To speak about Global Citizenship is to speak about Diversity. This means that to speak about Global Citizenship Education is to speak about pedagogical approaches that aim to sensitize citizens to the value of diversity as a shared common; to prepare citizens to live with the linguistically and culturally distinct Other (through otherness and alterity); to educate critical citizens active in the defense, assurance, and protection of Universal Linguistic and Cultural Rights, in particular, of systematically marginalized and exploited individuals and communities (UNESCO, 1996, 2002, 2005; Council of Europe, 2000). Therefore, we could argue for intercultural education (Vavitsas & Nikolaou, 2021), an educational approach that aims for citizens mindful of diversity, and one of many educational approaches closely linked to global citizenship education, also as an adequate way to educate global citizens (Lourenço, 2018; Faas et al.,2014).

In this paper, we present the findings from a critical literature review whose objective was to identify ontological and axiological connections between global citizenship and diversity through the analysis of pedagogical practices of intercultural education in the formal context reported in the literature.

As Tarozzi and Torres (2018) affirm, diversity can be understood as “the most important conundrum of the new global scenarios” (p.18) that “help to design a new cultural horizon, set in new terms regarding otherness and diversity” (p.18). This new cultural horizon sways education in new (global) directions. Namely, in formal education, as it brings diversity forward to the front stage of teaching and learning, requiring (particularly) teachers to support students’ development of plural and multiple identities. Global citizenship can represent one of those plural and multiple identities, and so, consequently, global citizenship education can represent a way for its development.

Although its multiple and plural interpretations (Goren, H. & Yemini, M., 2017; Oxley, L. & Morris, P., 2013; Pashby et al., 2020) global citizenship education represents an educational approach that emphasizes the development of critical citizens engaged in addressing global issues. It aims to empower citizens to become responsible, informed, and active global citizens who can actively participate in creating a more just and sustainable world. As so, global citizenship education recognizes the interconnectedness of people and issues across the world calling for action toward more equitable solutions, especially, to social and economic inequality. Furthermore, global citizenship education promotes a critical understanding of diversity, particularly for the interest of this study, as it encourages citizens to examine their values, beliefs, and cultural biases, engage in intercultural dialogue, and critically analyze systematic inequalities and challenge systems of oppression (Tarozzi & Torres, 2018). Despite all this, in formal education, teachers and educators find it difficult to understand what global citizenship means.

In the field of intercultural education two concepts that show potential as pedagogical approaches to tackle global citizenship education-related issues in formal education are intercomprehension (Silva, 2018) and linguistic landscapes (Lourenço et al., 2022; Gorter & Cenoz, 2015).

To put it briefly, we understand Intercomprehension as an educational goal to be achieved, at the relational and communicative level which, in a social context marked by complexity and fragmentation, becomes a political and social concept (Pinho & Andrade, 2008). As to linguistic landscapes, what is relevant to say is that as a principle they represent possibilities for global citizens to have quotidian interaction with linguistic and cultural diversity. Regarding the promotion of intercultural education, linguistic landscapes promote greater awareness and openness to linguistic and cultural diversity, encouraging the development of skills and attitudes required from global citizens to participate in multilingual and intercultural contexts.

This is a study of exploratory nature. As so, this paper presents a critical review of the literature (Grant & Booth, 2009) that discusses (education for) diversity within global citizenship education. This work intends to unveil ontological and axiological understandings of global citizen(ship) (XXX), global citizenship education (XXXX), and diversity, through its linguistic and cultural expression, that underpin reported educational practices in formal education. For that purpose, to describe, analyze, and summarize patterns and themes identified in our data, content analysis with a heuristic function was selected for data analysis. A critical literature review (Grant & Booth, 2009) was selected as it correlates with the objectives of an exploratory study. This particular type of literature review aims to demonstrate the result of extensive literature research, providing the researcher with the opportunity to build upon the previous body of work, being its conclusion “the starting point for further evaluation, not an endpoint in itself” (Grant & Booth, p.97, 2009). Since this study intends to unveil ‘non-apparent’ knowledge being reproduced by teachers and educators, content analysis (Bardin, 2016) was selected as a method for data analysis, since it allows researchers to draw inferences about the underlying meaning of data. Our understandings of what being human means and what values sustain our actions are not always explicit, and so are our understandings of what being a citizen means and what values sustain our educational practices, namely in formal education. Thus, a thematic content analysis was developed as a way to account for the presence of codes that concern, as Bardin (2016) puts it, qualities or flaws related to ontological or axiological orientations. The cohort of documents in review is still being determined since multiple searches are being done in different scientific databases and repositories (Scopus, Web of Science, Scielo, ERIC, RCAAP, Redalyc, and Dialnet). Four search terms were selected, plus two more for safeguard, respectively: “global citizenship education”, “diversity”, “Intercomprehension”, “linguistic landscapes”, “intercultural”, and “plurilingualism”. Furthermore, it was decided beforehand that all documents need to fall into a set of criteria previously defined, namely: peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, published from 2015 onward, written in Portuguese, Spanish, or English, and available in open-access.

As depicted above, within the field of global citizenship education there are “multiple ideological constellations overlapping and even contradicting one another” (Pashby et al., p.1, 2020). Accordingly, in some way expected, some literature reports that teachers and educators find the concepts of global citizenship, and thus, global citizenship education, evasive, and sometimes confusing (Lourenço, 2021; Lourenço & Andrade, 2023). One of the expected outcomes of this critical literature review (Grant & Booth, 2009) is to infer from our findings possible principles to support teachers and educators in developing their understanding of the concept of global citizenship education. In this sense, as stated above, the link between global citizenship education and diversity is deliberate since through the interaction with linguistic and cultural diversity in citizens’ everyday life, which has become ordinary (especially in the Global North), one can begin or better understand how global citizenship education topics and themes impact our individual life’s and how possibilities for action exist, for example, as we like to argue, in the valorization, defense and struggle for cultural and linguistic universal rights for marginalized and exploited communities which existence, unfortunately, also became more ordinary, particularly, in the European context (EUAFR, 2019). Consequently, from our findings, upon our theoretical framework, we intend to present arguments to support the relevance of diversity within global citizenship education. Specifically, through the pedagogical use of plural approaches like intercomprehension and Linguistic Landscapes as they have shown, from previous research, potential in the education of citizens aware of the presence and value of diversity in their lives and the life of their communities.

Bardin, L. (2016). Análise de Conteúdo. Edições 70. EUAFR, (2019). Fundamental rights report 2019. EUAFR. Faas, D., Hajisoteriou, C. & Angelides, P. (2014). Intercultural education in Europe: policies, practices and trends. British Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 300-318. 10.1002/berj.3080 Goren, H. & Yemini, M. (2017). Global citizenship education redefined – a systematic review of empirical studies on global citizenship education. International Journal of Educational Research, 82, 170-183. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2017.02.004 Gorter, D. & Cenoz, J. (2015). The linguistic landscapes inside multilingual schools. In B. Spolsky, M. Tannenbaum & O. Inbar (Eds.), Challenges for language education and policy: Making space for people (pp. 151-169). Routledge. Lourenço, M. (2018). Global, international and intercultural education: Three contemporary approaches to teaching and learning. On the Horizon, 26(2), 61–71. doi:10.1108/OTH-06-2018-095 Lourenço, M. (2021). From caterpillars to butterflies: exploring pre-service teachers’ transformations while navigating global citizenship education. Frontiers in Education, 6, 1-17. 10.3389/feduc.2021.651250 Lourenço, M., Brinkmann, L. M., McMonagle, S. & Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2022). Guidelines for introducing linguistic landscapes in (foreign) language learning and teacher education. Universität Hamburg. 10.25592/UHHFDM.10241 Lourenço, M. & Andrade, A. I. (2023). Educating for sustainability and global citizenship in uncertain times: a case study with in-service teachers in Portugal. In J. Madalinska-Michalak (Ed.), Quality in teaching and teacher education: international perspectives from a changing world (pp. 180-202). Brill. Oxley, L. & Morris, P. (2013). Global citizenship: a typology for distinguishing its multiple conceptions. British Journal of Educational Studies, 61(3), 301-325. 10.1080/00071005.2013.798393 Pashby, K., da Costa, M., Stein, S. & Andreotti, V. (2020). A meta-review of typologies of global citizenship education. Comparative Education, 1-21. 10.1080/03050068.2020.1723352 Pinho, A. S. & Andrade, A. I. (2008). Programme de formation et parcours personnels d’apprentissage professionnel. Les langues modernes, 1, 53-61. Silva, F. & Andrade, A. I. (2018). Educação para a cidadania global e intercompreensão: reflexões em torno de um projeto desenvolvido no 1º ciclo do ensino básico. Indagatio Didactica, 10(1), 83-97. 10.34624/id.v10i1.11403 UNESCO (1996). Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights. UNESCO. UNESCO (2002). Declaração Universal sobre a Diversidade Cultural. UNESCO. UNESCO (2005). Convenção sobre a Proteção e a Promoção da Diversidade das Expressões Culturais. UNESCO. Tarozzi, M. & Torres, C. A. (2018). Global citizenship education and the crisis of multiculturalism. Bloomsbury. Vavitsas, T. & Nikolaou, G. (2021). Highlighting the critical elements of interculturalism: towatds a critical intercultural education. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 19(2), 296-314.