ESD Competencies as an Opportunity for Interdisciplinary Links with the Integration of the Slovenian Language

Abstract

Various studies since 2007 have found that interdisciplinary integration in school practice in Slovenia is only sporadic and quite rare. Therefore, we cannot rely on tradition if we want to plan the targeted development of competencies for sustainable development, which also applies to language teaching, both foreign languages and Slovenian. The sporadic occurrence of interdisciplinary integration is directly related to the lack of didactic material for interdisciplinary integration. We are trying to fill this gap by presenting a module that combines the development of competencies for sustainable development, the inclusion of fictional texts, and some other subjects in interdisciplinary integration. The module consists of learning units of varying lengths, prepared for different levels in the school system. Its advantage lies not only in the inclusion of fictional texts, but also in its consideration of the principles of successful communication of the environmental crisis, based on the principles of comprehensibility, locality, and narrativity. The material and didacticisation of the teaching units, which were developed in close cooperation with experts from various fields, have been partially implemented to date and have proven to be very well received and appreciated by teachers in terms of both their design and the achievement of their objectives. We see this as an incentive to develop a tradition of preparing teaching materials for interdisciplinary integration that includes various elements of sustainability.