Cosmopolitanism, contemporary communication theory and cultural literacy in the EAL/D classroom

The impact of globalisation on classrooms is leading to greater complexity. Students are now increasingly mobile, more connected across time and space, and draw on multiple ways of learning and understanding. In this paper, we draw on cosmopolitan theory to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the nature of transformation, which is central to cosmopolitanism in general, so that intercultural understanding can be conceptualised as the creation of new knowledge. Such a process rests on social and cultural practices that transform personal relations as well as the self. This theoretical framing is then put into dialogue with contemporary communication theory and cultural literacy to highlight the connections between cosmopolitan concepts of transformation and the social and cultural practices involved in producing new knowledge. To elucidate this abstract discussion, the paper examines halaqah [or circle], an Arabian pedagogical model, to explore the ways that English as an Additional Language/Dialect 1 (EAL/D) teachers might acknowledge that this model is shared with other cultures. In acknowledging that contemporary practice in Australia shares practice with Arabic cultures, EAL/D teachers not only reveal local and global connections but bring into Australian classrooms a different language to describe a familiar practice and therefore a recognition of what children also bring. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the usefulness of cosmopolitan theory for intercultural understanding in the EAL/D classroom.