EDUC 6│MODULE 5 Interconnecting multicultural and global literacy

MULTICULTURAL AND GLOBAL LITERACY Every classroom contains students of different races,
religions and cultural groups. Guo (2014) averred that
Multicultural Literacy
students embrace diverse behaviors, cultural values,
Multicultural literacy consists of the skills and ability patterns of practice, and communication, yet they all
to identify the creators of knowledge and their share one commonality, which is their educational
interests (Banks, 1996) to reveal the assumptions of opportunity.
knowledge, to view knowledge from diverse ethnic and
Therefore, teachers should teach their students that
cultural perspective, and to use knowledge to guide
other cultures exist and that these deserve to be
action that will create a humane and just world
acknowledged and respected. Integrating a variety of
(Boutte, 2008).
cultural context into lessons and activities teaches
Multicultural literacy then, brings attention to students to view the world from many angles, creates
diversity, equity and social justice to foster cultural respect for diversity and enables students to learn
awareness by addressing difficult issues like exciting information. As classrooms become
discrimination and oppression towards other increasingly more diverse, it is important for
ethnicities (Boutte, 2008) educators to analyze and address diversity issues and
integrate multiculturalism information into the
Multicultural literacy should help students to develop
classroom curriculum (Guo, 2014).
the 21st century skills and attitudes that are needed
to become active citizens who will work toward The OECD Global Competence Framework
achieving social justice within communities.
The framework depicts the four dimensions of global
Global Literacy competence encompassing the development of
knowledge, values, attitude skills that flow along
Global literacy aims to address issues of globalization,
parameters of attaining such competency.
racism, diversity and social justice (Guo, 2014). It
requires awareness and action, consistent with a broad
understanding of humanity, the planet, and the impact
of a human decision on both. It also aims to empower
students with knowledge and take action to make a
positive impact in the world and their local community
(Guo, 2014).

According to the Ontario Ministry of Education

(2015), a global citizen should possess the following
characteristics:

• respect for humans regardless of race,

gender, religion or political
perspectives;

• respect for diversity and various Global Competence

perspectives;
Global competence is a multidimensional capacity.
• promote sustainable patterns of living, Global competence refers to skills, values and
consumption, and production; and behaviors to prepare young people to thrive in a
diverse, interconnected and rapid changing world. It is
• appreciate the natural world and
the ability to become engaged citizens and
demonstrate respect on the rights of
all living things.
collaborative problem solvers who are ready for the
workforce.
Promoting global competence in schools. Schools play
a crucial role in helping young people to develop global
competence. They can provide opportunities
critically examine global developments that are
significant to both the world and to their own lives.
They can teach students how to critically, effectively
and responsibly use digital information and social
media platforms.
The Need for Global Competence
The following are the reasons why global competence
is necessary.
• To live harmoniously in multicultural
communities. Education for
competence can promote
awareness and purposeful interactions in
increasingly diverse society
• To thrive in a changing labor market.
Education for global competence can boost
employability through effective
communication and appropriate behavior
within diverse teams using technology in
accessing and connecting to the world
(British Council, 2013).
• To use media platforms effectively and
responsibly. Radical transformations in
digital technologies have shaped young
people's outlook on the world, their
interaction with others and
perception of themselves.
• To support the sustainable development
goals. Education for global competence can
help form new generations who care about
global issues and engage in social, political,
economic and environmental discussions.
Dimensions of Global Competence: Implications to
Education
Education for global competence is founded on the
ideas of different models of global education, such as
intercultural education, global citizenship education
and education for democratic citizenship (UNESCO,
2014a; Council of Europe, 2016a)
This definition outlines four dimensions of global
competence that people need to apply in their
everyday life just like students from different
cultural backgrounds are working together on school
projects.
to
Dimension 1: Examine issues of local, global and
cultural significance.
This dimension refers to globally competent people's
practices of effectively utilizing knowledge about the
world and critical reasoning in forming their own
opinion about a global issue. People who acquire a
mature level of development in this dimension use
higher-order thinking skills, such as selecting and
weighing appropriate evidence to support arguments
about global developments. Most likely, globally
global competent students can draw on and combine the
cultural disciplinary knowledge and thinking styles learned in
schools to ask questions, analyze data and propositions,
explain phenomena, and develop a position concerning a
local, global or cultural issue. Hence, globally
competent people effectively use and create both
traditional and digital media (Boix Mansilla and
Jackson, 2011).
Dimension 2: Understand and appreciate the
perspectives and world views of others
This dimension highlights that globally competent
people are willing and capable of considering other
people's perspectives and behaviors from multiple
viewpoints to examine their own assumptions. This in
turn, implies a profound respect for and interest in
their others with their concept of reality and emotions.
Individuals with this competence also consider and
appreciate the connections that enable them to bridge
differences and create common ground. They retain
their cultural identity while becoming aware of the
cultural values and beliefs of people around them
(Fennes and Hapgood, 1997).
Dimension 3: Engage in open, appropriate and
effective interactions across cultures
This dimension describes what globally competent
individuals can do when they interact with people from
different cultures. They understand the cultural
norms, interactive styles and degrees of formality of
intercultural contexts, and they can flexibly adapt
their behavior and communication manner through
respectful dialog even with marginalized groups.
Therefore, it emphasizes individuals' capacity to
interact with others across differences in ways that
are open, appropriate and effective (Barrett, et. al.,
2014).
Dimension 4: Take action for collective well-being
and sustainable development
This dimension focuses on young people's role as active
and responsible members of society and refers to an
individual's readiness to respond to a given local, global
or intercultural issue or situation. It recognizes that
young people have multiple realms of influence ranging
from personal and local to digital and global. Globally
competent people create opportunities to get engaged
to improve living conditions in their communities and
build a just, peaceful inclusive and an environmentally
sustainable world.
The assessment strategy for global competence
The PISA 2018 assessment of global competence
contributes development, while considering challenges
and limitations. It has two components:
• a cognitive test exclusively focused on the
construct of "global understanding"; and
• a set of questionnaire items collecting self-
reported information on students' awareness
on global issues and cultures, skills (both
cognitive and social) and attitudes, as well as
information from schools and teachers on
activities that promote global competence
(OECD, 2018).
Curriculum for global competence: Knowledge, skills,
attitudes and values
Schools can provide opportunities for students to
explore complex global issues that they encounter
through media and their own experiences. The
curriculum should focus on four knowledge domains:
• culture and intercultural relations;
• socio-economic development and interdependence;
• environmental sustainability; and
• global institutions, conflicts and human rights.
Teaching these four domains should stress on
differences in perspectives, questioning concepts, and
arguments. Acquiring knowledge in this aspect is
important in developing values, such as peace, respect,
non- discrimination, equality, fairness, acceptance,
justice, non-violence and tolerance (OECD, 2018).
Skills to understand the world and to take action
Global competence builds on specific cognitive,
communication and socio-emotional skills. Effective
education for global competence gives students the
opportunity to mobilize and use their knowledge,
attitudes, skills and values together while sharing
ideas on global issues in and outside of school or
interacting with people from different cultural
backgrounds.
A school community that desires to nurture global
competence should focus on clear, controllable and
realizable learning goals. This means engaging all
educators to reflect on teaching topics that are
globally significant, the types of skills that foster
deeper understanding of the world and facilitate
respectful interactions in multicultural contexts, and
the attitudes and values that drive autonomous
learning and inspire responsible action (OECD, 2018).
Knowledge about the world and other cultures
Global competence is supported by the knowledge of
global issues that affect lives locally and around the
globe, as well as intercultural knowledge, or knowledge
about the similarities, differences and relations among
cultures. This knowledge helps people to challenge
misinformation and stereotypes about other countries
and people, and thus, results in intolerance and
oversimplified representations of the world.
This can be done through the following strategies
(OECD, 2018)
• Perspective-taking refers to the cognitive
and social skills of understanding how other
people think and feel.
• Adaptability refers to the ability to adapt
systems thinking and behaviors to the
prevailing cultural environment, or to
 situations and contexts that can present new • the creation of necessary conditions to
demands or challenges. have the essential needs satisfied.
understanding

Global Understanding
Openness, respect for diversity and global-
mindedness The framework distinguishes four interrelated
cognitive processes that globally competent students
Openness toward people from other cultural
need to use to fully understand global or intercultural
backgrounds involves sensitivity towards curiosity
issues and situations (OECD, 2018).
about and willingness to engage with other people and
other perspectives on the world (Byram, 2008; Council • The capacity to evaluate information,
of Europe, 2016a). formulate arguments and explain complex
situations and problems by using and
Respect consists of a positive regard for someone
connecting evidence, identifying biases and
based on judgment of intrinsic worth. It assumes the
gaps in information and managing conflicting
dignity of all human beings and their inalienable right
arguments
to choose their own affiliations, beliefs, opinions or
practices (Council of Europe, 2016a). • The capacity to analyze multiple perspectives
and worldviews, positioning and connecting
Global-mindedness is defined as a worldview, in which
their own and others' perspectives on the
one sees him/herself connected to the community and
world
feels a sense of responsibility for its members
(Hansen, 2010). • The capacity to understand differences in
communication, recognizing the importance of
Valuing human dignity and diversity
socially appropriate communication and
Valuing human dignity and valuing cultural diversity adapting it to the demands of diverse cultural
contribute to global competence because they contexts
constitute critical filters through which individuals
• The capacity to evaluate actions and
process information about other cultures and decide
consequences by identifying and comparing
how to engage with others and the world. Hence,
different courses of action and weighing
people, who cultivate these values, become more aware
actions on the basis of consequences.
of themselves and their surroundings. and are strongly
motivated to fight against exclusion, ignorance, Integrating Global and Intercultural Issues in the
violence, oppression and war. Curriculum

Clapham (2006) introduced the four aspects of valuing
equality of core rights and dignity. To wit:
• the prohibition of all types of inhuman
treatment, humiliation or degradation
by one person over another;
• the assurance of the possibility for
individual choice and the conditions for
each individual's self-fulfillment,
autonomy or self- realization;
For global education to translate abstraction into
action, there is a need to integrate global issues and
topics into existing subjects (Klein, 2013; UNESCO,
2014). In practice, content knowledge related to global
competence is integrated in the curriculum and taught
in specific courses. Therefore, students can
understand those issues across ages, starting in early
childhood when presenting them in developmentally
appropriate ways (Boix Mansilla and Jackson, 2011:
UNESCO, 2015).

• the recognition that protection of Connecting global and intercultural topics to the
group identity and cult may be reality, contexts and needs of the learning group is an
essential for that of personal dignity; effective methodological approach to make them
and relevant to adolescents (North-South Centre of the
Council of Europe, 2012). People learn better and
become more engaged when they get connected with
the content and when they see its relevance to their
lives and their immediate environment (Suárez Orozco
and Todorova, 2008).
Group-based cooperative
project work can improve reasoning and collaborative
skills. It involves topic- or theme-based tasks suitable
for various levels and ages, in which goals and content
are negotiated and learners can create their own
learning materials that they present and evaluate
together. Learners, participating in cooperative tasks
soon would realize that to be efficient, they need to
be respectful, attentive, honest and empathic
(Barrett, et. al., 2014).
Class discussion
is an interactive approach that encourages proactive
listening and responding to ideas expressed by peers.
By exchanging views in the classroom, students learn
that there is no single right answer to a problem,
understand the reasons why others hold different
views and reflect on the origins of their own beliefs
(Ritchhart, et. al., 2011).
Service learning
is another tool that can help students develop multiple
global skills through real-world experience. This
requires learners to participate in organized activities
that are based on what has been learned in the
classroom and that benefit their communities.
Through service learning. students not only "serve to
learn," which is applied learning, but also "learn to
serve" (Bringle, et. al., 2016).
The Story Circle Approach
intends students to practice key intercultural skills,
including respect, cultural self-awareness and empathy
(Deardorff, n.d.). The students, in groups of 5-6, take
turns sharing a 3-minute story from their own
experience based on specific prompts, such as "Tell us
about your first experience when you encountered
someone who was different from you in some ways."
Other types of intercultural engagements involve
simulations, interviews, role plays and online games.
Attitudes and values integration toward global
competence.
Allocating teaching time to a specific subject that
deals with human rights issues and non-discrimination
is an important initial step in cultivating values for
global competence.
Values and attitudes are partly communicated through
the formal curriculum and also through ways in which
teachers and students interact, how discipline is
encouraged and the types of opinions and behavior
that are validated in the classroom. Therefore,
recognizing the school and classroom environments'
influence on developing students' values would help
teachers become more aware of the impact of their
teaching on students (Gay, 2015).
GLOBAL AND MULTICULTURAL LITERACIES
• Multicultural literacy depicts diversity, equity and
social justice to foster cultural awareness on
discrimination and oppression toward other
ethnicities.
• Global literacy aims to address issues of
globalization, racism, diversity and social justice.
• Global competence refers to the skills, values, and
behaviors that prepare young people to thrive in a
more diverse, interconnected world, engaged
citizens and collaborative problem solvers who are
ready for the workforce.
• Globally competent individuals can examine local,
global and intercultural issues, understand and
appreciate different perspectives and worldviews,
interact successfully and respectfully with others,
and take responsible action toward sustainability
and collective well-being.
• The Global Competence Framework is designed as
a tool for policymakers, leaders, and teachers in
nurturing global competence among young people
worldwide with four salient dimensions.
• In order to attain respect for diversity in the
classroom, teachers should integrate global
multiculturalism in the lesson by citing relevant
issues to be addressed.