Empowering students through cosmopolitan literacies: Pedagogical examples from classrooms in Confucian heritage cultures

In our globally interconnected age, language plays a fundamental role not only in facilitating communication across cultures but in fostering dispositions of intercultural understanding. In this chapter, we argue for the significance of cosmopolitan literacies for the development of ethical, global citizens. Cosmopolitanism, or citizen of the world, has typically been theorized from the perspective of Western philosophy. In this chapter, we focus on theorizing key concepts of cosmopolitanism from Eastern traditions, particularly Confucianism. We delineate these concepts to highlight the core principles of cosmopolitanism literacy, which refers to reading, writing, speaking, listening, and other meaning-making practices that serve to develop critical, aesthetic, and ethical engagement with diverse others in the world. Using examples drawn from Language and Literature classrooms in Asia, with particular attention to Confucian Heritage Cultures, we explore how teachers have sought to develop students’ cosmopolitan literacies through pedagogies that cultivate an ethical orientation, transnational attunement, critical engagement, and transformative action. We conclude with a discussion of some of the limitations and possibilities for future research.