Change in classroom dialogicity to promote cultural literacy across educational levels

• The authors argue that cultural literacy is essential to creating harmony in a diverse world.
• Cultural literacy includes the attitudes of inclusion, tolerance and empathy, and the skill of dialogic argumentation.
• Preschool, primary and secondary school teachers participated in professional development about dialogic strategies, including: (i) listening to students’ questions; (ii) asking open-ended questions to probe and challenge students’ thoughts; and (iii) encouraging respectful dialogue between peers.
• The participating teachers then taught lessons where students studied texts that would prompt dialogue about living together and belonging.
• The authors suggest that students’ cultural literacy can be developed when teachers plan lessons that use multimodal texts (such as stories and short films) and encourage dialogue to talk about stereotypes, prejudices and different viewpoints.

Publication

Garcia-Mila, M., Miralda-Branda, A., Luna, J., Remesal, A., Castells, N., & Gilabert, S., (2021). Change in classroom dialogicity to promote cultural literacy across educational levels. Sustainability, 13(6410). https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116410