Preparing elementary readers to be critical intercultural citizens through literacy education

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to extend existing approaches to civic and English as a foreign language (EFL) literacy education to include critical intercultural citizenship. Students not only need to learn how to communicate, but should also develop their positions as citizens who exercise literacy skills to demonstrate connections to others in intercultural domains. The central research question explored how teacher pedagogy in the intercultural citizenship curriculum helped students to become more intercultural and caring citizens. A practitioner action study was conducted for two years with 10 fifth- and sixth-graders (11–12 years old) in Korea. All 40 one-hour video-taped class sessions containing eleven graphic novel discussions, as well as the artifacts students produced, were collected for analysis. Data analysis illustrates that critical citizenship literacy skills can be developed with teacher pedagogy that help students reflect on the cultural knowledge and practices that seem natural to them. The pedagogies of dialoguing, active consideration of missing perspectives and direct juxtaposition of students’ own and others’ social contexts are unpacked to suggest ways of incorporating intercultural citizenship education into literacy education. Educational implications are considered in terms of teacher engagement with learners, expanded position-taking of learners as intercultural citizens, and selection of discussion topics.

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