Climate change and other kinds of environmental degradation make the questions of sustainability one of the most pressing issues of our current times. An issue that school education has the duty to address by developing new and cross-disciplinary competences that help learners build a climate-just future. For foreign language teachers, in our case English teachers, this means accomplishing the joint task of both “facilitating student enjoyment of and expertise in their languages, and at the same time engaging students in fulfilling their responsibility as citizens of their home country and the world” (Maley 2022, 346).

EcoStories aims at supporting English teachers in doing so by developing a competence framework, educational materials, as well as providing them with digital training, all of which are based on the integration of English, climate, and digital literacies. The toolbox will incorporate digital methodologies in the form of digital storytelling using open source, participatory platforms that promote the creation of stories inspired by students’ engagement with museum resources/sites in combination with climate fiction. Addressing the particular interconnections between digitalization and climate change is central to this project to enable students to better understand the twin transition (digital and green) that the European Union is currently dealing with. Furthermore, the project will build on the competences of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which aims at giving “learners of all ages the knowledge, skills, values and agency to address interconnected global challenges, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality” (UNESCO 2022).

The pedagogical approaches in ESD aim at enabling a shift towards active, participative, and experimental learning methods to address climate change related issues and digital transformation, which this project will follow in its objectives. ESD is also closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is seen as a key strategy to realize quality education which is essential for reaching the SDGs. The project, hence, addresses the two priorities (climate change and digital transformation) in its design, objectives, and outcomes. Finally, EcoStories also fosters a comprehensive approach to  language teaching and learning as a specific priority, as it supports both the use of new technologies for language learning and the development of CLIL teaching skills and educational resources. The project addresses the selected priorities by developing an Eco-Storytelling toolbox for the English (ESL/EFL) classroom that aims at stimulating the imagination for building a climate-just and low-carbon future while also fostering teachers’ and students’ digital skills and competences in the English language classroom. The toolbox is targeted at pre- and in-service teachers of English, as well as English learners (level B1+).