Transforming pre-service EFL teacher education through critical cosmopolitan literacies: voices from Mainland China

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper describes a qualitative participatory action research study applying critical cosmopolitan literacies principles with pre-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to address global human rights issues through international English youth literature. Using literary works on sociopolitical issues alongside critical pedagogy engagements and teaching practicum in various educational settings, the author as a teacher-researcher attempts to raise the student teachers’ critical awareness to issues of power, privilege, and social justice embedded in the multicultural and multimodal texts. Analysis of the qualitative data indicates important outcomes in terms of an enhanced understanding of critical human rights issues pertaining to the formation of student teachers’ identities as global-conscious and socially responsible educators. Meanwhile, with explicit guidance from the teacher educator, the student teachers also develop communicative intercultural competence, high-order thinking skills, and learning agency by engaging in multiliteracies practices within a cosmopolitan liteacies orientation.