Migration, Educational Innovation, and the Challenges of Critical Cultural Literacy

The migrant student is considered an "absent subject" in Brazilian educational policy. Given the scarcity of comprehensive information on the topic in the scientific literature, this study aims to identify the limits and potential of critical cultural literacy and to examine whether this educational innovation enables greater social inclusion and equity in schools with a strong presence of migrant students. Critical cultural literacy, regarded as an essential competence that students will need in the 21st century, has an emancipatory agenda and is concerned with the cultural practices and expressions of marginalized groups and communities. To assess the extent to which cultural literacy processes are associated with changes in the school environment toward greater equity, a qualitative approach was employed, drawing on critical ethnography and community-based research design, which includes arts-based methodologies and involves both students and teachers. Accordingly, observations and participatory engagement were conducted in the cultural literacy dynamics of a school with a high presence of migrant students, located in the city of Barcelona, in the Catalonia region of Spain. As preliminary results, we highlight that critical cultural literacy, used by European countries as a pedagogical tool in schools with high diversity, can be considered an educational innovation, as it drives the transformation of the school's "grammar," contributing to the formation of subjects committed to social transformation—one of the challenges proposed by the conception of critical cultural literacy through the arts.