Transformative Literacy Practices for Active Global Citizenship

Addressing inequities and injustices is a central concern in global citizenship education and therefore, we argue, is also a concern in literacy education as an anchor for global citizenship. Responding to global and national imperatives for education to ensure young people’s capabilities for participating as global citizens, this article reports on findings of an integrative literature review of literacy practices necessary and relevant to active global citizenship (AGC). We view active global citizens as globally minded individuals engaging in networked relationships with people and planet to advance human rights and social, cultural, and ecological justice. Based on the review’s findings, this article advances a new Transformative AGC Literacy Practices Framework comprising AGC literacy practices for access, understanding, inquiry, and action. These literacy practices are oriented to specific subjects/domains, diversities and equity, local/global connections, dialogic reflexivity, and promoting and augmenting action. The framework’s unique contribution lies in showing how these literacy practices are all necessary to, and together enable, global citizenship participation for advancing human rights and social, cultural, and ecological justice. As such, these AGC literacy practices all have an essential place in citizenship and literacy education contexts, whatever form such education takes in the various education settings involved. The Transformative AGC Literacy Practices Framework offers early childhood educators, elementary and high school teachers, and leaders, policymakers, and researchers working in literacy and citizenship education a broad research-informed basis for (re)positioning literacy and citizenship practices and policies for fostering young people’s AGC literacy practices.