EFL Teacher Perspectives on Global Poverty Education

This chapter presents findings from interviews with eight German teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the lower secondary level, focusing on their pedagogical beliefs and attitudes toward teaching global poverty. While all teachers acknowledged the topic’s educational value in principle, their responses revealed strong reservations and frequent negativity. Results show that nearly two-thirds of comments emphasized challenges, with particular resistance to the action dimension of global poverty education. Teachers valued the importance of information and empathy but questioned their feasibility in the EFL classroom, often citing linguistic barriers, curricular constraints, learner maturity, and lack of institutional support. Furthermore, systemic factors, learner disinterest, and the topic’s sensitivity—especially given students’ own socioeconomic realities—emerged as dominant obstacles. Teachers also expressed frustration with textbooks, which they viewed as either omitting poverty, presenting it superficially, or instrumentalizing empathy for language-learning goals. Overall, the findings indicate that teachers feel underprepared, constrained by curricula, and uncertain about pedagogical strategies for addressing global poverty. These perspectives not only shape how poverty is (or is not) taught in classrooms but also highlight tensions between the aims of education for sustainable development and the realities of foreign language instruction.