The Sound of Curricular Silence: A Critical Review of Germany’s Foreign Language Curriculum

Abstract: When, in 2023, the latest version of the national educational standards (KMK, 2023a) was published in Germany, policymakers had a real chance to cement the social aims of education, such as sustainable development, social justice, and global citizenship, in foreign language education once and for all.  They did not seize this opportunity.  Instead, the new guidelines promote language education that is aimed at the development of functional communicative skills, devoid of social aims; and the question remains, functional skills to what end?  The document’s silence on the potential of language education for global development speaks volumes, but there has not been critical engagement with the new curriculum yet, which is bound to influence language teaching and learning in Germany in the years to come. 

This Perspectives article critically reviews the latest version of the national guidelines against the background of two central questions:  first, what are the goals of language education?  This question highlights the relationship between language, communication, and being/acting in the world for a better future for all.  It invites a potential argument for a stronger positioning of language education in line with the overarching efforts for education for sustainable development and global citizenship.  And, second, why is it important to reflect social aims in curricula for modern foreign languages?  This question highlights the significance of a balance between functionality and criticality in language education.  Embedded in this question is an argument for the progressive cultivation of sustainability, social justice, and global citizenship in the foreign language classroom starting from the very beginning of language education.  While the focus of this contribution is on German educational standards, the discussion yields generalisable implications for foreign language education in other contexts.

Key words: Education for Sustainable Development; Education Policy; Foreign Language Education; Germany; Social Justice.

Introduction: missed opportunities

In 2023, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education in Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz in German; KMK) published an updated version of the educational standards for the first foreign language (English/French) for years five to nine/ten at German secondary schools (that is, for pupils generally aged ten to sixteen) (KMK, 2023a).  This move came almost twenty years after the publication of the document’s original version in 2004.  Policymakers had the opportunity to cement the social aims of education, such as sustainable development, social justice, and global citizenship, in foreign language education once and for all.  They had the opportunity to balance functionality, that is the development of functional communicative skills and literacies, with criticality, or the cultivation of critical literacies essential for learners to contribute to meaningful change in the world.  The update provided a chance to reposition foreign language education in Germany in line with the United Nations’ (2015) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly with SDG 4.7, which specifies what constitutes quality education in the twenty-first century.  It provided the chance to re-orientate impactful, nation-wide guiding policy documents along existing KMK guidelines on sustainable development, such as the Curriculum Framework Education for Sustainable Development for modern foreign languages (KMK, 2017), which were designed to translate UNESCO’s Agenda 2030 into classroom practice in Germany.

These opportunities were missed.  Instead, the updated educational standards (KMK, 2023a) make no mention at all of sustainability, development education, human rights education, global citizenship, or any of the social aims of education as spelled out by SDG 4.7.  Fully aware of this fact, KMK (2023b) explained this decision in a supplementary paper on how to implement educational standards in Germany’s sixteen federal states and in schools.  The relevant paragraph reads:

“Overarching educational objectives such as possible subject-specific contributions to democracy education or comparable agreements of the Standing Conference were not explicitly included in the formulation of the subject-specific standards – apart from specific links immanent to the subject, for example in the STEM subjects, with regard to education for sustainable development.  This is primarily due to the fact that the standards are limited to the central subject competences to be developed.  As mentioned at the beginning, the objectives of media education and education in the digital world were taken into account in an appropriate manner for the subject, where possible and if based on subject-specific didactic foundations.  The action plan of the relevant strategy [...] were the guiding reference documents” (KMK, 2023b: 6; author’s translation; emphasis added).

This contribution departs from both the fact that the social aims of foreign language education were deliberately left out of the updated standards as well as the explanation given for this decision by the policymakers.  In particular, this discussion is sparked by formulations such as ‘specific links immanent to the subject’ (fachimmanent, in German), the idea of ‘central subject competences’ in the languages, and the implied notion that there is a lack of didactical/conceptual foundation when it comes to ESD.

Against the background of Kwauk and Iyengar’s (2021) identification of major roadblocks to quality education in times of sustainability and development crises, which includes a lack of systemic support for teachers, for instance by policy and curriculum, this article discusses two main implications of KMK’s silence on social aims for the state and the future of education for sustainable development (ESD) in foreign language education in Germany.  Firstly, that these decisions were made on false assumptions about the current state of foreign language education research and practice and are indicative of a perception of school subjects as siloed rather than integrated vis-a-vis the overarching project of education for sustainable development and global citizenship.  Secondly, that these decisions send the wrong signals moving forward, among other things as regards the relationship between functionality and criticality in language education as well as the ‘elitarisation’ (see, e.g., Ventsel and Struchkova, 2015, who use the term when discussing language and identity) of sustainability and development education in the foreign languages in Germany.

Decisions made on false assumptions

To better understand KMK’s silence on ESD in the updated educational standards and to project its future implications for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Germany, it is necessary to focus on the arguments provided in the supplement paper (KMK, 2023b).  The relevant passage (as quoted in length above) contains at least two noteworthy aspects that offer hints as to the why the standards remain silent on ESD.  First, there seems to be a perceived lack of immanence of questions around sustainability, sustainable development, social justice, and global citizenship in the foreign language subjects.  Second, the supplementary paper implies a lack of foundation – be it theoretical, conceptual, didactical, empirical, or methodological – when it comes to researching and practicing ESD in foreign language subjects.  This section addresses these aspects.

ESD for language education – language education for ESD

By referring to the STEM subjects as examples of high degrees of subject immanence, the updated educational standards follow a line of thought observable in numerous policy guidelines, curricula, and textbooks: sustainability is primarily a matter of the natural sciences.  In Germany, each of the sixteen federal states is in charge of their own education systems.  The national educational standards are important guiding documents which provide orientation for the individual state legislators, school developers, curriculum designers, and educators.  While some states have embedded ESD in their foreign language curricula, such as Saxony-Anhalt (MSB Sachsen-Anhalt, 2022), others have published guidelines for ESD that exclude the languages, such as North Rhine-Westphalia (MSB NRW, 2019), Germany’s most populous state.  Arguably, this inconsistency is fuelled by KMK’s decision not to mention ESD in the national guidelines.  By questioning just how immanent to the language subjects ESD really is, KMK seems to support the view that sustainability, sustainable development, the environment, social justice, and global citizenship may be regarded as peripheral rather than central to foreign language education.  This impression is supported by the observation that sustainability, the environment, and global development are often merely dealt with as one topic among many in a curriculum for foreign languages and in respective textbooks.  In this way, sustainability as a topic caters to the more ‘central competence areas’ of foreign language education, such as learning to speak and write about the environment (including the acquisition of vocabulary and other communicative means). In other words, the question asked here is what can sustainability/the environment do for language education?

However, as Gabaudan (2022: 528) noted when looking at ESD in the foreign language curriculum in higher education:

“ESD is an educational change agenda grounded in transformative learning and critical pedagogy.  It can be understood as a lens that enables us to look critically at how the world is and to envision how it might be.  Indeed, it equips us to deliver that vision”. 

Importantly, dialogue, listening, and learning to argue and resolve conflicts peacefully by communication are key to this (Mesa, 2023: 35).  Thus, another question should be asked, too: what can language education contribute to the project of education for sustainable development and global citizenship?  If this perspective manifested in curricula and policy guidelines, it would mean a re-orientation of foreign language education towards the merits (and necessity, one could argue) of being multi-/plurilingual in an increasingly complex and interconnected world rather than towards functional command of a language devoid of social purpose.

If we look at the intersections between ESD and foreign language education through this lens, it quickly becomes apparent that there is indeed an inherent link, a high degree of subject immanence in the language subjects, particularly of questions surrounding social justice, socio-environmental justice, human and children’s rights, cultural diversity, and global citizenship.  The exploration of this inherent link has been the focus of a growing number of studies in recent years in the German context (Küchler, 2014, 2021; Surkamp, 2022a; Römhild, 2023).

A perceived lack of didactical foundation

The fact that calls for a more integrated view of foreign language education and ESD have grown louder in recent years also serves to refute the implied criticism that there has not been a sufficient (or indeed existing) scientific, didactical foundation for ESD in the foreign language education context.  This is true both nationally and internationally.  Internationally, it is helpful to search for studies on the link between language education and certain aspects listed in SDG 4.7 as part of what constitutes quality education to find an emergent, highly active and interdisciplinary field of study.  These studies reveal manifold points of contact between foreign language education and related disciplines, such as, for instance, social justice (Ortaçtepe Hart, 2023), global citizenship education (Lütge, Merse and Rauschert, 2022), critical literacy (Misiaszek, Misiaszek and Iftekhar, 2022) or buen vivir / well-being (Büter, 2016).  Studies explicitly focusing on the intersection of ESD and language (education) can be found in the field of ecolinguistics (Fill and Penz, 2018; Stibbe, 2021; Micalay-Hurtado and Poole, 2022) or in notions such as Eco-ELT (Saiful, 2020) and education for sustainable development (Jodoin and Singer, 2019; Römhild, Siepmann and Bruns, 2023).

Nationally, research into foreign language education and its relationship with ESD looks back at years of activity, with Küchler calling for conceptual frameworks back in 2014 (Küchler, 2014: 23).  Since then, multiple studies have tackled this issue (Küchler, 2016, 2021; Bartosch, 2019, 2021; Surkamp 2022a; Hoydis, Bartosch and Gurr, 2023).  Surkamp (2022b: 35), for instance, put forth a model for the integration of ESD-related learning objectives in the English language classroom, which translates the central competence areas specified by the Curriculum Framework Education for Sustainable Development (KMK, 2017) to the areas of linguistic/communicative, literary, cultural, and reflective learning.

In short, there is no lack of didactical foundation for the integration of ESD and language education in Germany.  To the contrary, the field is highly active and keeps growing.  However, while it is possible that a lack of science communication has led policymakers to believe that there were no concepts for them to use, a more surprising oversight is that KMK have published their own guidelines (KMK, 2017) in accordance with UNESCO documents and chose to ignore these.  In 2017, KMK published a foreign language-specific Curriculum Framework Education for Sustainable Development (Ibid.).  This document specifies competence areas, learning objects, and sub-goals for foreign language education that is embedded in and oriented towards ESD.  The document also contains example tasks that showcase how to implement ESD-informed language education in practice.  It is directly informed by UNESCO’s ESD programme and could have provided an excellent platform for the inclusion of ESD in the updated educational standards of 2023.  It is important to note that the framework is far from perfect.  For instance, Heidt and Freitag-Hild (2023) discussed its reproduction of neoliberal and neo-colonial thinking patterns against a background of critical global citizenship (Andreotti, 2006) and suggested improvements to the sample material.  However, compared to the updated standards’ silence on the matter and their deliberate omission of ESD, the curriculum framework may be regarded as a major step forward or, put differently, the updated educational standards are a major step backwards.

From silos to integration

In sum, the two aspects discussed in this section hint at a perception of ESD and foreign language education as not necessarily linked.  This perspective is indicative of a siloed understanding of (sustainable development) education rather than an integrated one.  If foreign language education, with its focus on literatures, cultures, and communication can indeed contribute to the project of ESD as ‘an educational change agenda grounded in transformative learning and critical pedagogy’, as Gabaudan (2022: 528) noted, silo mentality needs to be overcome.  There are instruments in place in Germany to support a shift towards a more integrated understanding of school subjects in the face of the overarching educational agenda provided by ESD.  The Curriculum Framework helps embed language learning into the wider project of learning to live together peacefully and sustainably; it helps educators, scholars, and policymakers ask questions about the contribution of languages to the transformation towards sustainability and global citizenship.  The fact that this idea of education can be implemented in praxis is supported by reports from schools that orientate their entire curriculum towards ESD (Schultz and Blom, 2023).  An important step towards this goal, however, is for policymakers to send the right signals through guidance documents and policies.

Sending the wrong signals

Publishing national education standards is a political process involving a large number of representatives from politics and education.  In the case of Germany with its federal system, this includes representatives from the sixteen states.  The necessity for compromise is evident and inevitable.  As such, discussing reasons for the deliberate silence on social aims in the updated version without the provision of explicit arguments can only be speculative to a certain extent.  However, this decision now constitutes new realities.  This section discusses two signals in particular, which may have a lasting impact on foreign language education in lower secondary schools in Germany.  The first signal sent by the updated educational standards concerns a (missing) balance between functionality and criticality in foreign language education.  The second signal concerns a growing sense of elitism in Germany’s tiered educational system, with sustainability seemingly being an issue only for the most academic track of education.

Ever since the very first iteration of the educational standards was published in 2003/2004 (KMK, 2003; 2004), they have drawn criticism pointing out that functionality was favoured over criticality (Bausch et al., 2003, 2005; Zydatiß, 2005; De Florio-Hansen, 2008, 62; Rössler, 2008; Zydatiß, 2008: 14, 30; Grimm, Meyer and Volkmann, 2015: 13; John et al.,  2020: 12; Volkmann, 2020: 33).  The main argument was and remains that the standards predominantly focus on functional competence-oriented language education and assessment, which works to the detriment of cultural, content-oriented, and critical aspects of learning foreign languages.  In other words, social aims of foreign language education are sidelined, whereas functional communicative competence areas, such as speaking, reading, writing, and listening are regarded as central (this is mirrored in KMK’s explanation as quoted in the introduction).

However, functionality is not the opposite of criticality, they are two sides of the same coin.  Examples from the context of peace education illustrate how social aims can be embedded and achieved through functional-communicative approaches in the language classroom.  For instance, Takkaç Tulgar (2017) argued that education for peace may be implemented in the foreign language classroom through the use of literary texts, thus integrating literary, aesthetic, communicative, and social learning.  Yastibas (2021) found that peace education can be implemented as early as primary school by way of learning vocabulary in contexts relevant to peace and violence-prevention, including topics like ‘Friends’, ‘In the classroom’, or ‘At the playground’.  Examples like these are plentiful, and they show that even in a thematically rather open, competence-oriented curriculum, it is possible to learn a foreign language on a functional level while, at the same time, engaging with the pressing issues of our times through the language.

The second signal sent by KMK may turn out to be particularly damaging in societal dimensions, especially in a country like Germany, which suffers some of the worst levels of inequality in its educational system amongst industrialised nations (OECD, 2023).  To understand the implications better, it is necessary to contextualise the policy document within Germany’s tiered educational system.  KMK’s revised educational standards (KMK, 2023a) guide foreign language education in lower secondary education (Sekundarstufe I, in German). After primary school (years one to four), every child in Germany attends lower secondary schools from year five to year nine or ten (depending on the federal state).  Graduating lower secondary allows young people to leave school and apply for apprenticeships.  Alternatively, and if their academic performance qualifies them, they may choose to attend higher secondary school (Sekundarstufe II, in German) for another two to three years (again, depending on the federal state).  Higher secondary prepares young adults for the Abitur (equivalent to A-levels), Germany’s highest school exit exam, which qualifies them for university access. 

The current educational standards for foreign languages in higher secondary education in Germany (KMK, 2014) also do not explicitly mention ESD or even sustainability.  However, in their preamble, they do refer to elements that could be included under the umbrella term of ESD, such as human rights (Ibid.: 20).  Accordingly, the sixteen federal states’ curricula for foreign languages also tend to mention value orientations that would be counted as ESD-relevant explicitly in their preambles (Scheunpflug et al., 2023).  A closer examination of the competence descriptors in these curricula quickly reveals that the inclusion of these aspects in the preambles may often be regarded as paying lip service to sustainability issues, and the way these are incorporated in the curricula have been found to be highly problematic (Ibid.: 71, 72).  Nevertheless, they at least signal to educators that social aims are an inherent part of language education in Germany and worth pursuing.  Staying silent on ESD in the policy guidelines for lower secondary foreign language education suggests that ESD is a matter for the elite, only for those pursuing the most academically oriented track of education in Germany, which leads towards university studies.

Conclusion: silence creates realities

It is important to note that silence on education for sustainable development, global citizenship, human rights, and the other elements of SDG 4.7 does not automatically mean that these will not be part of any foreign language classroom in Germany.  The ultimate decision on how to design lessons, which educational philosophies to follow and what topics to cover lies with the teachers.  However, it does not seem fair to place all responsibility on individual teachers and their perceptions of what is important and significant.  Being silent on ESD in education standards constitutes problematic realities.  While teachers may ultimately work against this curricular silence, it has also been found that the national standards provide extremely powerful guidance, with the policy suggestions spelled out there trickling down through the system, from the national level into the federal states’ curricula, which strongly inform textbook design.  Textbooks, in turn, are one of the most significant factors in designing lessons in lower secondary classrooms (Bonnet and Hericks, 2014: 93).

As ESD is not mentioned in the national educational standards, it will likely remain just one topic among many in Germany’s foreign language curricula (often in year 10 or above) rather than become an actual underlying education philosophy and paradigm.  Thus, Germany’s recently updated educational standards are a prime example of a political roadblock (Kwauk and Iyengar, 2021: 8), stopping foreign language education from unfolding its unique contributing potential to the project of education for sustainability and global citizenship.

However, there is hope.  The relationship between language, communication, and being/acting in the world for a better future for all is becoming increasingly prominent in theory and practice.  With this growing interest, more and more voices have emerged calling for a stronger positioning of foreign language education policy in line with the overarching efforts for education for sustainable development and global citizenship.  These voices highlight the need for an approach towards foreign language learning which balances functionality and criticality, and which integrates communicative and social aims. Undoubtedly, the coming years will yield more opportunities to make meaningful changes and reflect these changes in policies and guidance documents, but these will have to be seized.

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Ricardo Römhild is a post-doctoral educator and researcher at the Chair of English Language Education, University of Münster, Germany.  His research primarily revolves around education for sustainability and global citizenship in the language classroom, pedagogies of hope, cultural learning and critical literacy, as well as language variation and Global English Language Teaching (GELT).