; World Economic Forum, 2015). To make formal education in the 21st century relevant, teaching these skills should be integrated into key subjects (e.g., Language Arts, World Languages, Mathematics, Science, History) together with 21st-century interdisciplinary themes (e.g., global awareness, environmental literacy, health literacy) (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, n.d.). Therefore, these skills can be developed during English lessons while students also work on their four basic language skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening, and speaking), preferably while engaging in activities centred around the above-mentioned interdisciplinary themes. Thirdly, apart from becoming productive and competitive employees in the job market, students also need to be prepared to be active citizens, who will be able to react to 21st-century challenges (World Economic Forum, 2020), and who will be able to navigate in this increasingly complex world, characterized by radicalization, climate change, increased inequalities, and disinformation. Hence, there is an understandable demand in education to address these difficult issues in a sheltered environment, under the guidance of teachers, and to empower young people to react to them. According to UNESCO MGIEP (2017), the language lesson is an “open-content space” (p. 158), thus, it allows teachers to bring in real-world issues and develop the above-mentioned skills. Therefore, the EFL classroom could be a suitable place for the development of students’ global competence.

To educate global citizens, teachers should assume new roles and reconsider what and how they teach (Cates, 2002; Bourn, 2015). Many teachers have already started to bring global content into their classrooms to develop the knowledge component of global competence in their students. However, most of these real-life, contemporary issues can be considered controversial and even though their discussion has various benefits, many teachers are steering away from treating them in class because of their sensitive nature (Haynes, 2009; Yoshihara, 2013). Therefore, there is a gap between what would be advisable to do for teachers in class according to the recently adopted educational frameworks and what they do in practice when it comes to dealing with controversies.

Despite exemplary initiatives to prepare young people to react to the realities of today and the possibilities of tomorrow, in many countries, teaching is still “geared to preparing young people for lives in the 19th and 20th centuries” (Gardner, 2011, p. xi). As presented in the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (2020), in 2020, only 12% (n = 9) of the 68 countries surveyed adopted GCED in all domains of education. As a member of the United Nations, Hungary has also committed to the inclusion of global citizenship education on all levels of its educational system (HAND, 2016). The Hungarian National Core Curriculum already contains some elements of the global dimension (HAND, 2016), but whether teachers actually deal with global issues in class to develop their students’ global competence is yet to be explored. Sociological studies show that Hungarian teenagers and young adults are disillusioned with politics, reluctant to participate in public affairs and feel that their schools do not prepare them to do so (Gáti, 2010; Szabó & Kern, 2011). The OECD PISA assessment in 2018 shed light on the same phenomenon: Hungary scored low in examining issues of global, local, and intercultural significance, and significantly lower than the OECD average concerning students’ attitudes towards immigrants and their agency regarding global issues (e.g., taking action for collective well-being and sustainable development) (OECD, 2020). In this climate, it is important to explore what is happening in classrooms and how teachers see their role in fostering students’ global competence.