Education for Sustainable Development in Turkish Language Textbooks: A Multidimensional Analysis of Grade 5 and Grade 6 Textbooks Within the Türkiye Century Education Model

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) emphasises the integration of sustainability across subject areas, including language education. This study examines ESD representation in Grade 5 and Grade 6 Turkish language textbooks developed within the Türkiye Century Education Model (TYMM). Four textbooks comprising 12 themes were analysed through qualitative document analysis using eight Global Citizenship Education/Education for Sustainable Development (GCED/ESD) thematic areas and three ESD learning domains: cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioural. Representation was coded as not represented (0), implicit (1), or explicit (2). Two researchers coded the corpus independently. Raw agreement between the coders was 78.47%, with a linearly weighted Cohen’s κ of 0.593. The thematic areas, however, were not represented to the same extent. Human Survival and Well-being was the most widely represented thematic area, followed by Cultural Diversity and Tolerance, Peace and Non-violence, and Human Rights. Climate Change, Gender Equality, and Sustainable Consumption and Production appeared less frequently across the themes. In terms of learning domains, cognitive and socio-emotional representation was equal, with each accounting for 36.4% of the total descriptive score; the behavioural domain accounted for the remaining 27.1%. Of the 78 domain-level decisions in which ESD was represented, 79.5% were explicit. Overall, the findings indicate the potential of mother-tongue language textbooks to provide opportunities for ESD, while highlighting areas for broader thematic coverage and more consistent behavioural engagement.