Literacy and citizenship: an intercultural perspective

In this paper I report on a small scale teaching project indicated by the general title above. The overall aim of the project has been to investigate and if possible enhance pupils' understanding and experience of two key areas of contemporary educational concern—literacy and citizenship—through a creative intercultural perspective. The teaching and research seek to suggest both connections and contrasts, starting from a critical cultural awareness of the ‘familiar' and from there reaching outwards—although the movement is by no means in this direction only. The project has notions of literacy and citizenship at its very core: literacy as broadly covering our ways of appreciating ourselves and our world through language; citizenship as suggestive of the ways of thinking, feeling and behaving which may result from (and in turn determine) our understanding.