Global Literacy

GLOBAL LITERACY
WHAT IS GLOBAL LITERACY ?

Global literacy can be defined as the education which equips students with the knowledge, skills
and values they need to navigate the interconnected world and opportunities and challenges they
encounter within (OXFAM, 2015). Being globally literate, allows individuals to critically think
about the world and their roles in it. A globally literate citizen is someone who can respect and
value diversity, is committed to social justice, aware of the interconnectedness of the world,
works towards a sustainable environment and takes responsibility for their actions (OXFAM,
2015).
HOW DO YOU INCORPORATE GLOBAL

LITERACY INTO YOUR CLASSROOM?
Incorporating global literacy into the classroom is a effective way to discuss key issues that are
occurring around the world. Using the news as a platform to discuss these issues is one way
educators can incorporate global literacy into their classroom. For example, talking about whats
going on in the world today. Democracy, human rights, natural disasters etc. exposing students to
what is occurring in our world. Having students find news articles, browse news platforms and
expose students to real world current issues can all address global literacy.
Educating For Global Citizenship (2010), is a good resource for teacher to use to incorporate and
expand global literacy in a variety of different ways cross-curricular. The resource was created
by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) aligned with the Ontario curriculum
expectations for junior and intermediate classes. The document includes a variety of practical
lessons that focus on global literacy. One example addresses global issues. Students are to create
a Public Service Announcement (PSA) of a social justice issue that they are passionate about, to
stand up and speak out about the issue. The PSA includes words/information about the social
issue, pictures, graphic, music and other media that suit the announcement. The idea of the PSA
is to catch the audience’s attention to make them aware of the social issue. The ETFO provides
teachers with specific resources linked to child labour, global warming, HIV/AIDS, the
Holocaust, and Child Rights to help facilitate student research. This lesson is a good example of
global literacy in action because students understanding the power to act on a social issues.
Students are exposed to different social issues that are occurring globally and gain empathy for
the social issues thus are empowered to make a change. This activity makes students aware of
their choices and the impact their choices have currently and for the future. This lesson is one of
many that the ETFO provides in the Educating for Global Citizenship resource.
Link: Educating for Global Citizenship

INTERCONNECTED TO OTHER LITERACIES
 Global literacy is interconnected to critical literacy because individuals must critically

think about the broader context of the world, their roles in it, and how to act towards
making a change.
 Global literacy is interconnected to environmental literacy because individuals must work
towards a sustainable environment. Being globally literate means understanding and
recognizing the significant impact our environment has on our lives currently and in
the future.
 Global literacy is interconnected to multicultural literacy because it stems from the same
idea of having an inclusive and diverse education system where students from all
cultural backgrounds are given the same level of recognition and respect that they
deserve. Similarly, global literacy and multicultural literacy address social justice and
social differences found within the broader community.
5 ways to improve global literacy

By Sophie Edwards // 29 March 2018
Students look over a book at the Sandogo “B” Primary School in

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Photo by: Kelley Lynch / GPE / CC BY-NC-ND
OXFORD, United Kingdom — Literacy experts and advocates gathered in

Oxford this week to discuss the latest thinking around how to promote
global literacy.
Despite recent improvements, it remains a major challenge but is

massively underfunded and subject to a number of misconceptions,
experts said.
The Sustainable Development Goals call for “all youth and a substantial
proportion of adults, both men and women, to achieve literacy and
numeracy” by 2030. While youth literacy rates have jumped in the past 50
years, progress is not fast enough, experts warned.
Approximately 750 million people over the age of 15 still lack basic reading and
writing skills. Two-thirds of these are women, according to the United
Nations, with female literacy improving by just 1 percent since 2000. Sub-
Saharan Africa and Southern Asia have the lowest literacy rates, and the
poorest and most marginalized are least likely to be able to read and do
basic sums.
See more related topics:
► Global Learning XPRIZE finalists chase $10M prize for literacy solutions
► The Future of Education: It's coming, but will it get here fast enough?
► Do libraries have the key to the framework for implementing the SDGs?
► What it takes to educate South Sudan's 'forgotten' communities
HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands gave an opening address at

this year’s World Literacy Summit which kicked off on Monday, calling on
literacy to be framed as a “win-win” for everyone, and not simply as an
education goal.
“We need to be framing literacy not as an educational issue but [as

something] of importance to the ministry of finance because by helping
literacy you help crime, poverty, health issues, employment issues,” she
told Devex.
Here are five key takeaways for development from the two-day
conference.
1. Remember adult learning
Historically, donor funding for literacy has focused on young school

children and has tended to miss adolescent or adult literacy, according to
Katy Newell-Jones of the British Association for Literacy in Development, or BALID.
In the past, literacy programs assumed a “trickle up feeling that if we can
educate the next generation of children then literacy problems will be
solved,” she said, but this has been “proved to be so wrong.”
Instead, a holistic approach to literacy is needed, Newell-Jones told
Devex, which supports adults, especially women, to become literate and
which also emphasizes the role of learning within the family, including
intergenerational learning and creating a “learning environment in the
home.” The theme of adult learning was picked up throughout the
conference’s sessions.
2. Teach in the mother tongue
In many developing countries, lessons are taught in English or another

nonlocal language, such as French, from a young age.
In Pakistan, for example, this is has resulted in children learning to read

English but with very little comprehension, according to Nadia Naviwala,
an adviser to the Citizens Foundation in Pakistan. “Kids in Pakistan do learn to
read English; they just have no comprehension of it,” she said. “Is literacy
impeded because it’s being done in a language that’s not their own?”
Teachers are also often not proficient in the language they are instructing
in, according to Ian Cheffy from BALID.
Instead, children and adults should be learning to read and write in their
local languages, he said.
“Parents may be demanding English but let’s not ignore local languages,”
Cheffy said, pointing out that in sub-Saharan Africa more than 1,700
languages are still regularly spoken by 750 million people, and of those
1,100 languages are also being written down. “Let’s not marginalize these
supposedly marginal languages,” he said.
Nal’ibali Trust, a charity that aims to promote a culture of reading in South

Africa, has made multilingual storytelling the center of its work to drive
literacy rates among children. It is crucial for both readers and listeners
that written stories are available in local languages, so they can
understand and enjoy the experience, according to managing director
Jade Jacobsohn, who spoke during the summit.
“Most parents work, and in South Africa they travel a long distance … [so]
by the time they get home they’re exhausted,” and sitting down to read to
their child is “the last thing they want to do,” she said. In response,
Nal’ibali aims to make it as easy as it possible for parents to “access the
resources” they need to read to their children. A key component is that
books and other materials are “in a language that the child and the parent
understands,” she said.
She also stressed the importance of recognizing the role played by

grandparents, who tend to have lower literacy rates but can still offer oral
storytelling. “How do you make sure that [grandparents] know that what
they do have is good enough and even if you can’t read you can tell a
story…[and] put value in what they are able to do already,” she said.
Matthew Johnson from Universal Learning Solutions, a U.K.-based social

enterprise working with governments and donors to improve literacy,
agreed that young children can be taught to read English without
comprehending what they are reading.
“Let’s get on with life and pull in literacy as we go, and people will
develop literacy as they go.”
— Katy Newell-Jones, chair of the British Association for Literacy in Development
In order to overcome this, ULS has been piloting an oral storytelling

project that enables educators to teach in both English and their
students’ mother tongue by “creating stories in mother tongue and then
adding actions so it becomes universally understandable … then
transferring that into English and developing the two side by side,” he
said.
“The main message is that the more that children hear words — the more
they get to experience stories and tell and share stories — [then] the
more language and vocabulary and understanding they will have,”
Johnson added.
3. Don’t just hand out books: Foster a love of reading
The emphasis on storytelling in local languages is also key to We Love

Reading, an NGO started in Jordan that aims to foster a love of reading
among children by training local volunteers to read to them. Rana Dajani,
the NGO’s founder, told Devex that fostering a love of reading is the first
step to improving literacy but is something that many development
programs fail to appreciate, instead focusing on inputs such as books.
“It’s not about giving books; that is secondary and I have seen books
sitting on shelves but not being used,” Dajani said. Instead, it is important
to “plant the need and the love of books first,” which she says leads to
direct literacy, as well as a host of other gains by encouraging a love of
school.
A molecular biologist by training, Dajani was at the summit to pick up an

award from the World Literacy Council, and told Devex that We Love
Reading has spread to 36 countries in 10 years with very little donor
funding because of its low-cost, “niche” approach to promoting learning
through reading and storytelling for pleasure, and its use of volunteers.
Last year, the NGO secured funding from UNICEF and has recently begun
partnering with international NGOs including Plan International.
4. Embed literacy into other programs
Standalone literacy programs are not necessarily the best approach,

according to Newell-Jones from BALID, who argued that literacy and
numeracy should instead be embedded into community development
projects.
Presenting at the conference, she gave examples of where applying

literacy training had led to a “deeper understanding” of the topic being
discussed, and thus to better results. For example, she described a
program to help women secure land rights in Rwanda by training them up
as paralegals. The project was much more effective once the NGO in
charge of the project changed the type of language it was using from
legal jargon to “simplified land right laws” in the mother tongue, “so that
the community women could understand.” These changes meant “there
was a real understanding of the sensitive topic,” but the program is also
an example of increasing literacy levels within a community while not
explicitly running literacy classes, Newell-Jones said. It is something she
wants development programmers to do more of, especially for adults.
“Let’s get on with life and pull in literacy as we go, and people will
develop literacy as they go,” she said. “They don’t have to learn the skills
first and apply them [later].” Instead, developers can take advantage of
“hidden literacies” within communities.
5. Use technology — but use it carefully
According to a 2016 analysis of the global literacy sector by United States

NGO Results for Development, donors focus too much on technology at a
time when there is a “significant lack of evidence on what types of
technology interventions actually work.” Critics, including Princess
Laurentien of the Netherlands, also warn that the digitalization of
communication could have negative impacts on literacy rates.
“We know reading and writing comes through talking, [but] research
shows that in this digital age, through social media, we talk less to each
other,” she told Devex.
However, Sun Books Uganda, a project by the World Literacy Foundation, which
presented during the summit, offers an example of how technology can
help. It provides low-cost, solar-powered tablets loaded up with “a
toolbox of digital books and learning resources to ‘off the grid’
classrooms with no internet and electricity.” Usually one per classroom,
the Sun Books tablets are written in Swahili and English, but Grace
Baguma from Uganda’s National Curriculum Development Center, which
has recently partnered with the NGO, said the plan is to add more
languages so that mother tongue can be used as the mode of instruction,
especially for younger years.
Word Scientists also presented about its work offering free online resources
to improve early reading in Nepal, including lesson guides, teacher
tutorials, and books. What is sometimes missed in ed tech interventions,
said chief executive Jacob Bronstein, is the need to focus on the content
and the software as opposed to the technology itself, since “the tech
can’t do it alone.”
Word Scientists has developed materials intended to be engaging and

practical, written in local languages so a teacher can read the story to
pupils in their mother tongue before reading it in English. The “software”
is also free to access and can be downloaded onto a USB or printed out,
and so does not rely on internet access.
5 ways to improve global literacy | Devex

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GLOBAL LITERACY

WHAT IS GLOBAL LITERACY ?

HOW DO YOU INCORPORATE GLOBAL

Link: Educating for Global Citizenship

 Global literacy is interconnected to critical literacy because individuals must critically

5 ways to improve global literacy

Students look over a book at the Sandogo “B” Primary School in

OXFORD, United Kingdom — Literacy experts and advocates gathered in

Despite recent improvements, it remains a major challenge but is

See more related topics:

► What it takes to educate South Sudan's 'forgotten' communities

HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands gave an opening address at

“We need to be framing literacy not as an educational issue but [as

1. Remember adult learning

Historically, donor funding for literacy has focused on young school

2. Teach in the mother tongue

In many developing countries, lessons are taught in English or another

In Pakistan, for example, this is has resulted in children learning to read

Nal’ibali Trust, a charity that aims to promote a culture of reading in South

She also stressed the importance of recognizing the role played by

Matthew Johnson from Universal Learning Solutions, a U.K.-based social

In order to overcome this, ULS has been piloting an oral storytelling

3. Don’t just hand out books: Foster a love of reading

The emphasis on storytelling in local languages is also key to We Love

A molecular biologist by training, Dajani was at the summit to pick up an

4. Embed literacy into other programs

Standalone literacy programs are not necessarily the best approach,

Presenting at the conference, she gave examples of where applying

5. Use technology — but use it carefully

According to a 2016 analysis of the global literacy sector by United States

Word Scientists has developed materials intended to be engaging and

5 ways to improve global literacy | Devex

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