Conformity of the content of english as a foreign language textbooks with the concept of education for sustainable development

In our time, when distance education technologies (usually involving asynchronous teaching and learning) are getting dominance over traditional ways of teaching, teacher's personal qualities and competence are likely to become less important than the quality and topical content of online textbooks for students. The aim of the paper is to study how much the content of English as a foreign language textbooks published in Russia match to the concept of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which is supposed to be the leading vector of higher education development over the past decades. A short review of research papers in the field allows us to reveal a number of sustainable development problems which can be identified as ESD topics in English as a foreign language textbooks. They include: ecology and environment (as well as climate, natural resources, and moderate consumption), economy (poverty, work, industrial development), society ( inequality, injustice, partnership, family, values, social behavior, governance, responsible citizenship), education (competence), cultural diversity (national languages and national identity), health and healthcare (mainly HIV/AIDS problems), urban and regional development. If the mentioned problems are touched in English as a foreign language textbooks, the books are considered to fit the education for sustainable development conception. So, the paper presents the results of the textbooks content analysis and methodological analysis of the exercises given in each book. The results show that only 30 percent of English as a foreign language textbooks presented in the most popular Russian online libraries for university students have topics connected with sustainable development. The amount and content of the topics presented in the textbooks depend on the students' major subject, though UNESCO adopted the idea of teaching sustainable development problems in all disciplines and majors long ago. Besides, there are textbooks for economy students and medical students, whose majors are supposed to be connected with sustainable development, which do not include ESD topics.