Towards critical global functional scientific literacies

Amid intensifying global crises—including environmental degradation, socio-ecological injustices, and widespread public mistrust in science—science education must be re-envisioned through more critical and global but also local inclusive lenses. This response article critically engages with the recent contribution by Lederman et al. (2025), who introduce the concept of global functional scientific literacy. While their intervention is timely, we argue that their framing is limited, decontextualised, and insufficiently attentive to broader socio-political and epistemic concerns. Building on Vision III and recent scholarship in critical scientific literacies, we propose the notion of critical global functional scientific literacies as a more expansive and transformative framework. These literacies encompass not only scientific understanding and real-world application, but also socio-cultural, ethical, glocal and political dimensions that foster agency and collective action. Through this critique, we advocate for a form of science education that is justiceoriented, pluralistic, and reflexive—one capable of meaningfully engaging with the complexities and urgencies of the contemporary world. Our response builds on and extends previous critiques, emphasising that science education should function as a site of collective empowerment, rather than mere knowledge transmission.