challenges in teaching essay

7 Challenges in Teaching, According to Real Teachers

• Topics : Teaching Advice A Teacher's Perspective

We surveyed the TeacherVision audience to find out what they believe to be the biggest challenges in teaching. A year later, we sent teachers the same survey to compare responses and see if the assumed challenges inside the classroom played out as expected.

In the ever-changing landscape of education, teachers face a myriad of challenges that continue to evolve. This is why we’ve asked our audience about their biggest challenges in the classroom. In this article, we explore the 7 challenges of teaching in 2024 as experienced by teachers themselves. We explore the complexities of the teaching profession, from classroom management to technology adaptation, and from dealing with large class sizes to managing parental expectations.

We asked teachers...

At TeacherVision, we are invested in supporting teachers so that they can, in turn, help their students. So, we were naturally curious about what new challenges they might have faced in these years after the start of the pandemic and what they will be facing in future school years to come.

In a recent TeacherVision survey, over  60% of teachers were concerned with students falling behind   and not performing at their current grade level . We polled hundreds of US educators at the high school, middle school, and elementary school levels on the challenges they have faced already and what they anticipate in the future. The results may surprise you.

The top 7 challenges in teaching, according to real teachers

1. Students falling behind 

Back at the start of the pandemic, teachers and parents alike were concerned about what kind of quality education could be provided on online platforms versus in-person classrooms. One major fear was the possible loss of learning and the  widening of achievement gaps .

These turned out to be both valid and growing concerns. While the poll at the beginning of the year revealed that  over 60% of teachers believed their biggest challenge in teaching would be academic progress , that number  rose closer to 70% when polled at the end of the year

Teachers have seen it all in the last few years. Dealing with the COVID-19 interruption of the traditional learning process, having to address a more diverse group of learners than ever before, and possibly managing a weightier workload due to teacher shortages and burnout were all referenced in the poll. But the numbers don’t lie. Teachers are mostly concerned with their student’s academic progress - and it’s not getting any better.

2. Behavioral challenges in the classroom

While academics were at the forefront of classroom concerns this past year, there are others quickly climbing up the polls.

When we asked teachers to provide their own suggestions of the challenges they faced outside of academics,  student behavior  was at the very top of the list— even above stress and differentiating instruction.

One teacher shared her experience about how the pandemic-induced break in learning as resulted in more behavioral issues in the classroom:

“It was apparent that because of the pandemic, not only are children behind in their academic skills, but also in their behavior skills. Children in 2nd grade who have never been to school before still throw tantrums like toddlers because they missed that important part of development in 1st grade and Kindergarten. Students in the 5th grade have no idea how to handle peer pressure and cannot hold conversations with each other because they missed that part of their development.”

There was not one thing that could be narrowed down as the cause of the decline in student behavior. However, the poll tells us that the lack of experience that leadership and administration have in dealing with these heightened challenges might have something to do with it.

“Student behavior was an issue, as well as greatly lowered standards, despite what is told to the general public,” says one teacher. Good teachers in school districts across the country are left to fend for themselves with behavior management concerns and having to lower benchmarks, as everyone is navigating uncharted waters. Unfortunately, it’s something they simply don’t have enough time for right now, among the other growing issues.

3. Adapting to technology

The sudden shift to virtual learning forced teachers to quickly adapt to new technologies. This transition has been challenging, especially for those who were not tech-savvy.

Not only did teachers have to learn new software and platforms, but they also had to find ways to ensure their students were able to adapt as well. Additionally, they had to create engaging and effective virtual lessons, which presented an entirely new set of challenges. Despite the difficulties, many teachers have reported that they feel more comfortable with technology and are better prepared for future disruptions to traditional learning.

4. Balancing work and personal life

Overwhelmingly, we have found that teachers are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The increase in workload and the expectation to be available around the clock for students and parents can lead to burnout.

The issue of teacher burnout is a significant one. With the demands of preparing lessons, grading assignments, dealing with behavioral issues, and communicating with parents, teachers often find themselves with little time for personal activities or relaxation. This constant pressure can lead to stress, fatigue, and eventually burnout, which not only affects the teachers themselves but also their ability to effectively teach and inspire their students. Teachers must prioritize their well-being and take steps to manage their work-life balance.

TeacherVision provides a variety of  self-care resources  to support teachers struggling with teacher burnout.

5. Lack of resources

Many teachers are facing a lack of resources, including textbooks, technology, and other materials necessary for effective teaching. This has been especially challenging during remote learning.

In addition, these expectations can sometimes be at odds with the realities of the classroom and the unique needs of each student. Navigating these expectations while striving to provide the best education for every student is a balancing act that many teachers face.

6. Large Class Sizes

Managing large classes can be a big challenge, as it makes it difficult to give each student the attention they need. It can also make classroom management more difficult.

7. Dealing with Parental Expectations

Teachers often face pressure from parents who have high expectations for their children's academic performance. This can create additional stress and challenges for teachers.

Since the pandemic, parental expectations have shifted significantly. As parents gained a firsthand view of their children's education through remote learning, many developed higher expectations of teachers and the educational system as a whole. Teachers have been faced with the challenge of meeting these elevated expectations while also navigating the complexities of virtual instruction and dealing with the impacts of the pandemic on their students' learning.

Moving forward

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Over  40% of teachers indicated that they feel their district displays appropriate staff appreciation . It’s important to note, also, the plain points of necessary improvement; only 14.8% of teachers listed peer coaching and mentoring as an active focus in their district, with team development and opportunities coming in at the bottom of the list at 8.7%.

Navigating a (not quite) post-pandemic educational landscape is not an easy task. Based on our most recent survey, we are moving in the right direction- but still have quite a way to go. The categories that require the most focus for the 2023/24 school year are academic, social/emotional, and teacher work/life balance, as the demands continue to increase without modifications to the time, it will be required to address them. We remain committed to serving teachers in the ever-changing educational environment with materials and resources that support their growing needs.

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Top 10 Biggest Challenges Teachers Face In The Classroom Today

Written by Victoria Hegwood

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• Teaching Strategies
• 10 Common challenges teachers face in the classroom

1. Understanding different learning styles

2. lack of effective communication, 3. staying up to date with learning technology, 4. communicating with parents, 5. pressure from school administrators, 6. creating engaging lesson plans that fit the curriculum, 7. behavior and classroom management, 8. time-consuming administrative work, 9. lack of funding, 10. burnout.

• How Prodigy helps teachers

There are few careers that make a bigger impact than teaching. Teachers are shaping the next generation, those that will decide what the future looks like.

But this noble work doesn’t come without challenges. Many teachers face challenges both inside and outside of the classroom, often making the career feel overwhelming. 

While the rewards often outweigh the negatives, it's still important to understand the daily challenges teachers face . It can help parents and administrators better support teachers and help teachers know that they are not alone in their struggles. 

10 Common challenges teachers are facing in the classroom

These are ten of the most common challenges that teachers face on a day-to-day basis. While that may seem like a lot of bad news, once the issue is understood, it’s easier to find the solution. 

Let’s get started. 

A single classroom most often contains students with a wide set of learning abilities and styles. It is nearly impossible for teachers to simply use one teaching method and have it be effective for all of their learners. 

Teachers are required to think strategically when making lesson plans to cater to all the learning styles in their classroom. They also have to be flexible while actively teaching, as they make adjustments in real time based on student performance.

This can take a lot of time and effort on the teacher’s end, but the benefits for student performance are unbeatable.

Teachers can also face significant challenges when trying to communicate with their students effectively. Not every student, especially at lower grade levels, will know when to ask for help. 

For example, most high school students are able to effectively communicate their needs, struggles, and triumphs. However, teachers with younger grade levels may not have the same experience.

In cases like this, teachers have to find an effective channel of communication so that their classroom can function well.

Now, there’s not one answer to this problem. Teachers may need to use different strategies depending on the age of their students. Particularly for teachers that teach multiple grades, this can be a time-consuming task. 

Finding a system to improve communication in the class can not only help struggling students get support, but it can also help teachers manage multiple students' needs at once.

See below how once teacher implemented a non-verbal signalling system in her classroom that helped students express their needs and thoughts without disrupting the class.

Learning technology is constantly changing. Every year, there are a slew of new apps, websites, and other technology tools created to improve the learning process.

And there is a lot of pressure on teachers to constantly stay up to date with the latest technology. Most believe that the latest and greatest tools will provide the best quality education. 

But there is often a lack of funding, resources, or time to implement every new technology as it's introduced.

One of the most common and pressing classroom challenges for teachers is the fact that some students are not receiving adequate support outside of the classroom. While teachers can work with students while they’re at school, students need support from their parents as well.

When parents take an active part in their children's learning, that student is much more likely to succeed. 

This issue also extends to intrapersonal relationships. Students will often feel comfortable turning to a teacher in their time of need–when it’s emotional support they are looking for instead of academic support.

However, this dynamic can put a lot of pressure on a teacher. The relationship can be tricky to navigate, and teachers often don’t have enough hours in the day to check in and talk with every student. 

Students need to be fully supported both in school and at home in order to have the best chance of success.

Did you know?

When teachers use Prodigy, a game-based learning platform Prodigy that delivers adaptive skill practice in students, they can also invite parents to join. With their free account, parents can keep up on their child's progress with reports and even send them motivational messages as they play.

Teachers are often under a lot of pressure by their school administrators to come up with new teaching strategies and ways in which they can improve student learning. 

School administrators want to remain competitive with other school districts when it comes to performance and test scores. However, teachers are the ones actually in the classroom, teaching students the necessary skills to achieve these outcomes. 

Teachers are seen as exclusively responsible for student achievement, growth indicators, professional development, and discipline.

With so much on a teacher’s plate, a supportive school administration can make a world of a difference to both their success and students’ success.

Creating engaging lesson plans that also align with the state’s outlined curriculum can be a tall task. 

And beyond just being engaging, time-constraints can also be an issue. While there is a syllabus and course schedule to stick to, students will often need additional time to fully grasp a subject.

Oftentimes, the state will outline a detailed curriculum for the school year, giving a jam-packed schedule for all the topics that need to be covered in a particular year. Teachers need to rely heavily on problem-solving skills in order to maximize their time in the classroom.

Additionally, with larger class sizes, it can be difficult to ensure every student is getting the support they need to fully understand a lesson. Teachers may work incredibly hard to create a great lesson plan that just doesn’t resonate with all of their students.

Engage your students in math with Prodigy

If you're teaching math, you'll probably already know how hard it can be to motivate students. Traditional learning materials like worksheets can bore some quickly, especially if they're not feeling confident with the material.

Prodigy Math combines the joy of game-based learning with the benefits of adaptive and targeted skill practice. As students play Prodigy Math, they'll answer questions of your choice, all while having fun exploring a magical world and casting spells. It's a great way to differentiate learning while keeping your class engaged.

One study even showed that students saw their level of math enjoyment significantly increase after just a few months of using Prodigy Math!

Student behavior can be difficult for teachers to manage on top of their other job tasks like administrative work, staying on track with the curriculum, and staying up to date with the most recent classroom trends.

Creating distinct behavioral and academic plans can help teachers stay on track and meet their educational goals as the school year progresses. But this doesn’t happen without a lot of work and support from administrators, parents, and other educational professionals. 

Oftentimes, motivating students with engaging lessons can be enough to manage student behavior in the classroom. But in some cases, students may need more support to manage behavioral issues and create a growth mindset .

The administrative work that comes with teaching takes a lot of time on top of managing students, creating assessments, and actually teaching lessons. Because of this, time management is a vital skill for every teacher.

The overwhelming amount of administrative work on a teacher’s plate can adversely affect their work-life balance, as they are often required to spend time outside of working hours grading assignments, creating lesson plans, filling out reports, and more.

In order to get everything done, some teachers are faced with the question of whether to give up their personal time or their time with students to complete administrative work. While they’re always looking for ways to streamline their administrative work, there often seems to be no good answer.

Teaching hack: Skip the grading with Prodigy!

Did you know that elementary and middle school teachers can use their free Prodigy teacher dashboard to set up engaging assessments in just a few clicks? All you need to do select the standards-aligned content you want your students to practice and have them play Prodigy Math or Prodigy English.

Then as they play, student responses are automatically graded and fed into your reports, helping you uncover hidden learning gaps and insights!

It's no secret that teachers and schools are constantly facing issues in terms of lack of funding.

For most public schools across the country that run into issues with funding, teachers are the ones that are expected to get creative and make do with the resources that they do have.

Beyond just a lack of classroom materials, underfunding can also lead to the inability to hire enough teachers. Oftentimes, this is remedied by increasing class sizes. 

While it may seem like the only solution, large class size can negatively impact the classroom experience for many students. It leaves less time for individualized teaching and one-on-one time with the teacher. 

This can lower the quality of learning and have a negative impact on student learning. It also negatively impacts the teachers, with them always feeling behind and overworked.

Teaching is one of the most demanding professions out there. Teachers are constantly working to juggle all their tasks of educating students, managing behavior, completing administrative tasks, and more.

And there’s an emotional element, as they know that their work is shaping lives and the future. 

With the high demand from all their job responsibilities, teachers commonly experience burnout. Some of the common symptoms of burnout include:

• Feeling drained after working on lesson plans
• Dreading going to work
• Lacking the motivation to be productive

Teachers should try to have the best work-life balance as possible in order to avoid burnout, but this can prove difficult with so many responsibilities on their plate. Administrators and parents need to take an active role in education in order to help prevent teacher burnout.

Fight burnout with these tips!

Burnout can happen to the best of us and knowing how to overcome it can be tricky. But with careful reflection and practice, teachers can get back on track and feel reinvigorated. We identified these tips proven to help combat teacher burnout:

• Practice self-care, especially when you doubt yourself
• Create boundaries with work and home where possible
• Consider adding a new approach to your teaching strategy
• Put every challenging day in perspective and remind yourself of your progress
• Share how you're feeling with other teachers, including those outside your school

Find new & unique teaching strategies to create an engaging classroom experience

Teaching is not for the faint of heart. It takes dedication, time, and grit to stick with it through the difficulties and the hard days. 

Teachers face a number of challenges while teaching students and even after students leave the classroom. Understanding what teachers are facing can help all of us provide solutions and support to those teaching our children. 

While demanding, teaching is a very rewarding career choice. Few other people in our society have as much impact as teachers do. There are downsides, but there are even more benefits.

If you're an elementary or middle school teacher looking to support your class, try Prodigy! Prodigy is a game-based learning platform that delivers adaptive skill practice in math and English to students. See how it works below!

The best bit? It's full of time-saving teacher features like reports and is available at no cost to teachers and schools. You can use Prodigy to:

• Set engaging, fun skill practice in just a few clicks
• Easily assess students on over 1000 standards-aligned skills
• Motivate your students with classroom goals, rewards and challenges
• Monitor and track student performance with automatic grading and reports

Get started with Prodigy today and bring the benefits of game-based learning into your classroom for free!

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Challenges in Education: A Student’s-Eye View

As many teachers know, the national discussion on education is overcrowded with opinions on teacher training, salaries, tenure, and unions -- with occasional detours through iPads, textbooks, and national policy. In fact, it seems that we listen to every interested party except the one for whom education exists in the first place: students.

We've worked one-on-one with hundreds of students over the last decade, and while they always start from "my teacher hates me" or "I'm just bad at this subject," a change in their own behaviors and beliefs consistently leads to a turnaround in grades. We've seen firsthand all the ways that students can impede their own academic performance. We've seen how parents and our culture at large unwittingly sabotage students' success. And then we've seen our society give teachers full responsibility for a process that is only partially in their hands. That has to stop.

Teachers are essential and influential, guiding their students through new material, drawing out analysis and excitement about ideas. But even the best teacher is helpless against the student looking straight at the board but thinking about lunch. Students are, ultimately, the only party with the ability to truly transform the state of education. And as it turns out, what they have to say is quite telling.

What the Students Are Thinking

A year ago, we were approached by The Princeton Review to help them design a survey about Student Life in America . Rather than focusing on academic performance, they wanted to understand students' academic process. What goes through their heads when they do homework? Where do they turn for help when they're stuck? How do they think and feel during a typical school day? In short, the survey was designed to find out what only students can know: their thoughts, feelings, and goals. The results suggest that if we want to fix education, then we have to move away from blaming teachers, resources, or classroom size, and start talking seriously about what students are doing to create academic success -- and how we can best support them in that process.

Here are some of the survey's most telling results.

Too much homework or too much homework time?

Students readily reported that they spend one-third of their study time stressing out . We hear parents and students constantly complain about teachers assigning too much homework. Based on volume of hours alone, that makes sense. However, what the students have reported provides a totally different picture.

For every three hours that students seem to be spending on homework, only two are productive. Concerns about whether they'll do well, whether they're smart enough to understand the assignment, what grade they have, and how everyone else in class is doing can derail them in a major way. We could cut out that hour so that the work gets done and they can move on. Rather than assigning less homework, we should focus on helping students work more effectively. In preparing students for the modern world, that strategy is essential. In the working world, they won't have time to spend one third of their day unproductively stressing out. They need to learn how to stay on top.

They do care. . . about the wrong things.

One of the most interesting results was that 90 percent of students reported that they want good grades . For an educator, that's thrilling to hear. But only six percent of students want good grades for the sake of learning . Many students are so concerned with grades, tests, and college admissions that they've lost what's really important about school. When they're not succeeding, they feel terrible about school. The irony is that the act of learning in itself releases dopamine, the brain's ultimate feel-good chemical. That’s why those "aha!" moments feel so good. We can help students make that virtuous cycle happen. Better grades and scores matter, but you don’t get them by focusing endlessly on them. Better results come from finding better ways of working -- from improving process.

When students are so obsessed with results -- what they need to learn and what grades they'll get -- that they ignore how learning works. The frequent explanations ("math is stupid" and "my teacher just hates me") are obviously unproductive and untrue. But the survey participants made it clear that we must help students by making sure that they need to know how to learn, manage their stress, ask for help, and get that dopamine kick they deserve.

Here are just a few survey-inspired ways to help your students improve their approach:

1. Do a side-by-side comparison of cramming and learning.

We educators obviously love the subjects we teach and want kids to love learning for its own sake. However, the benefits of learning aren't obvious to students. Help them do a side-by-side comparison of learning and cramming over both the short and long term. While students' preferred strategy of last-minute cramming seems "smart" (why study every night when you can study just one night?), it doesn’t lead to long-term learning. Within hours or days, that material is forgotten, and students end up needing to relearn and refresh basic concepts, month after month or year after year. Also, by choosing to cram the material, students are denying themselves that dopamine release. Since they want to do well in school and have a non-miserable existence, once they realize that actually learning helps them do both, they'll choose it more and more often.

2. Teach your students to substitute action for stress.

Not only is spending one third of your study time freaking out unpleasant, it's a huge waste of time. Doing any small thing that gets your work closer to done is a much better use of time. Getting students to recognize when they're freaking out and substitute that worry for any small, productive action will help them massively reduce the amount of time they spend studying. Best of all, their results will improve, too!

3. Challenge students to produce actionable feedback.

We're all familiar with good and bad tech support, and this is no different. Comments like "Math is stupid" or "When am I going to use this in real life?" often lead to arguments about the virtues of a subject. But the real issue is that when we feel like throwing our computer out the window, it's not because computers are a waste of time. It's because the thing won't work, and we have no idea how to fix it. So we should encourage students to stop discussing results and start discussing actions. Instead of letting them talk in terms of grades and ability, turn the focus to what they actually did and why:

• What steps did you take?
• What could you do differently next time?
• How did you get this answer?
• What specific piece needs improvement?

Solutions at Our Fingertips

The fixes that come from listening to kids don’t require more money, more resources, or consensus in Congress. Talking to our elected leaders doesn't seem to have fixed education. Talking to our kids just might.

How have you gotten your students to take charge of their learning in the classroom? What strategies do you use to help students manage stress? What are your policies for making sure that students can come to you for help? We'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

Essay on My Teaching Experience

Students are often asked to write an essay on My Teaching Experience in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on My Teaching Experience

Introduction.

Teaching is a rewarding job that offers an opportunity to shape young minds. My experience as a teacher has been both challenging and fulfilling.

Starting My Journey

I began my teaching journey as a volunteer at a local school. It was a valuable experience, teaching me patience and communication skills.

Challenges and Triumphs

Teaching is not always easy; it comes with its set of challenges. However, watching my students grow and learn has been the greatest reward.

In conclusion, my teaching experience has been a journey of learning, growth, and satisfaction.

250 Words Essay on My Teaching Experience

Teaching is an intricate and multifaceted profession that requires a deep understanding of subject matter and pedagogy, complemented by a profound commitment to nurturing students. My teaching experience has been a journey of self-discovery and growth, a continuous process of refining skills and techniques to stimulate learners effectively.

Personal Growth and Development

My initial teaching days were marked by a blend of enthusiasm and anxiety. Over time, I learned to convert this nervous energy into a constructive force, enhancing my ability to engage students. I discovered that teaching is not merely about disseminating information, it’s a process of fostering curiosity, instilling critical thinking skills, and inspiring lifelong learning.

Embracing Diversity

In my classroom, I encountered a diverse group of learners, each with unique strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles. This diversity necessitated a flexible teaching approach, tailored to individual needs. I learned to create an inclusive environment that respects and values differences, fostering a sense of belonging for all students.

Challenges and Rewards

Teaching is not devoid of challenges. From dealing with disengaged students to managing classroom dynamics, I faced numerous hurdles. However, the rewards far outweighed the challenges. Witnessing a student’s ‘aha’ moment, observing their progress, and contributing to their personal and academic development was deeply fulfilling.

In conclusion, my teaching experience has been a profound journey of learning and growth. It has reinforced my belief in the transformative power of education and the pivotal role of teachers in shaping young minds. As I continue to evolve in my teaching career, I look forward to more opportunities for self-improvement and to making a positive impact on my students’ lives.

500 Words Essay on My Teaching Experience

Teaching is not merely a profession; it is a vocation that demands a deep sense of commitment and a passion for learning and sharing knowledge. My teaching experience has been an enlightening journey, filled with both challenges and rewards. It has provided me with a profound understanding of the dynamics of the educational process and the significance of creating a conducive learning environment for students.

The Beginning of My Journey

My teaching journey began as a graduate assistant during my master’s program. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the responsibility that came with the role. However, I soon realized that teaching was not just about imparting knowledge but also about inspiring curiosity and fostering a love for learning. This realization made me approach teaching with a renewed perspective, focusing not just on the content but also on the process of learning.

As with any journey, my teaching experience was fraught with challenges. The diverse backgrounds and learning styles of the students posed a significant hurdle. I had to devise innovative teaching strategies and employ differentiated instruction to cater to the varied needs of my students. Despite these challenges, the triumphs were numerous. The moments when a concept finally ‘clicked’ for a struggling student or when a class discussion evolved into a profound intellectual exchange were truly rewarding. These instances reaffirmed my faith in the transformative power of education.

Teaching as a Learning Experience

Teaching is a two-way process. As I strived to impart knowledge to my students, I also learned a great deal from them. Their unique perspectives and insightful questions often made me revisit and rethink my own understanding of certain concepts. This reciprocal process of learning and teaching enriched my intellectual growth and honed my pedagogical skills.

The Role of Technology

In the digital age, technology plays a crucial role in education. My teaching experience was no exception. I incorporated various technological tools into my teaching to enhance the learning experience. From using multimedia presentations to facilitate understanding to employing online platforms for collaborative learning, technology greatly augmented my teaching methods.

In conclusion, my teaching experience has been a transformative journey that has shaped my understanding of education and its role in society. It has taught me the importance of fostering a love for learning, the value of embracing diversity, and the significance of leveraging technology in education. As I continue my journey in the field of education, I carry with me the lessons learned and the experiences gained, ready to face the challenges and embrace the rewards that come my way.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on My Internship Experience
• Essay on My First Flight Experience
• Essay on My First Experience on Stage

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Top 10 Challenges to Teaching Math and Science Using Real Problems

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Nine in ten educators believe that using a problem-solving approach to teaching math and science can be motivating for students, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Teachers perceive lack of time as a big hurdle. In fact, a third of educators—35 percent—worry that teaching math or science through real-world problems—rather than focusing on procedures—eats up too many precious instructional minutes.

Other challenges: About another third of educators said they weren’t given sufficient professional development in how to teach using a real-world problem-solving approach. Nearly a third say reading and writing take priority over STEM, leaving little bandwidth for this kind of instruction. About a quarter say that it’s tough to find instructional materials that embrace a problem-solving perspective.

Nearly one in five cited teachers’ lack of confidence in their own problem solving, the belief that this approach isn’t compatible with standardized tests, low parent support, and the belief that student behavior is so poor that this approach would not be feasible.

The nationally representative survey included 1,183 district leaders, school leaders, and teachers, and was conducted from March 27 to April 14. (Note: The chart below lists 11 challenges because the last two on the list—dealing with teacher preparation and student behavior—received the exact percentage of responses.)

Trying to incorporate a problem-solving approach to tackling math can require rethinking long-held beliefs about how students learn, said Elham Kazemi, a professor in the teacher education program at the University of Washington.

Most teachers were taught math using a procedural perspective when they were in school. While Kazemi believes that approach has merit, she advocates for exposing students to both types of instruction.

Many educators have “grown up around a particular model of thinking of teaching and learning as the teacher in the front of the room, imparting knowledge, showing kids how to do things,” Kazemi said.

To be sure, some teachers have figured out how to incorporate some real-world problem solving alongside more traditional methods. But it can be tough for their colleagues to learn from them because “teachers don’t have a lot of time to collaborate with one another and see each other teach,” Kazemi said.

What’s more, there are limited instructional materials emphasizing problem solving, Kazemi said.

Though that’s changing, many of the resources available have “reinforced the idea that the teacher demonstrates solutions for kids,” Kazemi said.

Molly Daley, a regional math coordinator for Education Service District 112, which serves about 30 districts near Vancouver, Wash., has heard teachers raise concerns that teaching math from a problem-solving perspective takes too long—particularly given the pressure to get through all the material students will need to perform well on state tests.

Daley believes, however, that being taught to think about math in a deeper way will help students tackle math questions on state assessments that may look different from what they’ve seen before.

“It’s myth that it’s possible to cover everything that will be on the test,” as it will appear, she said. “There’s actually no way to make sure that kids have seen every single possible thing the way it will show up. That’s kind of a losing proposition.”

But rushing through the material in a purely procedural way may actually be counterproductive, she said.

Teachers don’t want kids to “sit down at the test and say, ‘I haven’t seen this and therefore I can’t do it,’” Daley said. “I think a lot of times teachers can unintentionally foster that because they’re so urgently trying to cover everything. That’s where the kind of mindless [teaching] approaches come in.”

Teachers may think to themselves: “’OK, I’m gonna make this as simple as possible, make sure everyone knows how to follow the steps and then when they see it, they can follow it,” Daley said.

But that strategy might “take away their students’ confidence that they can figure out what to do when they don’t know what to do, which is really what you want them to be thinking when they go to approach a test,” Daley said.

Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.

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8 Overcoming Challenges College Essay Examples

The purpose of the Overcoming Challenges essay is for schools to see how you might handle the difficulties of college. They want to know how you grow, evolve, and learn when you face adversity. For this topic, there are many clichés , such as getting a bad grade or losing a sports game, so be sure to steer clear of those and focus on a topic that’s unique to you. (See our full guide on the Overcoming Challenges Essay for more tips).

These overcoming challenges essay examples were all written by real students. Read through them to get a sense of what makes a strong essay. At the end, we’ll present the revision process for the first essay and share some resources for improving your essay.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Essay 1: Becoming a Coach

“Advanced females ages 13 to 14 please proceed to staging with your coaches at this time.” Skittering around the room, eyes wide and pleading, I frantically explained my situation to nearby coaches. The seconds ticked away in my head; every polite refusal increased my desperation.

Despair weighed me down. I sank to my knees as a stream of competitors, coaches, and officials flowed around me. My dojang had no coach, and the tournament rules prohibited me from competing without one.

Although I wanted to remain strong, doubts began to cloud my mind. I could not help wondering: what was the point of perfecting my skills if I would never even compete? The other members of my team, who had found coaches minutes earlier, attempted to comfort me, but I barely heard their words. They couldn’t understand my despair at being left on the outside, and I never wanted them to understand.

Since my first lesson 12 years ago, the members of my dojang have become family. I have watched them grow up, finding my own happiness in theirs. Together, we have honed our kicks, blocks, and strikes. We have pushed one another to aim higher and become better martial artists. Although my dojang had searched for a reliable coach for years, we had not found one. When we attended competitions in the past, my teammates and I had always gotten lucky and found a sympathetic coach. Now, I knew this practice was unsustainable. It would devastate me to see the other members of my dojang in my situation, unable to compete and losing hope as a result. My dojang needed a coach, and I decided it was up to me to find one.

I first approached the adults in the dojang – both instructors and members’ parents. However, these attempts only reacquainted me with polite refusals. Everyone I asked told me they couldn’t devote multiple weekends per year to competitions. I soon realized that I would have become the coach myself.

At first, the inner workings of tournaments were a mystery to me. To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side. I learned everything from motivational strategies to technical, behind-the-scenes components of Taekwondo competitions. Though I emerged with new knowledge and confidence in my capabilities, others did not share this faith.

Parents threw me disbelieving looks when they learned that their children’s coach was only a child herself. My self-confidence was my armor, deflecting their surly glances. Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

Despite the attack, I refused to give up. When I saw the shining eyes of the youngest students preparing for their first competition, I knew I couldn’t let them down. To quit would be to set them up to be barred from competing like I was. The knowledge that I could solve my dojang’s longtime problem motivated me to overcome my apprehension.

Now that my dojang flourishes at competitions, the attacks on me have weakened, but not ended. I may never win the approval of every parent; at times, I am still tormented by doubts, but I find solace in the fact that members of my dojang now only worry about competing to the best of their abilities.

Now, as I arrive at a tournament with my students, I close my eyes and remember the past. I visualize the frantic search for a coach and the chaos amongst my teammates as we competed with one another to find coaches before the staging calls for our respective divisions. I open my eyes to the exact opposite scene. Lacking a coach hurt my ability to compete, but I am proud to know that no member of my dojang will have to face that problem again.

This essay begins with an in-the-moment narrative that really illustrates the chaos of looking for a coach last-minute. We feel the writer’s emotions, particularly their dejectedness, at not being able to compete.

Through this essay, we can see how gutsy and determined the student is in deciding to become a coach themselves. The writer shows us these characteristics through their actions, rather than explicitly telling us: To prepare myself for success as a coach, I spent the next year as an official and took coaching classes on the side.

One area of improvement of this essay would be the “attack” wording. The author likely uses this word as a metaphor for martial arts, but it feels too strong to describe the adults’ doubt of the student’s abilities as a coach, and can even be confusing at first.

Still, we see the student’s resilience as they are able to move past the disbelieving looks to help their team. The essay is kept real and vulnerable, however, as the writer admits having doubts: Every armor is penetrable, however, and as the relentless barrage of doubts pounded my resilience, it began to wear down. I grew unsure of my own abilities.

The essay comes full circle as the author recalls the frantic situations in seeking out a coach, but this is no longer a concern for them and their team. Overall, this essay is extremely effective in painting this student as mature, bold, and compassionate.

Essay 2: Starting a Fire

Was I no longer the beloved daughter of nature, whisperer of trees? Knee-high rubber boots, camouflage, bug spray—I wore the garb and perfume of a proud wild woman, yet there I was, hunched over the pathetic pile of stubborn sticks, utterly stumped, on the verge of tears. As a child, I had considered myself a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes, who was serenaded by mourning doves and chickadees, who could glide through tick-infested meadows and emerge Lyme-free. I knew the cracks of the earth like the scars on my own rough palms. Yet here I was, ten years later, incapable of performing the most fundamental outdoor task: I could not, for the life of me, start a fire. 

Furiously I rubbed the twigs together—rubbed and rubbed until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers. No smoke. The twigs were too young, too sticky-green; I tossed them away with a shower of curses, and began tearing through the underbrush in search of a more flammable collection. My efforts were fruitless. Livid, I bit a rejected twig, determined to prove that the forest had spurned me, offering only young, wet bones that would never burn. But the wood cracked like carrots between my teeth—old, brittle, and bitter. Roaring and nursing my aching palms, I retreated to the tent, where I sulked and awaited the jeers of my family. 

Rattling their empty worm cans and reeking of fat fish, my brother and cousins swaggered into the campsite. Immediately, they noticed the minor stick massacre by the fire pit and called to me, their deep voices already sharp with contempt. 

“Where’s the fire, Princess Clara?” they taunted. “Having some trouble?” They prodded me with the ends of the chewed branches and, with a few effortless scrapes of wood on rock, sparked a red and roaring flame. My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame. 

In the tent, I pondered my failure. Was I so dainty? Was I that incapable? I thought of my hands, how calloused and capable they had been, how tender and smooth they had become. It had been years since I’d kneaded mud between my fingers; instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano, my hands softening into those of a musician—fleshy and sensitive. And I’d gotten glasses, having grown horrifically nearsighted; long nights of dim lighting and thick books had done this. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lain down on a hill, barefaced, and seen the stars without having to squint. Crawling along the edge of the tent, a spider confirmed my transformation—he disgusted me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to squash him. 

Yet, I realized I hadn’t really changed—I had only shifted perspective. I still eagerly explored new worlds, but through poems and prose rather than pastures and puddles. I’d grown to prefer the boom of a bass over that of a bullfrog, learned to coax a different kind of fire from wood, having developed a burn for writing rhymes and scrawling hypotheses. 

That night, I stayed up late with my journal and wrote about the spider I had decided not to kill. I had tolerated him just barely, only shrieking when he jumped—it helped to watch him decorate the corners of the tent with his delicate webs, knowing that he couldn’t start fires, either. When the night grew cold and the embers died, my words still smoked—my hands burned from all that scrawling—and even when I fell asleep, the ideas kept sparking—I was on fire, always on fire.

This essay is an excellent example because the writer turns an everyday challenge—starting a fire—into an exploration of her identity. The writer was once “a kind of rustic princess, a cradler of spiders and centipedes,” but has since traded her love of the outdoors for a love of music, writing, and reading. 

The story begins in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. One of the essay’s biggest strengths is its use of imagery. We can easily visualize the writer’s childhood and the present day. For instance, she states that she “rubbed and rubbed [the twigs] until shreds of skin flaked from my fingers.”

The writing has an extremely literary quality, particularly with its wordplay. The writer reappropriates words and meanings, and even appeals to the senses: “My face burned long after I left the fire pit. The camp stank of salmon and shame.” She later uses a parallelism to cleverly juxtapose her changed interests: “instead of scaling a white pine, I’d practiced scales on my piano.”

One of the essay’s main areas of improvement is its overemphasis on the “story” and lack of emphasis on the reflection. The second to last paragraph about changing perspective is crucial to the essay, as it ties the anecdote to larger lessons in the writer’s life. She states that she hasn’t changed, but has only shifted perspective. Yet, we don’t get a good sense of where this realization comes from and how it impacts her life going forward. 

The end of the essay offers a satisfying return to the fire imagery, and highlights the writer’s passion—the one thing that has remained constant in her life.

Essay 3: Last-Minute Switch

The morning of the Model United Nation conference, I walked into Committee feeling confident about my research. We were simulating the Nuremberg Trials – a series of post-World War II proceedings for war crimes – and my portfolio was of the Soviet Judge Major General Iona Nikitchenko. Until that day, the infamous Nazi regime had only been a chapter in my history textbook; however, the conference’s unveiling of each defendant’s crimes brought those horrors to life. The previous night, I had organized my research, proofread my position paper and gone over Judge Nikitchenko’s pertinent statements. I aimed to find the perfect balance between his stance and my own.

As I walked into committee anticipating a battle of wits, my director abruptly called out to me. “I’m afraid we’ve received a late confirmation from another delegate who will be representing Judge Nikitchenko. You, on the other hand, are now the defense attorney, Otto Stahmer.” Everyone around me buzzed around the room in excitement, coordinating with their allies and developing strategies against their enemies, oblivious to the bomb that had just dropped on me. I felt frozen in my tracks, and it seemed that only rage against the careless delegate who had confirmed her presence so late could pull me out of my trance. After having spent a month painstakingly crafting my verdicts and gathering evidence against the Nazis, I now needed to reverse my stance only three hours before the first session.

Gradually, anger gave way to utter panic. My research was fundamental to my performance, and without it, I knew I could add little to the Trials. But confident in my ability, my director optimistically recommended constructing an impromptu defense. Nervously, I began my research anew. Despite feeling hopeless, as I read through the prosecution’s arguments, I uncovered substantial loopholes. I noticed a lack of conclusive evidence against the defendants and certain inconsistencies in testimonies. My discovery energized me, inspiring me to revisit the historical overview in my conference “Background Guide” and to search the web for other relevant articles. Some Nazi prisoners had been treated as “guilty” before their court dates. While I had brushed this information under the carpet while developing my position as a judge, i t now became the focus of my defense. I began scratching out a new argument, centered on the premise that the allied countries had violated the fundamental rule that, a defendant was “not guilty” until proven otherwise.

At the end of the three hours, I felt better prepared. The first session began, and with bravado, I raised my placard to speak. Microphone in hand, I turned to face my audience. “Greetings delegates. I, Otto Stahmer would like to…….” I suddenly blanked. Utter dread permeated my body as I tried to recall my thoughts in vain. “Defence Attorney, Stahmer we’ll come back to you,” my Committee Director broke the silence as I tottered back to my seat, flushed with embarrassment. Despite my shame, I was undeterred. I needed to vindicate my director’s faith in me. I pulled out my notes, refocused, and began outlining my arguments in a more clear and direct manner. Thereafter, I spoke articulately, confidently putting forth my points. I was overjoyed when Secretariat members congratulated me on my fine performance.

Going into the conference, I believed that preparation was the key to success. I wouldn’t say I disagree with that statement now, but I believe adaptability is equally important. My ability to problem-solve in the face of an unforeseen challenge proved advantageous in the art of diplomacy. Not only did this experience transform me into a confident and eloquent delegate at that conference, but it also helped me become a more flexible and creative thinker in a variety of other capacities. Now that I know I can adapt under pressure, I look forward to engaging in activities that will push me to be even quicker on my feet.

This essay is an excellent example because it focuses on a unique challenge and is highly engaging. The writer details their experience reversing their stance in a Model UN trial with only a few hours notice, after having researched and prepared to argue the opposite perspective for a month. 

Their essay is written in media res , or in the middle of the action, allowing readers to feel as if we’re there with the writer. The student openly shares their internal thoughts with us — we feel their anger and panic upon the reversal of roles. We empathize with their emotions of “utter dread” and embarrassment when they’re unable to speak. 

From the essay, we learn that the student believes in thorough preparation, but can also adapt to unforeseen obstacles. They’re able to rise to the challenge and put together an impromptu argument, think critically under pressure, and recover after their initial inability to speak. 

Essay 4: Music as a Coping Mechanism

CW: This essay mentions self-harm.

Sobbing uncontrollably, I parked around the corner from my best friend’s house. As I sat in the driver’s seat, I whispered the most earnest prayer I had ever offered.

Minutes before, I had driven to Colin’s house to pick up a prop for our upcoming spring musical. When I got there, his older brother, Tom, came to the door and informed me that no one else was home. “No,” I corrected, “Colin is here. He’s got a migraine.” Tom shook his head and gently told me where Colin actually was: the psychiatric unit of the local hospital. I felt a weight on my chest as I connected the dots; the terrifying picture rocked my safe little world. Tom’s words blurred as he explained Colin’s self-harm, but all I could think of was whether I could have stopped him. Those cuts on his arms had never been accidents. Colin had lied, very convincingly, many times. How could I have ignored the signs in front of me? Somehow, I managed to ask Tom whether I could see him, but he told me that visiting hours for non-family members were over for the day. I would have to move on with my afternoon.

Once my tears had subsided a little, I drove to the theater, trying to pull myself together and warm up to sing. How would I rehearse? I couldn’t sing three notes without bursting into tears. “I can’t do this,” I thought. But then I realized that the question wasn’t whether I could do it. I knew Colin would want me to push through, and something deep inside told me that music was the best way for me to process my grief. I needed to sing.

I practiced the lyrics throughout my whole drive. The first few times, I broke down in sobs. By the time I reached the theater, however, the music had calmed me. While Colin would never be far from my mind, I had to focus on the task ahead: recording vocals and then producing the video trailer that would be shown to my high school classmates. I fought to channel my worry into my recording. If my voice shook during the particularly heartfelt moments, it only added emotion and depth to my performance. I felt Colin’s absence next to me, but even before I listened to that first take, I knew it was a keeper.

With one of my hurdles behind me, I steeled myself again and prepared for the musical’s trailer. In a floor-length black cape and purple dress, I swept regally down the steps to my director, who waited outside. Under a gloomy sky that threatened to turn stormy, I boldly strode across the street, tossed a dainty yellow bouquet, and flashed confident grins at all those staring. My grief lurched inside, but I felt powerful. Despite my sadness, I could still make art.

To my own surprise, I successfully took back the day. I had felt pain, but I had not let it drown me – making music was a productive way to express my feelings than worrying. Since then, I have been learning to take better care of myself in difficult situations. That day before rehearsal, I found myself in the most troubling circumstances of my life thus far, but they did not sink me because I refused to sink. When my aunt developed cancer several months later, I knew that resolution would not come quickly, but that I could rely on music to cope with the agony, even when it would be easier to fall apart. Thankfully, Colin recovered from his injuries and was home within days. The next week, we stood together on stage at our show’s opening night. As our eyes met and our voices joined in song, I knew that music would always be our greatest mechanism for transforming pain into strength.

This essay is well-written, as we can feel the writer’s emotions through the thoughts they share, and visualize the night of the performance through their rich descriptions. Their varied sentence length also makes the essay more engaging.

That said, this essay is not a great example because of the framing of the topic. The writer can come off as insensitive since they make their friend’s struggle about themself and their emotions (and this is only worsened by the mention of their aunt’s cancer and how it was tough on them ). The essay would’ve been stronger if it focused on their guilt of not recognizing their friend’s struggles and spanned a longer period of time to demonstrate gradual relationship building and reflection. Still, this would’ve been difficult to do well.

In general, you should try to choose a challenge that is undeniably your own, and you should get at least one or two people to read your essay to give you candid feedback.

Essay 5: Dedicating a Track

“Getting beat is one thing – it’s part of competing – but I want no part in losing.” Coach Rob Stark’s motto never fails to remind me of his encouragement on early-morning bus rides to track meets around the state. I’ve always appreciated the phrase, but an experience last June helped me understand its more profound, universal meaning.

Stark, as we affectionately call him, has coached track at my high school for 25 years. His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running. When I learned a neighboring high school had dedicated their track to a longtime coach, I felt that Stark deserved similar honors.

Our school district’s board of education indicated they would only dedicate our track to Stark if I could demonstrate that he was extraordinary. I took charge and mobilized my teammates to distribute petitions, reach out to alumni, and compile statistics on the many team and individual champions Stark had coached over the years. We received astounding support, collecting almost 3,000 signatures and pages of endorsements from across the community. With help from my teammates, I presented this evidence to the board.

They didn’t bite. 

Most members argued that dedicating the track was a low priority. Knowing that we had to act quickly to convince them of its importance, I called a team meeting where we drafted a rebuttal for the next board meeting. To my surprise, they chose me to deliver it. I was far from the best public speaker in the group, and I felt nervous about going before the unsympathetic board again. However, at that second meeting, I discovered that I enjoy articulating and arguing for something that I’m passionate about.

Public speaking resembles a cross country race. Walking to the starting line, you have to trust your training and quell your last minute doubts. When the gun fires, you can’t think too hard about anything; your performance has to be instinctual, natural, even relaxed. At the next board meeting, the podium was my starting line. As I walked up to it, familiar butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Instead of the track stretching out in front of me, I faced the vast audience of teachers, board members, and my teammates. I felt my adrenaline build, and reassured myself: I’ve put in the work, my argument is powerful and sound. As the board president told me to introduce myself, I heard, “runners set” in the back of my mind. She finished speaking, and Bang! The brief silence was the gunshot for me to begin. 

The next few minutes blurred together, but when the dust settled, I knew from the board members’ expressions and the audience’s thunderous approval that I had run quite a race. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough; the board voted down our proposal. I was disappointed, but proud of myself, my team, and our collaboration off the track. We stood up for a cause we believed in, and I overcame my worries about being a leader. Although I discovered that changing the status quo through an elected body can be a painstakingly difficult process and requires perseverance, I learned that I enjoy the challenges this effort offers. Last month, one of the school board members joked that I had become a “regular” – I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Just as Stark taught me, I worked passionately to achieve my goal. I may have been beaten when I appealed to the board, but I certainly didn’t lose, and that would have made Stark proud.

While the writer didn’t succeed in getting the track dedicated to Coach Stark, their essay is certainly successful in showing their willingness to push themselves and take initiative.

The essay opens with a quote from Coach Stark that later comes full circle at the end of the essay. We learn about Stark’s impact and the motivation for trying to get the track dedicated to him.

One of the biggest areas of improvement in the intro, however, is how the essay tells us Stark’s impact rather than showing us: His care, dedication, and emphasis on developing good character has left an enduring impact on me and hundreds of other students. Not only did he help me discover my talent and love for running, but he also taught me the importance of commitment and discipline and to approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The writer could’ve helped us feel a stronger emotional connection to Stark if they had included examples of Stark’s qualities, rather than explicitly stating them. For example, they could’ve written something like: Stark was the kind of person who would give you gas money if you told him your parents couldn’t afford to pick you up from practice. And he actually did that—several times. At track meets, alumni regularly would come talk to him and tell him how he’d changed their lives. Before Stark, I was ambivalent about running and was on the JV team, but his encouragement motivated me to run longer and harder and eventually make varsity. Because of him, I approach every endeavor with the passion and intensity that I bring to running.

The essay goes on to explain how the writer overcame their apprehension of public speaking, and likens the process of submitting an appeal to the school board to running a race. This metaphor makes the writing more engaging and allows us to feel the student’s emotions.

While the student didn’t ultimately succeed in getting the track dedicated, we learn about their resilience and initiative: I now often show up to meetings to advocate for a variety of causes, including better environmental practices in cafeterias and safer equipment for athletes.

Overall, this essay is well-done. It demonstrates growth despite failing to meet a goal, which is a unique essay structure. The running metaphor and full-circle intro/ending also elevate the writing in this essay.

Essay 6: Body Image

CW: This essay mentions eating disorders.

I press the “discover” button on my Instagram app, hoping to find enticing pictures to satisfy my boredom. Scrolling through, I see funny videos and mouth-watering pictures of food. However, one image stops me immediately. A fit teenage girl with a “perfect body” relaxes in a bikini on a beach. Beneath it, I see a slew of flattering comments. I shake with disapproval over the image’s unrealistic quality. However, part of me still wants to have a body like hers so that others will make similar comments to me.

I would like to resolve a silent issue that harms many teenagers and adults: negative self image and low self-esteem in a world where social media shapes how people view each other. When people see the façades others wear to create an “ideal” image, they can develop poor thought patterns rooted in negative self-talk. The constant comparisons to “perfect” others make people feel small. In this new digital age, it is hard to distinguish authentic from artificial representations.

When I was 11, I developed anorexia nervosa. Though I was already thin, I wanted to be skinny like the models that I saw on the magazine covers on the grocery store stands. Little did I know that those models probably also suffered from disorders, and that photoshop erased their flaws. I preferred being underweight to being healthy. No matter how little I ate or how thin I was, I always thought that I was too fat. I became obsessed with the number on the scale and would try to eat the least that I could without my parents urging me to take more. Fortunately, I stopped engaging in anorexic behaviors before middle school. However, my underlying mental habits did not change. The images that had provoked my disorder in the first place were still a constant presence in my life.

By age 15, I was in recovery from anorexia, but suffered from depression. While I used to only compare myself to models, the growth of social media meant I also compared myself to my friends and acquaintances. I felt left out when I saw my friends’ excitement about lake trips they had taken without me. As I scrolled past endless photos of my flawless, thin classmates with hundreds of likes and affirming comments, I felt my jealousy spiral. I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. I wanted to be called “perfect” and “body goals,” so I tried to only post at certain times of day to maximize my “likes.” When that didn’t work, I started to feel too anxious to post anything at all.  

Body image insecurities and social media comparisons affect thousands of people – men, women, children, and adults – every day. I am lucky – after a few months of my destructive social media habits, I came across a video that pointed out the illusory nature of social media; many Instagram posts only show off good things while people hide their flaws. I began going to therapy, and recovered from my depression. To address the problem of self-image and social media, we can all focus on what matters on the inside and not what is on the surface. As an effort to become healthy internally, I started a club at my school to promote clean eating and radiating beauty from within. It has helped me grow in my confidence, and today I’m not afraid to show others my struggles by sharing my experience with eating disorders. Someday, I hope to make this club a national organization to help teenagers and adults across the country. I support the idea of body positivity and embracing difference, not “perfection.” After all, how can we be ourselves if we all look the same?

This essay covers the difficult topics of eating disorders and mental health. If you’re thinking about covering similar topics in your essay, we recommend reading our post Should You Talk About Mental Health in College Essays?

The short answer is that, yes, you can talk about mental health, but it can be risky. If you do go that route, it’s important to focus on what you learned from the experience.

We can see that the writer of this essay has been through a lot, and a strength of their essay is their vulnerability, in excerpts such as this: I wanted to be admired and loved by other people too. However, I felt that I could never be enough. I began to hate the way that I looked, and felt nothing in my life was good enough. I wanted to be called “perfect” and “body goals,” so I tried to only post at certain times of day to maximize my “likes.”

The student goes on to share how they recovered from their depression through an eye-opening video and therapy sessions, and they’re now helping others find their self-worth as well. It’s great that this essay looks towards the future and shares the writer’s goals of making their club a national organization; we can see their ambition and compassion.

The main weakness of this essay is that it doesn’t focus enough on their recovery process, which is arguably the most important part. They could’ve told us more about the video they watched or the process of starting their club and the interactions they’ve had with other members.

Still, this essay shows us that this student is honest, self-aware, and caring, which are all qualities admissions officer are looking for.

Essay 7: Health Crisis

Tears streamed down my face and my mind was paralyzed with fear. Sirens blared, but the silent panic in my own head was deafening. I was muted by shock. A few hours earlier, I had anticipated a vacation in Washington, D.C., but unexpectedly, I was rushing to the hospital behind an ambulance carrying my mother. As a fourteen-year-old from a single mother household, without a driver’s license, and seven hours from home, I was distraught over the prospect of losing the only parent I had. My fear turned into action as I made some of the bravest decisions of my life. 

Three blood transfusions later, my mother’s condition was stable, but we were still states away from home, so I coordinated with my mother’s doctors in North Carolina to schedule the emergency operation that would save her life. Throughout her surgery, I anxiously awaited any word from her surgeon, but each time I asked, I was told that there had been another complication or delay. Relying on my faith and positive attitude, I remained optimistic that my mother would survive and that I could embrace new responsibilities.

My mother had been a source of strength for me, and now I would be strong for her through her long recovery ahead. As I started high school, everyone thought the crisis was over, but it had really just started to impact my life. My mother was often fatigued, so I assumed more responsibility, juggling family duties, school, athletics, and work. I made countless trips to the neighborhood pharmacy, cooked dinner, biked to the grocery store, supported my concerned sister, and provided the loving care my mother needed to recover. I didn’t know I was capable of such maturity and resourcefulness until it was called upon. Each day was a stage in my gradual transformation from dependence to relative independence.

Throughout my mother’s health crisis, I matured by learning to put others’ needs before my own. As I worried about my mother’s health, I took nothing for granted, cherished what I had, and used my daily activities as motivation to move forward. I now take ownership over small decisions such as scheduling daily appointments and managing my time but also over major decisions involving my future, including the college admissions process. Although I have become more independent, my mother and I are inseparably close, and the realization that I almost lost her affects me daily. Each morning, I wake up ten minutes early simply to eat breakfast with my mother and spend time with her before our busy days begin. I am aware of how quickly life can change. My mother remains a guiding force in my life, but the feeling of empowerment I discovered within myself is the ultimate form of my independence. Though I thought the summer before my freshman year would be a transition from middle school to high school, it was a transformation from childhood to adulthood.

This essay feels real and tells readers a lot about the writer. To start at the beginning, the intro is 10/10. It has drama, it has emotions, and it has the reader wanting more.

And, when you keep going, you get to learn a lot about a very resilient and mature student. Through sentences like “I made countless trips to the neighborhood pharmacy, cooked dinner, biked to the grocery store, supported my concerned sister, and provided the loving care my mother needed to recover” and “Relying on my faith and positive attitude, I remained optimistic that my mother would survive and that I could embrace new responsibilities,” the reader shows us that they are aware of their resilience and maturity, but are not arrogant about it. It is simply a fact that they have proven through their actions!

This essay makes us want to cheer for the writer, and they certainly seem like someone who would thrive in a more independent college environment.

Essay 8: Turned Tables

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain.

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

When my parents learned about The Green Academy, we hoped it would be an opportunity for me to find not only an academically challenging environment, but also – perhaps more importantly – a community. This meant transferring the family from Drumfield to Kingston. And while there was concern about Max, we all believed that given his sociable nature, moving would be far less impactful on him than staying put might be on me.

As it turned out, Green Academy was everything I’d hoped for. I was ecstatic to discover a group of students with whom I shared interests and could truly engage. Preoccupied with new friends and a rigorous course load, I failed to notice that the tables had turned. Max, lost in the fray and grappling with how to make connections in his enormous new high school, had become withdrawn and lonely. It took me until Christmas time – and a massive argument – to recognize how difficult the transition had been for my brother, let alone that he blamed me for it.

Through my own journey of searching for academic peers, in addition to coming out as gay when I was 12, I had developed deep empathy for those who had trouble fitting in. It was a pain I knew well and could easily relate to. Yet after Max’s outburst, my first response was to protest that our parents – not I – had chosen to move us here. In my heart, though, I knew that regardless of who had made the decision, we ended up in Kingston for my benefit. I was ashamed that, while I saw myself as genuinely compassionate, I had been oblivious to the heartache of the person closest to me. I could no longer ignore it – and I didn’t want to.

We stayed up half the night talking, and the conversation took an unexpected turn. Max opened up and shared that it wasn’t just about the move. He told me how challenging school had always been for him, due to his dyslexia, and that the ever-present comparison to me had only deepened his pain.

We had been in parallel battles the whole time and, yet, I only saw that Max was in distress once he experienced problems with which I directly identified. I’d long thought Max had it so easy – all because he had friends. The truth was, he didn’t need to experience my personal brand of sorrow in order for me to relate – he had felt plenty of his own.

My failure to recognize Max’s suffering brought home for me the profound universality and diversity of personal struggle; everyone has insecurities, everyone has woes, and everyone – most certainly – has pain. I am acutely grateful for the conversations he and I shared around all of this, because I believe our relationship has been fundamentally strengthened by a deeper understanding of one another. Further, this experience has reinforced the value of constantly striving for deeper sensitivity to the hidden struggles of those around me. I won’t make the mistake again of assuming that the surface of someone’s life reflects their underlying story.

Here you can find a prime example that you don’t have to have fabulous imagery or flowery prose to write a successful essay. You just have to be clear and say something that matters. This essay is simple and beautiful. It almost feels like having a conversation with a friend and learning that they are an even better person than you already thought they were.

Through this narrative, readers learn a lot about the writer—where they’re from, what their family life is like, what their challenges were as a kid, and even their sexuality. We also learn a lot about their values—notably, the value they place on awareness, improvement, and consideration of others. Though they never explicitly state it (which is great because it is still crystal clear!), this student’s ending of “I won’t make the mistake again of assuming that the surface of someone’s life reflects their underlying story” shows that they are constantly striving for improvement and finding lessons anywhere they can get them in life.

Where to Get Your Overcoming Challenges Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Overcoming Challenges essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Teachers Challenges

The Challenges Faced By A Teacher

Teaching, a noble profession is a daunting and challenging task. In the present era, with the advent of new methodologies in teaching and the way digital and smart learning has made inroads into the field of education, the role of teachers has also greatly evolved over a period of time. Today, a teacher is faced with the arduous task of keeping him/herself abreast with the latest inventions and strides in the field of medicine, education, science, art and etc. Upgrading their skills and knowledge from time to time is thus necessary and is an utmost priority today.

A teacher is also an educator. They have the opportunity of making a huge impact on the students, but with this opportunity come many challenges. The greatest of the challenges faced by a teacher are: 1)Knowing their students well. 2)Understanding the different learning abilities and capacities of the students. 3)Motivating and encouraging them when the students underperform and have to deal with parental and peer pressure. 4)Building an effective communication channel between the Management-Parents- Students.

A)Knowing their students well. It is imperative for a teacher to form a healthy bond with the students. Every effort should be made by a teacher to know their students well. The interaction should extend well beyond the Classrooms. A teacher should be a friend first and should shoulder the responsibility of grooming the Students with warmth and a cheerful disposition. Students should feel free to broach any subject and express all doubts whatsoever and a teacher should be approachable and accessible. A broad mind and a friendly attitude on the part of a teacher will make all the difference when it comes to knowing the Students well.

B)Understanding the different learning abilities and capacities of students: The biggest challenge for any teacher lies in understanding the different learning abilities of the students. Students differ in their grasping, memory, concentration, ability to learn and write and show varied interests in various subjects. A student who is good at Mathematics may find grasping the concepts of Biology difficult. So also a student may be good at sports and other co-curricular activities but does not show the same attention and interest when it comes to Academics. Some students are exceptionally brilliant and hard-working, while others are slow learners, who struggle to understand what is being taught in the class. How does a teacher handle different students?

A good teacher will always focus on the slow- learners takes them into his domain and nurtures them with care and concentration. Comparing and criticising the students on the basis of grades and marks scored should never be encouraged by a teacher. Talking individually to the students, designing modules as per their requirements and assigning tasks to them based on their interests and then assessing their progress is vital here and will contribute to an overall personality growth of the students.

C)When the Students underperform Today, the students not only have to cope with academic and peer pressure but also have to deal with unrealistic parental expectations. This is leading to unprecedented stress in the Students. The biggest challenge for any teacher will be, as to how he motivates, guides and encourages the students when they underperform, lose their focus and are distracted due to various circumstances. Lending a shoulder, a word of comfort and support, instilling confidence and a positive attitude towards the students in their tough times is bound to bring a sea change in the lives of the Students.

D) Being a bridge between the Management-Parent- Student The Parent-Teacher equation has changed today. Parents more involved in the schooling and academics of their wards and PT meetings are well attended. The biggest challenge for a teacher lies in assessing the progress of the students and effectively conveying the same to the parents. A teacher should identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Students and be able to discuss the same with the parents, thus creating an open atmosphere for the parents. Being harsh/rude to the parents and the students can prove detrimental to both the teacher as well as to the institution. Teachers should be accountable to the management as well and need to cooperate with the changing rules and regulations and play a key role in cementing a healthy bond between Management-Parent- Student.

Politeness, Patience, Perseverance and Assertiveness are all hallmarks of a great teacher. Teachers should rise up to these challenges, take them in their stride to make a difference and bring about a change in the society as a whole.

ALL TEACHERS ARE GREAT ROLE MODELS Thanking You Mrs.Parimala.G.Tadas.

congrats madam. an inspiring write up. a boosting factor for teachers as well as researchers. thanks.

very nicely explained, all the points are well enough to be understood very easily. thanks for enlightening all the key points that a teacher should k...

all ideals and far from reality. students in any class have different intelligence levels and those with low iq can never be brought up equal to thos...

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• Published: 31 May 2024

What difference does one course make? Assessing the impact of content-based instruction on students’ sustainability literacy

• Inan Deniz Erguvan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8713-2935 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  708 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Language and linguistics

Composition studies, with their cross-disciplinary role in students’ academic lives, can be essential in placing sustainability at the center of students’ learning. This research assessed the impact of content-based instruction on students’ sustainability literacy in a first-year composition course through a mixed-method design. In the quantitative part of this case study, 221 students in different classes of a first-year writing course in a higher education institute in Kuwait during the Fall term of 2022 were first given a pretest to determine their sustainability literacy levels. During a 6-week period, 121 students participated in the content-based instruction emphasizing sustainability, while 100 students comprised the control group, receiving curriculum without any emphasis on sustainability. The allocation of students in these two groups was random, determined solely by the classes they were enrolled in at the beginning of the semester. At the end of the semester, both the experimental and control groups were given a posttest to measure the impact of the instruction on their sustainability literacy levels. For the qualitative component, 60 students from the experimental group and 60 students from the control group were tasked with composing an essay identifying Kuwait’s major sustainability challenges and proposing corresponding solutions. The impact of content-based instruction on students’ literacy levels was measured by conducting a qualitative and quantitative content analysis on their writing. The results showed that the experimental group students made statistically significant improvements in their sustainable literacy levels, scored better on the posttest, used more sustainability terms and concepts, and identified more sustainability-related challenges and solutions in their essays.

Introduction

Our planet faces a critical emergency, evident in ecosystem devastation, species extinction, the depletion and destruction of vital resources, widespread pollution, and extreme poverty affecting billions of people. Scientists attribute these challenges significantly to our ignorance of the limits of Earth’s resources.

With its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda is one of the most important attempts to solve the intricate global issues of our day. Reaching the objectives of sustainable development (SD) requires education. According to the UN, sustainability literacy includes the mindsets, abilities, and information people need to genuinely commit to creating a sustainable future and make wise decisions in that direction (Decamps, 2017 ).

The Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework, developed by the UN, serves as a roadmap for institutions and educators to revise curricula and teaching pedagogies based on sustainability principles. This framework is employed by hundreds of universities worldwide (Yuan and Zuo, 2013 ). ESD has gained political and institutional acceptability in many parts of the world recognizing the potential of promoting sustainability literacy to foster creative solutions to the world’s problems.

There is consensus that higher education institutions (HEIs) ought to promote sustainable development via research and activism since all students, regardless of their field of study, have the capacity to be social change agents. As a result, pupils need to acquire the skills necessary to contribute to a sustainable future (Buckler and Creech, 2014 ).

HEIs are responsible for teaching sustainability literacy and producing environmentally conscious citizens, given their ability to shape students’ attitudes and perspectives (Stephens et al. 2008 ). This endeavor holds particular significance in creating a new generation keenly aware of the global environmental challenges we are going through (Koehn and Uitto, 2017 ).

Leal Filho ( 2010 ) argues that universities cannot avoid dealing with the biggest problems that humanity is currently experiencing. Additionally, he contends that ESD is especially important in higher education since students will soon be pursuing careers in a variety of fields and will need to understand how their careers can contribute to the solution of sustainability issues. According to Leal Filho ( 2010 ), ESD will inspire students “to take action both during their time as students and, later on, as professionals” (p. 2). Therefore, in order to effectively address the difficulties they will experience in their various disciplines, undergraduates should develop competence-based sustainability awareness and literacy.

Sustainable development is not restricted to a single science. Composition studies, with their inherent cross-disciplinary and distinctive purpose in students’ academic lives, can play an important role in making sustainability a core focus of the curriculum. Composition instructors have the freedom to teach in a variety of contexts and disciplines. While teaching composition is as labor-intensive as any other subject in higher education, writing instructors have more clout to urge students to investigate a wide range of topics than academics who teach in more specialized fields (Owens, 2001 ).

Although certain curricular initiatives have been the subject of research, the impact of curriculum design on improving sustainability understanding has not received as much attention. Because of this, there are currently no guidelines in the literature for developing curriculum that specifically address sustainability learning objectives. Therefore, the goal of this project is to enhance students’ sustainability literacy by supporting the development of a structured curriculum in a first-year writing course. In order to do this, this study examined the benefits of utilizing textual and audiovisual materials in content-based instruction to introduce students to the three dimensions of sustainability as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Content-based instruction (CBI) is a popular approach to language education that combines content and language learning. Content-based education varies from standard language classes in that language comes second to content. This teaching technique is deemed effective because it employs English as a medium to impart content knowledge while providing various opportunities for students to use English in class (Brinton et al. 2003 ). Thus, the use of English stems from meaningful purposes (content learning) and frequent practice (opportunities to use English), resulting in an environment conducive to rich discussions, ultimately improving language fluency while reinforcing the content taught in a variety of academic areas. In other words, content-based language acquisition gives pupils a valid or relevant purpose to use the language they are learning (Kennedy 2006 ).

The CBI is seen as an effective tool for preparing students for higher education studies in a new language and context. Song ( 2006 ) conducted a long-term study to find out how well CBI worked for ESL students at a community college in the United States. According to the study, students enrolled in the content-linked ESL program passed the ESL course with greater marks and pass rates. They also performed better in follow-up ESL and developmental English classes. Overall, compared to their peers, the ESL students who were linked to content demonstrated higher levels of long-term academic performance. Higher GPA overall, graduation and retention rates, and English proficiency exam pass rates were all indicators of this achievement.

According to Stoller ( 2004 ), CBI stands out for its dedication to both language and content-learning objectives. Over the years, the program has garnered support as a result of students’ improved language skills and content-area knowledge at the elementary, middle, and post-secondary education levels, which attests to its perceived successes. According to Kennedy ( 2006 ), kids who study languages in addition to other subjects perform better academically and are able to make links between their studies and the real world. Multiple teaching methodologies are employed in content-based foreign language instruction, which also accounts for the variety of learning styles and intelligences present in the classroom (Kennedy, 2006 ).

However, despite the abundance of interest in using CBI to increase students’ awareness of certain topics and concepts, there is still a lack of research in assessing the impact of CBI on sustainability literacy. There are a few case studies, several reports of individual attempts and class practices to implement CBI in EFL classes to familiarize students with sustainability concepts (Vorholt, 2018 ; Schneider, 2017 ), and the empirical studies tend to focus on assessing teachers’ perspectives on teaching sustainability to their students (Shah et al., 2022 ; Maijala et al., 2023 ). Additionally, studies assessing the impact of CBI on students’ sustainability literacy with an experimental research design are very rare in the literature. Thus, this research is expected to make an important contribution to the field of sustainability education in higher education institutions.

This research employs a case study approach due to its ability to allow in depth, multifaceted explorations of complex issues in a real-world context (Crowe et al., 2011 ). This methodology aligns with the exploratory nature of this research, enabling us to generate a contextualized understanding that contributes to the existing body of knowledge. The selected case institution offers a valuable opportunity to examine a real-world scenario that is both relevant to our research questions and has generated practical implications for decision-makers in the field.

The main research questions that will guide the study are as follows:

Did the content-based instruction have any significant effect on the participants’ sustainability literacy levels?

Are there any differences between the control and experimental groups’ essays in terms of students’ perceptions of sustainability challenges and their solutions in Kuwait?

Sustainability

The idea of sustainability is not so new; it existed before the field of environmental sciences as we know it today. Nonetheless, the need to use resources sustainably has become more widely recognized due to factors including population growth, increased consumption following the Industrial Revolution, and the threat of the depletion of essential resources like coal, oil, and wood. Fears that living standards would not be maintained for current or future generations sparked a style of thinking that led to the creation and acceptance of sustainable development (Du Pisani, 2006 ).

Although there is still no commonly accepted definition of sustainability, its context has eventually widened to include “three pillars”; namely the social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability (Purvis et al., 2019 ). Initially, the focus was mainly on the environmental dimension of sustainability and many researchers considered this dimension more important than the other two, however, later, the economic, and social dimensions started to attract similar amounts of attention (Colantonio, 2007 ).

Following the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which was the first UN conference devoted to environmental issues, there have been global efforts to redefine sustainability. There are many definitions of sustainable development, but the one that is most often cited comes from the 1987 Brundtland Report, also known as Our Common Future: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987 ).

Solutions to sustainability issues, whether ecological, social, or economic, hinge on decision-making processes at both the organizational and individual levels. It is important to recognize that organizational decisions stem from individual choices (Carley and Behrens, 1999 ). Therefore, the success of sustainability goals largely relies on individual decision-making, particularly in consumer behavior. By opting for sustainable choices, consumers can drive demand for sustainable products and services, articulate their values, reduce their environmental footprint, and contribute to building a culture of sustainability. The positive effect of education on pro-environmental consumption behaviors is evident in the literature (AlNuaimi and AlGhamdi, 2022 ; Adjengdia and Schlegelmilch, 2020 ; Achola et al., 2020 ) and was recognized in the Brundtland Report ( 1987 ).

Furthermore, in 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Commission on Sustainable Development emphasized the crucial role of information in informed decision-making. Hence, education emerges as a vital instrument in achieving sustainability goals. It empowers individuals and communities to take meaningful action and make informed choices that safeguard the environment while promoting social and economic development.

Sustainability literacy

Organizations from a variety of sectors have prioritized educational projects aimed at improving people’s understanding of sustainability because they believe that a sustainable future requires a society that is knowledgeable about sustainability. The significance of sustainability education has been emphasized recently by international organizations, private companies, and most significantly, higher education institutions. Renewing interest in creating trustworthy assessments of sustainability literacy and knowledge has coincided with the increased emphasis on sustainability education.

Various approaches have been used to develop a valid assessment tool for sustainability literacy. One noteworthy example is the SULITEST (Sustainability Literacy Test), established after the Rio+20 Conference (Decamps et al., 2017 ). SULITEST is an online standardized set of multiple-choice questions that can be used globally, alongside specialized modules tailored to specific national, regional, and cultural contexts. Décamps et al. ( 2017 ) outlined the structure of this tool and highlighted its potential for measuring sustainability literacy on a global scale, recommending its adoption by educational institutions.

Similarly, Zwickle and Jones ( 2017 ) developed a web-based survey tool to assess the sustainability knowledge of undergraduate students at Ohio State University; this tool involved 1000 participants and comprised 16 multiple-choice questions. In the United States, the American Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) introduced the Sustainability Tracking Assessment Rating System (STARS) in 2010, with participation from more than a thousand institutions by 2022. The STARS evaluates the sustainability efforts of colleges and universities in the U.S., rewarding institutions that offer a greater number of sustainability-related courses or even require students to complete at least one sustainability course as part of their general education requirements (Bullock and Wilder, 2016 ). Participating institutions assess the sustainability literacy of their students, focusing on their knowledge of sustainability topics and challenges.

As higher education institutions and society at large increasingly prioritize the importance of individuals’ understanding of sustainability, the need for accurate assessments of sustainability knowledge becomes more significant. The development of improved measures of sustainability knowledge is anticipated to enhance sustainability education and ultimately cultivate a population with higher levels of sustainability literacy (Kuehl et al., 2023 ).

Sustainability in Kuwait

Kuwait is identified as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, owing to its substantial revenues derived from the oil sector. The country enjoys an abundance of wealth from the oil sector which make up more than 90% of Kuwait’s export earnings, a dependence that makes it difficult to diversify the economy and develop other industries that are less reliant on fossil fuels (Eltony, 2002 ). Consequently, Kuwait encounters various sustainability challenges, primarily stemming from its heavy reliance on oil revenues (AlOthman and Palliam, 2018 ). Some of the major environmental challenges faced by Kuwait are air pollution, water scarcity, and waste management. The country has high levels of air pollution due to its petrochemical industry activities and transportation. Water scarcity is a significant issue in Kuwait, where desalination plants are relied upon to meet water needs. Nevertheless, Kuwaitis consume a staggering 520 l of freshwater per capita per day, one of the highest in the world (Kuwait National Development Plan, 2017 ). Waste management poses another significant challenge, as Kuwait generates large amounts of waste due to high mass consumption, necessitating proper disposal and recycling methods (Al Yaqout et al., 2002 ; Koushki et al., 2004 ). Currently, water and energy consumption, along with waste production per capita, rank among the highest globally in Kuwait.

The country has launched several initiatives to promote sustainable development, and the most significant initiative is the Kuwait National Development Plan (KNDP) that serves as a roadmap for sustainable development in Kuwait. The KNDP emphasizes the importance of economic, social, and environmental sustainability and sets targets for reducing carbon emissions, improving waste management, and promoting renewable energy (Kuwait National Development Plan, 2017 ). Kuwait officially embraced the SDGs in September 2015, subsequently integrating them into its Vision 2035 plan.

Despite these efforts, Kuwait currently holds the 101st position out of 163 countries, with an overall score of 64.53 (Sachs et al., 2022 ). Furthermore, there remains a gap in the implementation of sustainable practices by government agencies and a lack of sustainable awareness among the public. Very few studies exist in this domain, with the overarching message emphasizing the need for greater awareness of sustainability in Kuwait. For example, a study by Al Qattan and Gray ( 2021 ) revealed that government policies and practices inadequately address pollution issues, particularly in Kuwaiti water bodies. Similarly, AlSanad ( 2015 ) found that lack of awareness acts as a main barrier to adopting sustainable construction approaches in Kuwait and stresses the need for governmental initiatives such as standards, policies, and incentives to promote sustainability. According to similar research (Koushki et al., 2004 ; AlSulalili et al., 2014 ; Al Beeshi et al., 2020 ), there is a dearth of public knowledge of sustainable waste management techniques and municipal programs for waste prevention, reduction, or recycling.

Kuwait’s overall score of 64.53 places it 101st out of 163 countries, notwithstanding these efforts (Sachs et al., 2022 ). In addition, there is still a lack of public understanding of sustainability issues and a gap in the way government agencies are implementing sustainable practices. There are very few studies in this field, and most of them emphasize how important it is for Kuwaitis to be more conscious of sustainability. Al Qattan and Gray’s study from 2021, for instance, showed that pollution problems are not sufficiently addressed by government policies and practices, especially when it comes to Kuwaiti water bodies. Similar findings were made by AlSanad ( 2015 ), who highlighted the necessity of governmental initiatives such as standards, rules, and incentives and discovered that a major obstacle to Kuwait’s adoption of sustainable construction practices is a lack of awareness.

In conclusion, despite bourgeoning awareness of sustainability among businesses and the government’s initiatives to promote sustainability, Kuwait still requires heightened awareness and implementation of sustainable practices and concerted efforts to address the nation’s oil reliance and propel towards a more sustainable future.

Methodology

This study has a true experimental research design with random assignment of students in control and experimental groups, with a pretest and posttest administered to both groups. A mixed-method sequential explanatory approach was adopted to collect the data, which were first quantitative and then qualitative in two consecutive phases of the study (Creswell, 2012 ; Creswell and Clark, 2011 ). Using mixed methods helps to provide a more comprehensive framework of the phenomenon by enabling rich and informative data and validating and triangulating the data by analyzing the same issue through both quantitative and qualitative methods (Silverman, 2000 ).

Research population

The research population of the study consisted of students at a private university in Kuwait based on an American-style model of higher education that offers instruction in English. A total of 221 first-year composition students participated and were divided into experimental and control groups, with 100 students assigned to the experimental group and 121 to the control group. The allocation of students into these groups was random and determined by their enrollment in specific course sections at the beginning of the semester. The discrepancy in group sizes reflects variations in the number of students per course section, typically ranging from 20 to 25.

In the experimental group, 100 students received specialized content-based instruction focused on sustainability, while the remaining 121 students in the control group completed regular assignments as outlined in the course syllabus, covering various predetermined topics assigned by their writing instructors. Both groups underwent a pretest before the commencement of content-based instruction and a posttest at the conclusion of the semester.

The participants’ demographic information is displayed in Table 1 .

For the qualitative part of the study, the researcher collected essays from students at the end of the Fall semester of 2022. The research population consisted of students in both the experimental and control groups who attended the class and signed the consent form on the day of data collection, week 15 of Fall 2022. There were 65 students who produced an essay in the experimental group and 67 in the control group. Five essays from the experimental group and seven essays from the control group were eliminated because they had a very low word count (less than 100 words), thus, 120 were left for analysis.

Data collection

The quantitative section collected data through an adapted version of the Sustainability Literacy Assessment, prepared by a committee at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh to measure the university’s sustainability performance, within the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) framework ( 2018 ). The assessment form included four sections, testing the knowledge level with five multiple-choice questions, and assessing students’ self-reported skills, attitudes and familiarity with some sustainability topics and concepts on a five-point Likert scale. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval (case number 278674) was obtained, and students signed the consent form before the data collection. A total of 221 students completed the questionnaire—121 in the control group and 100 in the experimental group.

Table 2 shows the reliability scores of these sections of the data collection tool. When the scales are examined, it is determined that they have a good level of reliability. A Cronbach’s alpha greater than 0.50 indicates that the scale used is reliable. This also indicates that the internal consistency of the scale used in the study is good.

In the qualitative data collection, students in both the experimental and control groups were asked to write a short essay identifying the major sustainability challenge of Kuwait and offering solutions to this problem. This session was conducted during the scheduled class time of 50 min, on the computer under the instructor’s supervision.

Data analysis

The quantitative data were analyzed using the SPSS Statistics (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 25.0 program. Along with descriptive statistical methods (numbers, percentages, minimum-maximum values, median, mean, standard deviation), chi-square analysis was applied to test the homogeneity of the groups. The data were checked for the normal distribution compatibility with Q–Q plot drawing for its skewness and kurtosis values (±3).

For quantitative data comparison in normally distributed data, an independent t test was used for comparisons between two independent groups, and a dependent t test was used for comparisons between two dependent stages. One-way ANOVA was applied for comparisons of more than two independent groups.

Three processes comprise the data analysis process in qualitative research: arranging and prepping the data for analysis, coding and condensing the data to reduce the data into themes and presenting the data in tables and figures (Creswell, 2012 ). The content analysis method was used to assess the data collected for this study. The methodical, impartial, and, if feasible, quantitative examination of the content of different documents is known as content analysis (Bilgin, 2006 ). Content analysis’s primary goal is to find ideas and connections that will contribute to the explanation of the information gathered.

The student essays were imported into the MAXQDA 2022 program, which utilizes visual analysis tools extensively and offers a more structured approach to data analysis than manual analysis (Kuckartz and Rädiker, 2019 ). To identify the most frequent words and word combinations in the essays, a quantitative content analysis was performed using the MaxDictio function of the software. For the qualitative content analysis, a combined approach incorporating both inductive and deductive methods was employed. The researcher thoroughly reviewed the data multiple times, generating initial codes. Codes that were related to each other were then grouped together under relevant themes and assigned appropriate names. Subsequently, the obtained themes were elaborated upon in detail and the findings were interpreted.

Research Question 1

Did the content-based instruction have a significant effect on the participants’ sustainability literacy levels?

The first section of the questionnaire included five questions testing students’ knowledge of sustainability. Table 3 below shows the percentages of correct and incorrect answers in the control and experimental groups according to the pretest and posttest scores.

According to Table 3 , the experimental group of students in the posttest scored the highest percentage in the knowledge questions. The percentage of correct answers produced by the students in the control group did not show a consistent pattern, while it increased in Q1 and Q3, it decreased in Q2, Q4, and Q5.

However, for the experimental group, the students’ correct answers to all the questions increased. To assess whether these differences were statistically significant, an independent t test was conducted between the pretest and posttest scores of the two groups.

Table 4 shows the result of the independent t test conducted to compare the average knowledge of the participants before and after the CBI. There was no statistically significant difference between the control group and experimental group participants’ pretest knowledge averages, but there was a statistically significant difference in posttest averages ( p  < 0.05).

The questionnaire also included questions asking students to evaluate their literacy in skills, attitudes, and topics and concepts regarding sustainability. Table 5 shows the results of the independent t test conducted to compare the skills, attitudes, and topic and concept scores of the participants according to their groups. According to these findings, the posttest scores for skills, attitudes, and familiarity with topics and concepts were significantly greater for the experimental group participants than for the control group participants.

Research Question 2

Are there any differences between the control and experimental groups’ essays in terms of their perceptions of sustainability challenges and their solutions in Kuwait?

To analyze this question, students were asked to write an essay identifying the major sustainability challenge of Kuwait and offering some solutions to it. The essays were processed through MAXQDA, and the frequency distributions of the control and experimental group student essays are shown in Table 6 .

According to student perspectives, the major sustainability challenges in Kuwait were dependence on oil, donating money to other countries and unemployment in the economic area. In the environmental realm, pollution and littering were the most frequently mentioned problems, followed by climate change. Loss of biodiversity and scarcity of resources were the other two major environmental sustainability challenges. Social sustainability issues in Kuwait, as per student views, could be listed as health and wellbeing problems, corruption, lack of quality infrastructure, quality of education, gender inequality and discrimination and human rights issues.

Table 6 also shows the number of essays mentioning the coded sustainability problems in each group type. According to these findings, students in the control group identified similar codes for environmental and economic sustainability problems, except for unemployment, with varying frequencies. However, regarding social sustainability problems, no control group student mentioned quality of education, reducing inequality and discrimination, or traffic accidents, and only one student mentioned malnutrition and obesity, corruption and gender equality. These issues were identified by a larger number of students in the experimental group. Overall, in the sustainability problems content analysis, 94 codes were included in the control group, and 137 codes were included in the experimental group.

Table 7 below shows the codes in the student essays for solutions to Kuwait’s major sustainability problems. According to the content analysis of the essays, the control group students did not mention five solutions that were mentioned by the experimental group. These were Kuwaitization and creating jobs in the economic sustainability domain, improving the quality of education, reducing inequality and discrimination, and reducing traffic accidents in the social sustainability domain. Both groups proposed the same solutions in the environmental domain, with control group 84, and experimental 68 codes. However, overall, the control group students had 104 codes, and the experimental group students had 137 codes for sustainability solutions.

A final content analysis was conducted quantitatively, via the MAXDictio function of MAXQDA to test how many sustainability related terms and concepts the students used in their essays. The list prepared by The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability (AASHE)’s Suggested Keywords for Sustainability Course and Research Inventories (The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2023 ) was uploaded to the software and the student essays were analyzed based on these keywords.

According to Table 8 , the word count of the essays in the experimental group reached 27,751, and that of the control group reached 28,303. Despite the higher word count, dictionary-based content analysis revealed that the experimental group used more sustainability related keywords, as listed in the inventory. Students in the experimental group used 122, and the control group used 97 of these suggested sustainability keywords in their essays.

This study aimed to assess the impact of a 6-week course on content-based instruction (CBI) on the sustainability literacy levels of composition students. Our findings indicate that CBI significantly improved the sustainability literacy of the experimental group, as evidenced by their post-test scores and written work.

The first research question was addressed quantitatively, revealing significant improvements in the experimental group’s knowledge levels, skills, attitudes, and familiarity with sustainability concepts compared to those of the control group. This finding suggested that CBI effectively enhanced students’ sustainability literacy.

The second research question was explored qualitatively through the analysis of student essays. The experimental group demonstrated a greater ability to identify sustainability problems facing their country and propose solutions, particularly in the social sustainability domain. Additionally, they used more sustainability-related keywords in their essays, despite the control group having longer essays.

The results of our data analysis for both research questions revealed the positive effect of CBI on student learning. Content-based instruction is indeed widely recognized for its potential to enhance language learning outcomes and our findings are consistent with those of several previous studies in the field. While sustainable development is not frequently included in language education or promoted as part of teacher preparation for language learners (Maijala et al. 2023 ), it can readily succumb to CBI. CBI has begun transforming language-learning environments into places where students utilize language to research urgent global challenges, such as climate change (Turpin, 2022 ). A wide range of curricular approaches are included in CBI, ranging from language-focused programs where content is viewed as a helpful tool for extending the goals of the language curriculum to content-focused programs where content acquisition is prioritized over language learning (Met, 1999 ). As a result, teaching environmental and sustainable education in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes is growing in popularity.

Vorholt ( 2018 ) designed and taught a 6-week CBI course titled, “Environmental Issues” to undergraduate students at Lewis & Clark College, USA. The course focused on ecology versus economy, sustainability, and activism, which involved activities such as service learning and speaking. However, although she published her experiences and guidelines for designing the course, she did not assess the impact of student learning at the end of the course. Another review involved evaluating the opportunities for using an online German class as a vehicle for sustainability education in Ecuador, through content-based instruction (Schneider, 2017 ). This paper proposes adjusting the content of an online class and offering activities that will promote sustainability in a developing economy such as Ecuador.

A similar study was conducted in Switzerland, where SULITEST was administered to first-semester students in an HE institution, both before and after the survey (Zizka and Varga, 2021 ). Although the method used was not content-based instruction, the authors suggested that students from various nationalities and linguistic backgrounds in the Swiss HEI received an introductory course in English and French to sustainable hospitality culture aimed at providing insight into hospitality and tourism challenges and to reflecting on their sustainable solutions. The course did not specifically target the SDGs, but according to the posttest results, students’ knowledge about sustainability in general improved, and even exceeded the worldwide averages overall.

An attempt to incorporate environmental sustainability was made by task-based teaching in a translation course at two universities in Indonesia (Siregar et al., 2022 ). At the end of the course, the posttest demonstrated that the student’s confidence, one of the keys to acquiring a language, increased when using specific terms. The combination of task-based learning with appropriate content that is relevant to personal life, such as environmental sustainability increased the students’ motivation to learn and benefit from the translation activity.

Task-based learning was used in a translation course at two Indonesian institutions in an effort to include environmental sustainability (Siregar et al. 2022 ). The post-test at the end of the course showed that utilizing particular terms boosted the student’s confidence, which is one of the cornerstones to learning a language. Students were more motivated to learn and gain from the translation exercise when task-based learning was combined with relevant, real-world topics, including environmental sustainability.

A closer look at the findings of the second research question highlights the fact that students in both the experimental and control groups produced the highest number of codes for sustainability problems and solutions in the environmental pillar of sustainability. This aligns with the literature which suggests that the environmental pillar of sustainability is most often the one that students are more aware of (Zizka and Varga, 2021 ). For example, Chaplin and Wyton ( 2014 ) found that university students strongly associate recycling and sustainable living, and in many cases, they are believed to be the same thing. According to Drayson et al. ( 2014 ) the environmental dimension is the most prominent dimension in university students’ understanding of sustainable development. Another study conducted in China (Yuan and Zuo, 2013 ) showed that the students’ perceptions of the top priorities for higher education for sustainable development are generally environmentally oriented.

One interesting finding of the content analysis of the essays is that students in the experimental group mentioned more social sustainability problems and solutions than did those in the control group. These essays produced codes such as corruption, gender inequality and (lack of) quality of education, which are indeed some major social sustainability challenges Kuwait is facing, as reported in the Sustainable Development Report by the UN (Sachs et al., 2022 ). Gender inequality in Kuwait has been described as “significant challenges stagnating” by the UN, scoring particularly low in indicators such as the “ratio of female-to-male labor force participation” and ‘seats held by women in the national parliament’. Despite the growing achievements of Kuwaiti women, they still face challenges in social, cultural, and political arenas (Al Zuabi, 2016 ). In his study, Al Zuabi explored the Kuwaiti women’s challenges in attaining participation in the sociopolitical development of Kuwait and found that there are barriers preventing their empowerment and effective participation in national development. The fact that four students in the experimental group presented this problem and offered solutions to ensuring gender equality in the country as opposed to zero students in the control group could be interpreted as a positive influence of the sustainability-focused CBI.

Another major social problem that the country is facing and that emerged in the experimental group essays is corruption. Kuwait’s score in the Corruption Perceptions Index is decreasing (Sachs et al., 2022 ) and is defined as a significant challenge indicator. According to Al Saif ( 2020 ), corruption is a multilayered system in Kuwait that involves more than embezzlement and money laundering, with “wasta” (the Arabic word for the use of connections and influence to gain favors) serving as the cornerstone. Although corruption poses an existential threat to the country, it remains widespread to the extent that it has “become a staple of governance and a feature of everyday life in Kuwait” (Al Saif, 2020 ). Kuwait’s ranking in corruption indices falls every year, and this major social problem was identified solely by experimental group students, rather than by the control group.

The quality of education was another social sustainability problem mentioned by the experimental group students, but not by the control group. Despite some challenges, Quality Education (SDG 4) is a domain in which Kuwait seems to be doing better according to UN standards, with its high literacy and school enrollment rates. However, the Kuwaiti education system falls far below international standards and is quite inefficient, resulting in a higher cost per student. Among 141 countries, Kuwait has been ranked 112th globally in the skillset of graduates and 83rd in the quality of vocational training, according to the Global Competitiveness Report (World Economic Forum, 2019 ). Kuwait University, the only state university in the country, was ranked 9th in the GCC region, 19th in the Arab World, and 83rd in the MENA region (Abualrub, 2016 ). The major underlying reasons include a short school year, a high repetition rate, and low expenditure on school textbooks and teaching materials (Burney et al., 2013 ). The education system would benefit from increased use of technology, improved educational curriculum, and higher recruitment standards for teachers and their teaching skills (Murad and AlAwadhi, 2018 ; AlFelaij, 2016 ; AlHashem and AlHouti, 2021 ).

Foreign language teachers can play a crucial role in promoting sustainability; however, there are certainly some obstacles to implementing sustainability education in foreign language classes. Academics’ attitudes and level of awareness play a key role in shaping the successful implementation of a range of pedagogical techniques for ESD goals (Crosling et al. 2020 ). Currently, the greatest challenge is teachers’ lack of knowledge of sustainability concepts and their limited experience in teaching sustainability (Maijala et al., 2023 ; Shah et al., 2022 ).

In some countries where sustainability issues are on the political and educational agenda, in-service courses aiming to strengthen university teachers’ competence in integrating sustainable development (SD) into their classes are underway. At Uppsala University, Sweden, such a course was open to diverse participants from different faculties and allowed for stimulating exchanges of knowledge and perspectives (Rehn, 2018 ).

Conclusions and recommendations

In conclusion, this study aimed to evaluate the effects of a six-week content-based instruction (CBI) on the sustainability literacy of first-year composition students. The results from the experimental group showed significant enhancements in knowledge, skills, attitudes, and familiarity with sustainability concepts, as evidenced by the independent t test and content analysis findings.

Quantitative analysis revealed a clear increase in students’ sustainability literacy, aligning with CBI’s recognized potential to enhance language learning outcomes. Qualitative examination of the student essays further highlighted a deeper grasp of sustainability issues, particularly in the environmental domain, echoing existing literature regarding heightened environmental awareness among students.

Additionally, the experimental group demonstrated a heightened awareness of pressing social sustainability challenges in Kuwait, such as gender inequality, corruption, and educational quality. These topics were less emphasized or absent in the control group essays, indicating the positive influence of sustainability-focused CBI on students’ understanding of the social dimension of sustainability.

This study contributes to the existing research in two significant ways. First, it highlights the effectiveness of integrating sustainability into language education through CBI within an ESL context. The observed positive impact suggests that targeted interventions can effectively enhance students’ sustainability literacy, even within traditional language-focused curricula.

Second, the study emphasizes the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to bolster sustainability education in higher education. Collaborative efforts, workshops, and training opportunities across departments can equip writing and composition instructors with the pedagogical tools to integrate sustainability into their curriculum, fostering a more sustainable language-teaching culture.

This study is subject to several limitations. These include the relatively short duration of the CBI, and a small research population focusing on a specific group of students. Importantly, this was a case study in which one faculty member designed her own course materials to integrate sustainability into a first-year writing course at a higher education institution. Despite these constraints, the results were positive. Students exposed to CBI with a sustainability theme demonstrated increased sustainability literacy, evident in their improved scores on knowledge tests, incorporation of sustainability concepts, and the identification of sustainability problems and solutions in their essays. While these findings may not be broadly applicable, they suggest the potential impact of dedicated teachers designing courses to enhance student learning. Additionally, the scope of the study was limited because the effects of CBI were measured shortly before the semester ended, precluding assessment of students’ retention levels in subsequent semesters or years. Therefore, further research is necessary to explore this aspect.

Higher education institutions have a powerful opportunity to equip students in all disciplines with the knowledge and skills needed to achieve the UN’s SDGs by 2030 (Briens et al., 2022 ). By integrating sustainability education across all programs, universities can create a generation of graduates prepared to tackle global challenges.

To this end, preparing teachers and faculty to integrate sustainability issues in language teaching is essential. Higher education institutions should create collaborative programs and training for faculty to boost their understanding of sustainability. These initiatives should educate participants on integrating environmental, social, and economic issues into their teaching subjects and encourage them to develop activities that facilitate integrated teaching approaches (Nur et al., 2022 ; Hauschild et al., 2012 ; Çetinkaya et al., 2015 ).

Finally, educators should be encouraged to conduct similar case studies to contribute to a growing body of evidence showing the positive impact of dedicated teaching efforts in promoting sustainability literacy.

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Erguvan, I.D. What difference does one course make? Assessing the impact of content-based instruction on students’ sustainability literacy. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 708 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03149-4

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A Long & Wrong Road to Globalization: Why Have Japanese Universities Failed in “Catching Up” in the Twenty-First Century?

This essay examines how universities in non-Western, non-English-speaking countries respond to global competition in higher education, where English has become dominant due to “linguistic imperialism.” I pose critical questions about how these institutions can not only endure but thrive amid global competition, and whether intensified global competition has improved the quality of education. Focusing on Japan, I explore both successful and challenging aspects of globalization in its institutions of higher education. While Japan achieved success in adapting during the late nineteenth century, the emphasis on learning foreign languages, including English, diminished after World War II. The Japanese case illustrates the complex trade-offs between ensuring educational equity and global competitiveness, and highlights the evolving dynamics and challenges faced by universities as well as policymakers in non-English-speaking countries in the global higher-education landscape.

Takehiko Kariya is Professor in the Sociology of Japanese Society at Oxford University. He is the author of Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age: The Japanese Approach (with Jeremy Rappleye, 2020), Education Reform and Social Class in Japan: The Emerging Incentive Divide (2012), and “Credential Inflation and Decredentialization: Re-examining the Mechanism of the Devaluation of Degrees” in European Sociological Review (with Satoshi Araki, 2022).

Global competition in higher education has intensified during the twenty-first century. Governments and higher-education institutions across countries around the world are competing to survive by pursuing quality international students, faculty members, and external funding. Global rankings of universities, such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings, fuel the competition. There are clear advantages for institutions in English-speaking countries, particularly favoring the United States and the United Kingdom, partly because the value of English as a lingua franca is overwhelming in globalized economic competition. Thus, higher degrees obtained from top-ranked universities in English-speaking countries have become more valuable in the labor market beyond national borders, a situation sometimes referred to as the rise of a “global meritocracy.” 1

Under the “linguistic imperialism” of English, however, how can higher education in non-English-speaking countries survive? 2 Has the global competition enhanced the quality of education among those countries? What does “universalization,” or “Americanization,” of values in education mean to those in non-English-speaking countries? These questions are rarely scrutinized, in large part because of the taken-for-granted advantages in English-speaking countries.

To examine these questions, this essay focuses on Japan as a non-English-speaking country because Japanese experiences present an interesting case of success and failure in globalization, considering that Japan underwent two phases of accommodation to globalization in the process of modernization. In the early stage, Japanese higher education successfully contributed to adapting to the globalized world through “catch-up” modernization. In this stage, which commenced in the late nineteenth century, it was not difficult for Japan to accommodate higher education as a form of globalization, because catching up with the West provided unambiguous goals and measures for Japan. The Meiji government established higher-education institutions as a driving engine to power the catch-up. Their primary role, as I will discuss later, was learning the advanced knowledge and technologies valued in the West to establish a modern industrialized nation-state as rapidly as possible to avoid colonization by those same Western powers. Ironically, however, since the purported “completion” of the catch-up in the 1980s, both the government and higher-education institutions in Japan have been struggling. The problems come from the difficulty of setting new goals and discovering appropriate and effective measures to achieve these newly defined—but always rather vague—objectives.

What I herein call the post catch-up syndrome has emerged since the late twentieth century, and it is clearly evident in the globalization of Japanese higher education. I will argue that the syndrome and the suffering derive from, unexpectedly, Japan’s success in its earlier phase of globalization. What are the difficulties? And what has Japanese higher education won and lost, in terms of their educational values, through the global competition? By answering these questions, we get a sense of a broader story: the impact of the pressures of globalization on non-English-speaking countries that initiated modernization later than their Western counterparts. In doing so, it becomes easier to examine some of the problems raised by the globalization of higher education that are frequently overlooked in the English-speaking world: namely, contradiction between the importance of equality and waning diversity in values in education.

Japan is recognized as the first non-Western country that achieved modernization, and much earlier than other non-Western countries. While admittedly the process was complex, this historical experience for Japan is often coined as simply “catch up with the West” by Japanese intellectuals and leaders. 3 The Japanese leaders at that time modeled themselves on the advanced countries of Western Europe and the United States and strove to catch up through emulation and innovation of Western modern systems. 4 In this early stage of modernization, education played a crucial role, especially the field of higher education. First, experts and advisors in many fields were brought from Western countries to teach Japan’s best and brightest young men in non-Japanese, usually European, languages. During the 1870s, 200 to 800 foreign advisors were employed in government offices, military branches, factories, and public institutions, including higher-education institutions, with the peak of 858 advisors in 1874. Second, the Japanese government sent their smartest students to universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to learn advanced knowledge and technologies. In total, approximately 550 students studied abroad for the first seven years of the Meiji Restoration, with 209 students going to the United States. 5 For these students to succeed, they required a high command of foreign languages, particularly English, German, and French.

Learning advanced knowledge from the West was a common practice across a range of countries that were “late” to modernize. In countries that had been colonized before independence, elites had (and still have) to learn the languages of their suzerain nations, and they often had to study advanced knowledge in those languages. Even in their domestic universities, the lack of textbooks and scholarly works available in their vernacular languages often made them rely on the languages of those suzerain countries, even until quite recently. In contrast, in Japan, vernacularization of Western advanced knowledge was realized in the very early stages of Japan’s modernization. Amano Ikuo, an eminent historian of Japanese higher education, finds that within the first two decades after the commencement of modernization, Japanese young men who had studied abroad began to teach Western knowledge in Japanese to students in Japanese higher-education institutions, which were established and developed in the first three decades of modernization. 6 These Japanese then gradually replaced foreign teachers. Not only were lectures given in Japanese, but also most textbooks and many scholarly works were translated and written in Japanese for students and the wider public. 

There are enormous differences between Japanese and Western languages in their scripts (compare Roman alphabets and Japanese hiragana, kanji, and kana), grammatical structures (for example, Japanese uses more particles without relying on word order, unlike English in which word order is crucial to help readers and speakers understand different parts of speech), phonics (certain sounds exist in Western languages, but not in Japanese, and vice versa), and semantic fields (untranslatable terms, phrases, and idioms), all of which makes it challenging for Japanese students when learning Western languages. 7 Despite these differences, the rapid Japanification of Western knowledge was a feat for this latecomer country in the globalized world during the late nineteenth century. In this regard, Japanese higher education successfully adapted to the globalizing world at the early stage of modernization. Avoiding being colonized also permitted Japan to take advantages and learn from different Western nations. That is, they had time to determine what were the most suitable ways to establish modern institutions to emulate. This contrasts with former colonized countries in which the choice of models was influenced overwhelmingly by their suzerain countries. So, both language and non-colonization helped Japan establish hybrid modern institutions, including its higher-education system, by learning from different Western countries and blending these elements with Japanese tradition. 8

This Japanification of Western knowledge can also be seen in the development of the so-called “translation culture” ( Honyaku Bunka ) in Japan. In the late nineteenth century, for example, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was translated into Japanese. 9 In the early twentieth century, more Western literature was translated for the literate public. The Collected Works of World Literature gained a huge readership in the 1930s. The anthology included well-known authors of English, French, German, and Russian literature, such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Goethe, Hugo, Zola, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, among many others. The publisher of this collection proudly announced that, in total, five hundred eighty thousand readers had reserved the series in advance of publication. 10 That interest shows the intense demand to learn, if the language barrier could be overcome. As another example, in the field of social sciences and Western thought, Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics was translated in 1881, and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in 1924. Furthermore, the collected works of Marx and Engels were also translated into Japanese between 1928 and 1932: one of the earliest German translations. 11 Thanks to such rapid development of translation culture and scholarship, people who were educated completely in the Japanese language were able to access advanced Western knowledge, thought, and literature. Few other non-Western countries had such wide access to learning and higher education in their own languages at their early stage of modernization. Accordingly, unlike in other non-Western nations, where a strong cultural divide emerged between the elites and the public, divided by the language skills of the suzerain countries as well as the limited access to higher education, Japanification of Western knowledge mitigated an acute sociocultural divide in society. 12

It is important to note that those responsible for these translations were Japanese intellectuals who had been educated at Japanese universities first, then often studied abroad. Japanese universities became incubators of Western knowledge, where translation and introduction of advanced Western knowledge were highly appreciated as scholarly pursuits. But since works were primarily borrowed ideas from the West, this style was given the sarcastic name of “translation scholarship” ( Honyaku Gakumon ), suggesting it made little contribution to the original works in Western languages. But, in fact, the translation scholarship produced a kind of hybrid knowledge by situating Western knowledge in the Japanese cultural, societal, and historical context, since translation is never simply a copy, but a modification: Western knowledge was framed and accommodated within the Japanese context. This role of universities in disseminating and transforming Western culture and knowledge into Japanese context should be recognized as an example of successful adaptation to the early stages of globalization for Japan, a society that was late to modernize. It was a profound achievement given its vastly different linguistic, cultural, and historical background from the West.

Paradoxically, however, the past success in globalization subsequently created a problem after translation culture and scholarship reached a higher level. Since the end of World War II , English has become the primary foreign language taught in Japanese schools, and this has generated profound problems with English education. Since the language of Japanese is vastly different from English, it is difficult for the majority of the population to learn English. Furthermore, after the Japanification of Western knowledge reached a higher level, the importance and necessity for Japanese people to learn foreign languages, including English, have become less obvious. Accordingly, speaking and listening skills in English or in other foreign languages were placed in the background. Admittedly, the importance of reading in English remains, but not as strongly as before. 

Postwar educational reforms, hugely influenced by the U.S. military occupation, advocated democratic values. Democracy was to be realized, in large part, as a provision of equal educational opportunity. Establishing a more accessible educational system as well as eliminating gender discrimination were among the concrete policies. Junior high schools became coeducational and part of compulsory education, which resulted in a rapid expansion of educational opportunities beyond compulsory education. By the mid-1970s, more than 90 percent of junior high school graduates went on to senior high schools, which were also reformed to provide more enrollment opportunities for both male and female students. Higher-education reforms allowed national professional schools (which offered postsecondary technical training) to become universities after the war. Meanwhile, former “imperial universities” changed their status and name to become simply “national” universities. Two-year junior colleges were established, which enhanced access to higher-education opportunities for female students, to whom they mainly catered. Many of these institutions had been professional and vocational schools for women before the war, and a number would become women’s colleges and universities, although gender inequality in higher education has endured. Furthermore, newly established higher-education institutions, including universities and junior colleges, continued to increase steadily over the postwar period. 13 Accordingly, the junior college and university enrollment rate reached nearly 40 percent by the mid-1970s and has increased to 58 percent for four-year universities in 2023.

The increasing opportunities of university education have been led primarily by the expansion of private institutions, as shown in Figure 1. Approximately three-quarters of university students are now enrolled in private institutions, which account for 592 institutions out of 790 universities in total across Japan today. It is this expansion that made great contributions to Japan’s economic growth domestically from the 1960s to the 1980s by helping minimize government investment in higher education, given the restricted government financial support to private universities. 14 Put differently, the Japanese catch-up model of university education succeeded in providing or “cramming” broad and higher-level knowledge into a large number of students in large lecture rooms in an economically efficient manner that placed minimum strain on the national budget. Intense entrance examinations, taken by a growing number of young Japanese students, also incentivized these masses to learn solid basic academic skills. During the high economic growth era in particular, the enhanced demand for well-educated white-collar workers, including engineers, was primarily supplied by graduates from private institutions.

Over the 1960s and 1970s, those university-educated workers thus became a driving force of “Japan, Inc.” With greater opportunities to enter (mostly private) universities, the generations who were educated during this period built a solid “middle class” in tandem with the continuous increase in household income afforded by strong economic growth. This societal transformation successfully created Japan’s self-portrait of its “all middle-class society” in the 1970s, wherein Japan’s income distribution among households was much smaller as compared with other member countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) during that decade. By producing a large number of highly educated people in an economical way for the government, Japan established a stable society of residents who acquired a high command of literacy in culture, science, and technology, as well as social norms. Without the expansion of private universities, such a societal transformation would not have been achieved so smoothly.

A problem of trade-offs in education values emerges here, however. The success of the Japanese-language transfer of knowledge played a major role in achieving the expansion of educational opportunities, but equal access to educational opportunities clashed with the value of foreign-language education. The earlier success of globalization, which was limited to a few elite groups, is therefore inconsistent with the realization of equality as a democratic value in education. The question now becomes whether a new phase of globalization of education should be promoted at the cost of this democratic value. These contradictions—between the elitist and egalitarian values in education, and specifically in regard to foreign language education—are expected to occur more strongly in democratic non-English-speaking nations than in English-speaking countries.

In fact, in Japan, the expansion of educational opportunities challenged the value of English-language education. For example, the introduction of English-language education in the new compulsory junior high schools raised skepticism from the beginning about the significance of teaching English. Unlike the prewar elitist middle schools, all children in a given community began attending local junior high schools without entrance examinations. But soon after, teachers raised doubts about the value of teaching English. Aizawa Shinichi, a Japanese sociologist of education, analyzed the discourse of teachers in the 1950s to examine the process of introducing English-language education in newly established junior high schools. In his research, teachers reported that local people complained, “There is no use for learning English” for schoolchildren in their communities, and teachers were concerned that they could not explain the significance of learning English to the students. Teachers also pointed out that a foreign language (English) was a difficult subject to master for students with “low intelligence,” an unfortunate expression still widely used in the 1950s. 15 It contrasted with the fact that foreign languages had been taught only to students in prewar middle schools and to female students who had been selected for admission to women’s high schools. It was estimated that only about 25 percent of elementary school graduates enrolled in those prewar secondary schools. 16 The dearth of “learnability” of English became a major issue after the war. No agreement had been reached from the outset over the degree to which learning the English language should be expanded in compulsory education.

The perception that not everyone needs English and not everyone can learn a foreign language easily was shared by Japanese teachers half a century ago. A similar perception resonated with teachers in senior high schools and universities as well. The view expanded rapidly in the postwar period. In sharp contrast to the Meiji system that required elite students to be proficient in foreign languages, the rapid postwar expansion of upper secondary and tertiary education did not require advanced foreign language skills for students to attain admission, nor did these institutions provide quality language courses to enhance foreign language skills after students entered schools and universities. Even at the university level, many Japanese universities have failed to enhance students’ skills in speaking and listening in English. Again, this can be seen as a natural result of the Japanification of knowledge from abroad that no longer required the majority of students to learn English. 17 This is one aspect of a cluster that comprises what I call the post catch-up syndrome .

Against this backdrop, we gain new perspective as to why the number of Japanese students who studied abroad for tertiary education has declined in recent years, as shown in Figure 2.

The lines in the graph demonstrate that the number of Japanese students who studied abroad peaked in the early 2000s and has since declined both in the total number and for those studying in the United States. This is further evidence that domestic education in the Japanese language at Japanese universities satisfies the majority of young Japanese, even without providing high-level learning of foreign languages such as English, and/or obtaining globally valuable higher-education degrees abroad. In other words, as long as students pursue good jobs in the domestic labor market, Japanese universities provide enough opportunities for the majority of Japanese students, suggesting a very limited incentive to study abroad or acquire quality English skills. 

Under the “linguistic imperialism” of English, however, weakness in English language abilities in Japanese universities has resulted in lower global rankings and reputations. Many Japanese institutions, particularly private institutions, simply accept this reality. As mentioned earlier, approximately three-quarters of universities are private, but not a single Japanese private university is among the top 600 universities in the Times Higher Education ( THE ) global rankings. Only four Japanese universities are ranked in the top 300, two of which are within the top 100, but those four institutions are all national universities that were once former imperial universities. 18 Put differently, although private universities established after World War II made a great contribution to the expansion of educational opportunities, most of these institutions failed, not only in producing globally reputed quality research but also in providing quality foreign language education. Here again, we find a conflict between successful globalization of universities and expansion of educational opportunities in a non-English-speaking country, where the clash centers on promoting wider access to university education in an indigenous language and gaining an edge in global competition for elites.

In August 1980, a high-profile blue-ribbon council in Japan composed of famous scholars and social critics under then Prime Minister Ōhira Masayoshi published a historic document. To the council members, the purported end of catch-up signified the end of Westernization. But what would come next for Japan? In their report entitled “Economic Administration in an Age of Culture,” the council stated: “Japan’s modernization (industrialization and westernization) and its maturation into a highly industrial society implies the end of any models involving the need to align to or to ‘catch up with.’ From now on, we need to find our own path to follow.” 19  

In the mindset of this council, the Japanese nation and people were required “to find [their] own path to follow.” Since education was deemed a driving force after the catch-up transformations, the government launched education reforms that provided a way for students, young citizens underpinning the state in the future, to find their own path. Education reforms in the following years proposed to deconstruct alleged defects in the catch-up model of education: a pedagogy of cramming and a centralized and uniform education system that had been put in place as the most efficient way to catch up.

The shift from the cramming type of teaching to a pedagogy that leads students to think for themselves has also been vocally advocated in higher-education circles. Akutybu-rāningu , a Japanese version of “active learning,” has been introduced to encourage more interactive communications between teachers and students to replace the past one-way cramming pedagogy. This reform was expected to enable Japanese to find “our own path to follow” by guiding students to learn how to think for themselves rather than just listening to lectures to acquire knowledge. However, contrary to the reformers’ intentions, according to a recent survey conducted by education researchers at the University of Tokyo, about 80 percent of classes, regardless of the subject, at Japanese universities remain lecture-based. And those lecture classes do not require students to work hard. The same survey found that between 70 and 80 percent of students at Japanese universities study less than six hours a week in preparation for classes. 20

Although the government encouraged Akutybu-rāningu in university classes, another survey by the Benesse Educational Research & Development Institute revealed that approximately 80 percent of students prefer to attend traditional lecture-style classes, perhaps because of the lesser time and effort required of them. 21 As illustrated here, education reforms since the catch-up era ended have produced lower-than-expected outcomes. Moreover, the failure of these reforms has led the government to problematize the delay of globalization in higher education.

In addition to the pedagogical reforms, the Japanese government pointed to the “lag in globalization” of Japanese universities from the beginning of the 2010s. The proposal of the Cabinet Office’s Education Rebuilding Action Council published in 2013 stated:

The lag in globalization of universities is a critical situation. Universities are expected to create new knowledge based upon accumulated knowledge and become the core initiators for social changes by taking on the unprecedented challenges Japan is facing. The revitalization of Japan’s universities into places of continuous challenge and creativity is one of the major pillars for the “Rebirth of Japan,” in which Japan will once again become more competitive in the world and regain its luster. 22

Despite the recognition in the 1980s that catch-up was complete, we see in policy discourses the same catch-up mindset, though it now includes neighboring Asian countries as rivals, and the framing of the problems is explicitly linked to Japan’s economic stagnation that has deepened since the early 1990s.

This problem has led to concrete policies such as the “Super Global University Support Program,” which forced the nominated thirty-seven so-called super global universities to respond to globalization as rapidly as possible. One of the ambitious goals in the policy was to increase the number of Japanese universities within the top 100 in global league tables. While only two Japanese universities, the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, ranked in the top 100 in the THE global rankings at the time, the government aggressively set its goal for ten Japanese institutions to place within the top 100 in ten years. This goal failed. Moreover, in socially constructing the problems in this way, the failure of university globalization was simply linked to the failure of the Japanese economy without any plausible evidence, which functioned to make universities a scapegoat in the wider political discourse. 

As mentioned earlier, being a non-English-speaking country is a major handicap in global rankings. However, Japanese political leaders viewed Japanese universities’ low scores of assessments on international criteria as evidence of the “lag in globalization.” The THE rankings, for example, include a rating index called International Outlook, which is based on three criteria: proportion of international students, proportion of international staff, and proportion of international collaboration. The Japanese government compelled universities to improve on these criteria through the Super Global University Support Program policy, but with limited additional resources. To attract international students, for example, exceptional teaching in English is essential. For recruiting high-quality scholars from abroad, English-fluent environments in universities are necessary. 23

However, few resources were made available to accomplish this. Though citations are emphasized and important in research, little support was provided for translation, and nominal pressure or incentive was put on faculty to publish internationally. For example, only a small number of Japanese researchers publish in foreign academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, compared to Japanese researchers who publish in foreign science and engineering journals. To improve the International Outlook criteria, the government leaders encouraged universities to increase the number of classes taught in English, but they failed to take aggressive financial measures to hire more foreign faculty members. 

For Japanese universities, which have been teaching primarily in Japanese, it is not easy to improve on these criteria under resource constraints. The number of Japanese faculty members who earned degrees from universities abroad, especially in English-speaking countries, remained very small. While there are no national statistics available, even among the thirty-seven universities selected in the scheme of the Super Global University Support Program, only 7.6 percent of Japanese academic staff obtained foreign degrees, and 8.2 percent are non-Japanese nationals, two figures that undoubtedly overestimate the national average. 24 As a result, the Super Global University Support Program produced very negligible improvements among Japanese universities on the THE International Outlook criteria. This result is related to the past success of Japanese universities, which contributed to the rapid expansion of educational opportunities and easier access to Western culture in Japanese. However, that once successful Japanification has depreciated the value of foreign language skills, obscured the necessity to learn English in particular, and become a huge obstacle for Japanese universities trying to engage in an English-language-based, elitist global competition. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, the recent decline in the number of Japanese students who studied abroad has further intensified the “lag in globalization.” Despite efforts made by the government, the blurred incentive or pressure to study abroad and obtain high command of English language skills erodes the global competitiveness of Japanese universities. Nevertheless, for the majority of Japanese students, Japanese instruction in universities in Japan is acceptable, insofar as their main goal is to get a good job upon the completion of their studies.

Each society has built its own higher-education system according to its own historical trajectories of modernization. Indeed, the original model for this was in Western Europe. However, non-Western countries, especially uncolonized nations, have escaped the strong influences from educational systems in suzerain countries and have created their own modern higher-education systems. In this respect, Japan’s experience in achieving vernacularization at such an early stage and on such a large scale is valuable from the perspective of its position within world history. Current global competition, however, appears to be depriving Japan’s higher education of its unique features, aspects which undoubtedly contributed to creating a stable, wealthy, culturally rich, and relatively equal society for much of the second half of the twentieth century.

To survive the challenges that accompany competition, higher-education institutions in non-English-speaking countries must increase the value of English as a medium of instruction without sacrificing the quality of educational content. However, such a shift from the systems that served them during the catch-up era has produced several contradictions in their education systems. In the case of Japan, as we have seen, the enhancement of English as a medium of instruction contradicts with equal access to educational opportunities. Such a contradiction between globalization and equal opportunity in education may not emerge in English-speaking countries to the same severe degree as it does among non-English-speaking countries. For this reason, these dynamics are often overlooked. While the widespread provision of higher education in Japanese has contributed to the expansion of educational opportunities, it has resulted in worsening quality of English language skills among students and faculty members, thus lowering the international reputation of Japanese universities in global rankings. 

If we rush to resolve this contradiction by improving the International Outlook criteria, however, this will create a new hierarchy within the higher-education system. It will surely widen the gap between resourceful universities that can easily provide quality education in English by employing more faculty members with English-speaking backgrounds. In this respect, former imperial universities have a decisive advantage in receiving more financial support from the government. Yet other national universities, mostly local, and private institutions are far behind them (although exceptions exist, of course). 

And this division is intensified by further prioritizing support for sciences and engineering, which are more likely to be evaluated globally. This focus gives a cold shoulder to the humanities and social sciences, whose publications in Japanese are less likely to be valued globally. The government has consistently provided more preferential treatment to sciences and engineering subjects because they are seen as more “useful” disciplines that contribute to economic growth. The widening divide between sciences and engineering versus the humanities and social sciences subjects also overlaps with the gap between national and private universities, as the latter are dominated by humanities and social sciences subjects. 

The neglect of the humanities and social sciences in non-English-speaking countries will likely limit the potential contribution of those disciplines to diversify global knowledge production. In the case of Japan, Western-born ideas and thoughts were transplanted to Japan, a context far different from Western societies. The various gaps and contradictions between Japan’s reality and imported Western knowledge led to a struggle in the process of modernization and to many intractable problems. But, as a result, the humanities and social sciences scholarship that originated in Japan has obvious potential to bring about new developments—globally creative perspectives—thanks to their position as hybrids between Japan and the West. Just as diverse perspectives are understood as effective, productive, and valued within a single society, we need to recognize that diverse ways of perceiving problems and diverse approaches based on the experiences of each different society must be meaningful at the global level as well.

Unfortunately, most of the humanities and social sciences scholarship from Japan has been accessible only in the Japanese language. But the few works that do make it out, either translated or originally written in English, often reveal the clear potential to challenge the dominance of Western-centric knowledge systems. Without falling into parochial nationalism, we need to go beyond the simplicity of rankings: making full use of knowledge originating, developed, and accumulated in non-Western countries—Japan and elsewhere—based on their past experiences of modernization, and thus create another axis to relativize the so-called universal values, which helps mitigate the unescapable influences of Eurocentrism. The groundwork of Japanese humanities and social sciences as hybrid scholarship can provide one such perspective, quite distinct from the West or even from postcolonial nations. Therefore, by walking a different path in the ongoing accommodation of globalization of higher education, Japanese universities can contribute to accumulating and diversifying knowledge without losing their historically unique legacy. For other non-Western societies, Japan’s record provides a good example of how one society can recognize and understand its own hybrid legacy as a means of contributing to the diversification of human knowledge creation. 

However, as this essay has shown, humanities and social sciences scholarship in non-English-speaking universities is in crisis under the contemporary forms of global competition, as it compels universities, regardless of their origins, to incorporate “universalization” into pedagogical values. How can universities in non-Western or non-English-speaking countries coexist with global competition without being swallowed up by these purportedly universal—that is, “Anglo-American”—values? Or is there no other option but to opt out of the global competition? The long and often wrong road to globalization traveled by Japanese universities by way of the catch-up era highlights the many challenges in the competitive world of higher education, as well as the wealth of possibilities we can use to address them.

• 1 Takehiko Kariya and Jeremy Rappleye, Education, Equality, and Meritocracy in a Global Age: The Japanese Approach (New York: Teachers College Press, 2020); and Phillip Brown and Stuart Tannock, “Education, Meritocracy and the Global War for Talent,” Journal of Education Policy 24 (4) (2009): 377–392.
• 2 Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• 3 Takehiko Kariya, “Meritocracy, Modernity, and the Completion of Catch-Up,” in Japanese Education in a Global Age: Sociological Reflections and Future Directions, ed. Akiyoshi Yonezawa, Yuto Kitamura, Beverley Yamamoto, and Tomoko Tokunaga (New York: Springer, 2018), 287–306.
• 4 Imitation and innovation began before the Meiji Restoration. The Tokugawa shogunate imported limited Western knowledge through the Netherlands during the early nineteenth century. See D. Eleanor Westney, Imitation and Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organizational Patterns to Meiji Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).
• 5 Ardath W. Burks, ed., The Modernizers: Overseas Students, Foreign Employees and Meiji Japan (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985).
• 6 Ikuo Amano, “Daigaku Kōgiroku no Sekai” [The World of Printed Lectures Series], Bulletin of the National Institute of Multimedia Education 67 (2009).
• 7 The Foreign Service Institute in the U.S. Department of State lists Japanese as one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn, and vice versa.
• 8 See Westney, Imitation and Innovation.
• 9 Katō Shūichi and Maruyama Masao, ed., Honyaku no Shisō [Theories of Translation] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991).
• 10 Y. Yamamoto, “Enhon Būmu wo Kaidokusuru” [Decoding the Yen Book Boom], Nihon Bungaku 48 (1999): 43–53.
• 11 Maruyama Masao, “ Marxism in Pre-War and Post-War Japan, ” [in Japanese] (unpublished manuscript, 1963) (accessed February 26, 2024).
• 12 The literacy rate in Tokugawa, Japan, was higher than in contemporary European countries (see Ronald Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965]), which equipped a smooth modernization in Meiji, including establishing elementary schools rapidly. It contributed to improving people’s literacy further for them to read those translated works. The large readership enabled publishers to succeed commercially in selling translated books.
• 13 The educational system, characterized by a sharp pyramidal hierarchy, was largely maintained through the postwar educational reforms.
• 14 The rapid expansion of senior high schools over the same period also contributed to this success.
• 15 Shinichi Aizawa, “Japanese Educational Structure from the Perspective of Student’s Ability to Learn, 1957 to 1969: The Analysis of Educational Movement Discourse through the Case Study of English Teaching,” The Journal of Educational Sociology 76 (2005): 187–205.
• 16 Tokiomi Kaigo, Nihon Kindai Kyōikushi Jiten [Encyclopedia of Modern Japanese Education History] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1971).
• 17 A 2022 survey by Education First, a Swiss international education company, measures the English proficiency of people in 112 non-English-speaking countries and regions and finds that Japan is ranked 80th. “ Japan’s English Proficiency Falls Further Among Non-English-Speaking Countries in 2022, ” Nippon.com, December 8, 2022.
• 18 “ World University Rankings 2023, ” Times Higher Education (accessed February 26, 2024).
• 19 Cabinet Councilor’s Office, ed., “Bunka no Jidai no Keizai Keiei Kenkyū Gurūpu” [The Age of Culture–Economic Administration Study Group] in Ōhira Sōri no Seisaku Kenkyūkai Hōkokusho 7–Bunka no Jidai no Keizai Keiei [ PM Ōhira’s Policy Study Groups Report 7–Economic Administration in an Age of Culture] (Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Printing Bureau, 1980), 14.
• 20 “University Students Survey” [in Japanese], University Management and Policy Studies at University of Tokyo, 2018.
• 21 “A Survey on University Students’ Life and Learning” [in Japanese], Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, 2022.
• 22 Cabinet Office, Executive Council for Education Revitalization, The Third Proposal [in Japanese], 2013. A similar policy discourse is found in the Democratic Party of Japan government’s report “The Promotion of Global Human Resource Development” [in Japanese], 2011.
• 23 In 2019, international students composed 3 percent of tertiary education enrollment in Japan (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average is 5 percent), while less than 6 percent of all faculty members in Japanese universities were non-Japanese nationals.
• 24 M. Kato, “Internationalization of Academic Staff in Japanese Universities” [in Japanese], Annual Bulletin of GEORE [Global Exchange Office for Research and Education at Gakushuin University] 7 (2021): 3–16.

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Essay on Food Security: Challenges and Policies in India

• Updated on  
• May 28, 2024

Food security means ensuring access to nutritious food for everyone. It is vital for human well-being. In India, diverse challenges persist, but through strategic policies, progress towards ensuring food security is underway. This essay defines food security, looks at the obstacles India faces in securing it, lists the major food security laws that the nation has put in place, and ends with thoughts on the future.

Table of Contents

• 1.1 What is Food Security?
• 1.2 Food Security Challenges in India
• 1.3 Food Security Policies in India
• 1.4 Conclusion
• 2 Essay on Food Security in 200 Words

Essay on Food Security in 500 Words

Food security is a fundamental aspect of human well-being, ensuring that all individuals have access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to maintain an active and healthy life. In India, a country with a vast and diverse population, achieving food security is a complex challenge. This essay explores what food security entails, examines the challenges faced in ensuring it in India, outlines key food security policies implemented in the country, and concludes with reflections on the path forward.

Quick Read: Essay on Visit to Zoo in 100, 150, and 250 Words

What is Food Security?

Food security exists when everyone has physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. It encompasses four dimensions: availability, access, utilisation, and stability. Availability refers to the consistent presence of food in the market, access refers to the ability of individuals to obtain food, utilization concerns the nutritional value and safety of the food consumed, and stability involves the reliability of access to food over time.

Food Security Challenges in India

India, despite being agriculturally rich, faces significant challenges in ensuring food security for its vast population. Rapid population growth, unequal distribution of resources, climate change, inefficient supply chains, and inadequate infrastructure contribute to the complexity of the issue. Moreover, poverty, unemployment, and social disparities exacerbate the vulnerability of certain segments of society, particularly in rural areas.

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Food Security Policies in India

The Indian government has implemented various policies and programs to address food security challenges. Key initiatives include:

1. Public Distribution System (PDS) : The PDS aims to distribute essential food grains, such as rice, wheat, and sugar, at subsidised prices to vulnerable populations through a network of fair-price shops.

2. National Food Security Act (NFSA) : Enacted in 2013, the NFSA seeks to provide food and nutritional security by ensuring access to adequate quantities of quality food at affordable prices to all individuals, particularly the poor.

3. Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) : The ICDS aims to improve the nutritional and health status of children under six years of age and pregnant and lactating mothers through supplementary nutrition, health check-ups, and nutrition education.

4. Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) : The MDMS provides cooked meals to schoolchildren to improve their nutritional intake, increase school attendance, and enhance learning outcomes.

5. National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) : The NMSA promotes sustainable agriculture practices, soil health management, water conservation, and crop diversification to enhance food security and mitigate climate change impacts.

6. Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) : PM-KISAN provides income support to small and marginal farmers by transferring a fixed amount directly into their bank accounts to ensure their financial stability and improve access to food.

7. Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) : The RKVY supports states in increasing agricultural productivity and ensuring food security through investments in infrastructure, research and development, and extension services.

Achieving food security in India requires a comprehensive approach addressing the complex interplay of factors affecting food availability, access, utilization, and stability. While significant strides have been made through various policies and programmes, persistent challenges such as poverty, climate change, and inadequate infrastructure continue to undermine food security efforts. Sustained political commitment, increased investment in agriculture and rural development, adoption of sustainable practices, and targeted interventions to address the needs of the most vulnerable populations are essential for ensuring a food-secure future for all Indians.

Essay on Food Security in 200 Words

Ans: Assuring every individual at all times of physical and economic access to the food they need.

Ans: Food security is needed because the poor section of society is more insecure as compared to those above the poverty line when the country faces national disasters or calamities like earthquakes, droughts, floods, crop failures, etc.

Ans: Availability, Utilization, and Stability Pillars of Food Security.

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Aayushi Vardhan

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