ABSTRACT
This book offers critical perspectives on global literacies with the aim of connecting research, theory, and practice. Global literacies is an emerging concept in the literacy field. Many agree on the need for students to develop global literacies, but few agree on a definition. Based on a synthesis of the literature, the editors created a definition of global literacies with four dimensions. Global literacies include:
Literacies as a human right in all nations around the world.
Critical consumption and creation of multimodal texts about global issues.
Intercultural communication and reciprocal collaboration with globally diverse others.
Transformative action for social and environmental justice that traverses borders.
This definition brings together literacies to learn about the world with literacies to participate in an interconnected world. With a shared understanding of what global literacies means, each chapter then offers a contextualized example of global literacies from K–12 and teacher education classrooms to make explicit links among research, theory, and practice. Chapter contributors interact with and interrogate our definition of global literacies using a shared framework of critical theory. As a whole, this book provides emerging and established scholars with critical frameworks for positioning global literacies in ways that are relevant and forward-thinking.
