THE 21ST CENTURY LITERACIES AND SKILLS

Multicultural Literacy
- consists of the skills and ability to:
o identify the creators of knowledge and their interests (Banks, 1996
o to uncover the assumptions of knowledge
o to view knowledge from diverse ethnic and cultural perspective
o to use knowledge to guided action that will create a humane and just world
(Boutte, 2008).
- brings attention to:
o diversity, equity and social justice
o foster cultural awareness by addressing difficult issues like discrimination and
oppression towards other ethnicities (Boutte, 2008).
- Boutte (2008): education for multicultural literacy should help students to;
o develop the 21st century skills and attitudes that are needed to become
active citizens
o work towards achieving social justice within our communities
o manage the growing racial, language and ethnic diversity
- By making small changes within the classrooms, it can create big changes globally
(Boutte, 2008)
- Multicultural literacy competencies (Banks, 2003):
o Deeper understanding of others
o Appreciation of different cultures
o Empathy and tolerance
o question assumptions about cultural knowledge
o critique and critically think about important cultural issues.

Global Literacy:
- aims to address issues of globalization, racism, diversity and social justice (Guo, 2014)
- requires awareness and action, consistent with a broad understanding of humanity,
the planet, and the impact of human decision on both.
- aims to empower students with knowledge and take action to make a positive
impact in the world and their local community (Guo, 2014).
- Characteristics of a Global Citizen (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015):
o Respect for humans no matter their race, gender, religion or political
perspectives.
o Respect for diversity and various perspectives.
o Promoting sustainable patterns of living, consumption, and production.
o Appreciate the natural world and demonstrate respectful towards the rights
of all living things.

SOCIAL LITERACY
- mastering soft skills: good manners and right conduct
- What were once referred to as “manners” are now called “soft skills”
- basic, yet vital, behaviours
- education means the whole child, not just the academics.

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 - Bill Daggett, author of “Five Trends That Are Transforming Education:”
o there is more to life than the core subjects of math, science, English language
arts, and social studies
o Personal and interpersonal skills—such as responsibility, self-management,
integrity, honesty, collaboration, and leadership—are critical for success in
college, career, and life
o Strong schools build these skills into their curricula and create educational
cultures and relationships that value more than just academics
o helping students navigate confidently in the world has become essential.
o let’s not blame society for transgressions; rather, let’s focus on our own
classroom and offer opportunities to assist our students in developing
manners to be lauded and respected.

MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY

- literacy encompasses the ability to engage meaningfully with media and
information channels.
- School is the one place where it is absolutely crucial to train future citizens to
understand, to criticise and to create information.
- It is in schools that the digital citizen must begin and maintain constant critical
thinking in order to attain meaningful participation in his or her community.
- teaching users to critically judge, reflect and use the extremely broad range of
available media.
- Not only must users become media literate with respect to traditional media and
the representation of image, users now must become media literate with respect to
the wealth of new technology available and the development of applications
allowing entirely new ways of transmitting information.
- if schools are the training grounds for critical thinking, analysis and judgment
making, is it not logical that media and information literacy become cornerstones of
the educational curricula?
- aims to enable individuals to think critically about the media and the information
they consume by engaging in a process of inquiry.
- UNESCO: The aim is to allow individuals to become engaged citizens and
responsible decision-makers. By evaluating the source, the context, the message
and the medium within which it is received, considering its representations and its
intended audience, as well as the institutional context from which the message
emerges, MIL invites individuals to evaluate media at a critical distance.
- Some of the dimensions of media and information literacy:
O information literacy
O media literacy
O ICT/ digital literacy
- Use of devices to find meaningful answers, conduct evidence-based research,
spark a debate or follow the news
- Need discern what is of value and what is not; what is real and what is not.
Discernment goes beyond fake news and relates to their ability to process and
interpret information.

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 - to be able to process, analyse and make good decisions through appropriate
technology
- some distinctions:
O digital citizenship is the ability to critically evaluate media and online
technology, tools and information.
O media and information literacy (MIL) is how we think (critical thinking) about
all of the media around us, digital citizenship refers to how we live and how
we engage with all of the technology around us.
- media-related competences from the Council of Europe’s “butterfly” competence
framework to the concept of media and information literacy:

Figure 9: Four steps underpinning the process of inclusion

• Digital Citizenship Domains

o Being online
▪ Access and Inclusion
▪ Learning and Creativity
▪ Media and Information Literacy
o Well-being Online
▪ Ethics and Empathy
▪ Health and Wellbeing
▪ ePresence and Communications
o Rights online
▪ Active Participation
▪ Rights and Responsibilities
▪ Privacy and Security
▪ Consumer Awareness

- Citizens are able to access, analyse, create and consume media and information in
various formats from print to radio, from video to the internet.
- Learning how to use a search engine properly is an important skill for the digital
citizen and once the information is acquired, it is then necessary to apply transversal
skills such as critical thinking by searching for and comparing divergent sources
online.
- The ability to critically analyse, then classify and retain the pertinent information can
aid digital citizens in the acquisition of knowledge on a wide array of topics.
- Critical thinking is invaluable for citizens and especially for young learners, who also
need to be able to solve problems, find information, form opinions, evaluate sources

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 and more. Given the amount of data and truthful and erroneous information that is
available online, MIL is a crucial skill.
- Media and Information Literacy (MIL)’s potential is to enable individuals to process
and evaluate online information with discernment. Individuals today are
bombarded with media and information and are called to deconstruct and
evaluate messages constantly.

FINANCIAL LITERACY
- refers to the ability to understand and apply different financial skills effectively,
including personal financial management, budgeting, and saving.
- makes individuals become self-sufficient, so that financial stability can be
accomplished.
- requires the experience of financial principles and concepts, such as financial
planning, compound interest, debt management, efficient investment strategies,
and money-time value.
- The key steps to improve financial literacy include:
o Learning the skills to create a budget
o Ability to track expenses
o Learning the strategies to pay off debt
o Planning for retirement effectively
o financial specialist counselling
o understanding how money works
o developing and achieving financial goals
o handling internal and external financial challenges.
o ability to manage personal finance effectively: savings, insurance, real
estate, college payments, budgeting, retirement and tax planning.
o should be able to answer questions concerning transactions, such as whether
an item is required, whether it is accessible, and whether it is an asset or a
liability.
- illustrates a person's habits and perceptions towards money related to his or her
daily life.
- cognitive understanding of financial components and skills such as budgeting,
investing, borrowing, taxation, and personal financial management. The absence of
such skills is referred to as being financially illiterate
- allows an individual to be better prepared for specific financial roadblocks, which,
in turn, decreases the chances of personal economic distress.
- Fundamental Components of Financial Literacy:
o Budgeting:
▪ there are four main uses for money that determine a budget:
spending, investing, saving, and giving away.
▪ Creating the right balance throughout the primary uses of money
allows individuals to better allocate their income, resulting in financial
security and prosperity.
In general, a budget should be composed in a way that pays off all existing debt while
leaving money aside for saving and making beneficial investments.

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2. Investing
To become financially literate, an individual must learn about key components in regards
to investing. Some of the components that should be learned to ensure favorable
investments are interest rates, price levels, diversification, risk mitigation, and indexes.
Learning about crucial investment components allows individuals to make smarter financial
decisions that may result in an increased inflow of income.

3. Borrowing
In most cases, almost every individual is required to borrow money at one point in their life.
To ensure borrowing is done effectively, an understanding of interest rates, compound
interest, time value of money, payment periods, and loan structure is crucial.
If the criteria above are understood sufficiently, an individual’s financial literacy will
increase, which will provide practical borrowing guidelines and reduce long-term financial
stress.

4. Taxation
Gaining knowledge about the different forms of taxation and how they impact an
individual’s net income is crucial for obtaining financial literacy. Whether it be
employment, investment, rental, inheritance, or unexpected, each source of income is
taxed differently.
Awareness of the different income tax rates permits economic stability and increases
financial performance through income management.

5. Personal Financial Management

The most important criteria, personal financial management, includes an entire mix of all of
the components listed above.
Financial security is ensured by balancing the mix of financial components above to solidify
and increase investments and savings while reducing borrowing and debt.
Achieving an in-depth knowledge of the financial components discussed above
guarantees an increase in an individual’s financial literacy.

Importance of Financial Literacy

Obtaining financial literacy is one of the most important things an individual can do to
ensure prolonged financial stability.
Listed below are some real-world facts that should emphasize the overall importance of
attaining financial literacy.

• It is estimated that about 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

• More than 189 million of the American population own credit cards.
• On average, credit card owners own about four cards each.
• Student loan debt is about $1.5 trillion for more than 44 million borrowers.
• Credit card debt levels are at a record high of $1.04 trillion.
• Overall, Americans are approximately $12.58 trillion in debt.

The statistics depicted above should illuminate why financial literacy is paramount in
today’s financial climate.

Benefits of Financial Literacy

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Being financially literate is a skill that brings forth an assortment of benefits that can
improve the standard of living for individuals through an increase in financial stability.
Listed below are the assortment of benefits of being financially literate:
• Ability to make better financial decisions
• Effective management of money and debt
• Greater equipped to reach financial goals
• Reduction of expenses through better regulation
• Less financial stress and anxiety
• Increase in ethical decision-making when selecting insurance, loans, investments,
and using a credit card
• Effective creation of a structured budget

CYBER / DIGITAL LITERACY

1. Cyber Literacy and Internet Safety
2. Cyber bullying and Crimes
3. Managing Computer Crimes
4. Research/Evaluating the Web
5. Social Media Use and Mobile Devises
6. Digital Traits

For details, pls watch……..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl8PapHvgP0

ECO-LITERACY

Five Ways to Develop “Ecoliteracy”

(By: Daniel Goleman, Lisa Bennett, and Zenobia Barlow)

Socially and Emotionally Engaged Eco-literacy:

- an antidote to the fear, anger, and hopelessness that can result from inaction
- act of engaging in some of today’s great ecological challenges—on whatever
scale is possible or appropriate—develops strength, hope, and resiliency in young
people.
- Ecoliteracy is founded on a new integration of emotional, social, and ecological
intelligence
- While social and emotional intelligence extend students’ abilities to see from
another’s perspective, empathize, and show concern, ecological intelligence
applies these capacities to an understanding of natural systems and melds
cognitive skills with empathy for all of life.
- By weaving these forms of intelligence together, ecoliteracy builds on the
successes—from reduced behavioral problems to increased academic
achievement—of the movement in education to foster social and emotional
learning.
- And it cultivates the knowledge, empathy, and action required for practicing
sustainable living.
- Five Practices:
o 1.Develop empathy for all forms of life
▪ At a basic level, all organisms—including humans—need food, water,
space, and conditions that support dynamic equilibrium to survive. By

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 recognizing the common needs we share with all organisms, we can
expand our circles of empathy to consider the quality of life of other
life forms, feel genuine concern about their well-being, and act on
that concern.
▪ human brains are wired to feel empathy and concern for other living
things.
▪ traditional societies have viewed themselves as intimately connected
to plants, animals, the land, and the cycles of life. This worldview of
interdependence guides daily living and has helped these societies
survive.
o 2.Embrace sustainability as a community practice
▪ Organisms do not survive in isolation. Instead, the web of relationships
within any living community determines its collective ability to survive
and thrive.
▪ Valuing the common good.
▪ Building a community that values diverse perspectives, the common
good, a strong network of relationships, and resiliency.
o 3. Make the invisible visible
▪ Visualize, in anticipation, remote impacts or consequences of a
decision.
▪ If we strive to develop ways of living that are more life-affirming, we
must find ways to make visible the things that seem invisible.
▪ “travel” virtually and view the landscape in other regions and
countries.
▪ Communicate directly with citizens of distant areas and learn first hand
what the others are experiencing that is invisible.
o 4. Anticipate unintended consequences
▪ Many of the environmental crises that we face today are the
unintended consequences of human behavior. For example, we have
experienced many unintended but grave consequences of
developing the technological ability to access, produce, and use fossil
fuels. These new technological capacities have been largely viewed
as progress for our society. Only recently has the public become
aware of the downsides of our dependency on fossil fuels, such as
pollution, suburban sprawl, international conflicts, and climate
change.
▪ precautionary principle:
• When an activity threatens to have a damaging impact on the
environment or human health, precautionary actions should be
taken regardless
of whether a cause-and-effect relationship
has been scientifically confirmed.
• precautionary principle places the burden of proof on the
producers to demonstrate harmlessness and accept
responsibility should harm occur.
▪ Systems thinking:
• perspective that examines the connections and relationships
among
the various components of the problem.

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 • It is predicting possible consequences of a seemingly small
change to one part of the system that can potentially affect
the entire system.
• One easy method for looking at a problem systemically is by
mapping it and all of its components and interconnections. It is
then easier to grasp the complexity of our decisions and foresee
possible implications.
▪ Be Natural: We can turn
to nature and find that the capacity of
natural communities to rebound from unintended consequences is
vital to survival.
o 5. Understand how nature sustains life
▪ Turn to nature and learn the following tenets:
• all living organisms are members of a complex, interconnected
web of life and that those members inhabiting a particular
place depend upon their interconnectedness for survival.
• Eco-literate people tend to be more aware that systems exist on
various levels of scale. In nature, organisms are members of
systems nested within other systems, from the micro-level to the
macro-level. Each level supports the others to sustain life.
• ecoliterate people collectively practice a way of life that fulfills
the needs of the present generation while simultaneously
supporting nature’s inherent ability to sustain life into the future.
They have learned from nature that members of a healthy
ecosystem do not abuse the resources they need in order to
survive. They have also learned from nature to take only what
they need and to adjust their behavior in times of boom or bust.

ECOLITERACY: LEARNING FROM LIVING SYSTEMS(Daniel Christian Wahl)

- We need to reintegrate our economic activities, the way we meet our needs and
how we produce and share value, with the basic rules of ecology.
- Our design and technology need to be aligned with the way that life and living
systems are structured and how they maintain their vital functions in support of
individuals and the whole system.
- Ecoliteracy is the ability to understand the organization of natural systems and the
processes that maintain the healthy functioning of living systems and sustain life on
Earth. An ecologically literate person is able to apply this understanding to the design
and organization of our human communities and the creation of a regenerative
culture.
- All life in an ecosystem is interconnected through networks of relationship defining
life-sustaining processes.
- Networks are the patterns of organization expressing life’s
fundamental interbeing. They make mutual support, learning, exchange and
nurturing relationships possible.

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- Nature is structured as nested systems within systems (or processes within processes).
Each individual system is an integrated whole and is simultaneously comprised of
smaller sub-systems as well as being integrated into larger systems. This scale-linking
structure means that changes at one scale can affect all other scales.
- Nested systems are part of nature’s pattern of health and resilience as they create
both interconnection and a degree of self-reliance at different scales.
- The resilience and vibrancy of systems at any scale depend on this interlinking
‘panarchy’ which maintains redundancy, diversity, adaptability and transformability.
Re-localizing production and consumption will increase local/regional resilience and
decrease the multiple negative impacts of unnecessary transport of goods and
materials.
- A sustainable community has a certain level of self-reliance with regard to meeting
its needs for energy, food, water, shelter, transport, healthcare and education at the
local community level. For these semi-self-reliant systems to work and be resilient they
have to be designed as nested systems within a local, regional, national and global
context, based on knowledge exchange, collaboration and the exchange of the
materials, goods and services that cannot be easily provided at the smaller scale or
by using only the naturally occurring regenerative resources of a particular locality.
- To create a truly regenerative culture, we must design processes in interconnected,
closed- loop cycles.
- To create restorative and regenerative cultures we will have to re-learn how to work
with natural cycles like the availability of daylight; the hydrological cycle and water-
storage in the rainy season; the carbon cycle and restoring soil fertility; and the
seasonal cycle of availability of local foods and materials. Our industries, buildings
and food systems have to be carefully attuned to nature’s local, regional and global
cycles — not just to the annual seasonality, but also to ‘100-year floods, storms or
droughts’.
- One of the most important flows to which a regenerative culture has to attune its
patterns of energy consumption is the flow of energy from the sun. This energy initially
hits the Earth in the form of sunlight and solar radiation, but then begins to drive other
energy cycles like the flow of major wind systems, which in turn influence marine
currents and waves. We have to link the energy flows of our human systems to these
natural and renewable energy flows that ultimately come from the sun. We also
have to redesign our chemical industries and material culture to depend pretty
much entirely on material resource flows that are plant-based and therefore solar-
based.
- The fastest way for humanity to respond to this unsustainable situation is through
cultural transformation based on personal and collective development. Evolutionary
adaptation by mutation and selection will take too long. Individuals change culture
and culture changes individuals.
- We need individual, cultural and civilizational change to reinforce each other in
order to respond in a timely manner to this opportunity to re-invent our human
systems based on learning from other natural systems. Widespread education in
ecological literacy will help this cultural transformation.
- Dynamic Balance:
o despite constant change and transformation, natural systems remain relatively
stable over time.

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 o The interactions of short-term and long-term cycles create periods of dynamic
balance and transformational change.
o At the core of dynamic balance are processes of self-regulation and self-
organization based on feedback loops.

ARTS AND CREATIVITY LITERACY

- vital ‘invisible’ literacies that are used in the world today.

- invisible literacies need to be given more prominence and practice in schools and
should be more readily recognised by policy makers, curriculum designers and
educational leaders as essential to every day life in the 21stcentury.
- INVISIBLE LITERACIES:
o Discipline–specific literacies: literacies that are specifically needed in a
discipline
o Content area specialists build knowledge in their field. They use ‘invisible’ and
important literacies that go beyond traditional writing text, spelling,
punctuation and other conventional literacies. These include
other modes (such as collaboration or demonstration) or semiotics (signs,
marks) present in different subject areas.
o In order to become an ‘artist’, a ‘scientist’ or an ‘historian’ in the classroom
students need to know how knowledge is built through sophisticated uses of a
range of modes in the way that such specialists do. Students need to
understand the literacy demands placed upon them when reading historical
artefacts, scientific reports or laboratory work and/or artworks such as
sculptures or musical scores. They also need to know how such specialists go
about their work and make meaning of information through various
communicative methods.
o In the arts:
▪ teachers support students to interpret others’ artworks and create their
own.
▪ Students work towards being an artist by the end of their schooling by
critically viewing and discussing artistic-aesthetic elements of art.
▪ Arts-literacies are important because they can enable unique ways of
looking at the world that aren’t available in any other subject area.
Philosopher Maxine Greene calls this way of knowing ‘being wide
awake’.
▪ Arts literacies help students develop design-thinking, creativity and
critical thinking—all skills said to be important for the future workforce.
▪ Artistic practices intrinsically involve the reception-production of
“signs” in a continuous process of “translation” from one ‘language’ to
another.
▪ Being able to talk, read and write about the arts and arts practice is
important to the artistic process.
▪ Artists use much more than visible traditional literacies to create
meaning.
▪ They use arts-specific vocabulary, metaphors, embodiment, and other
more demanding ways to express themselves through using their art.

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 ▪ collaboration and sharing are important aspects of arts classrooms.
- Our curriculums acknowledge the need for invisible literacies
o The arts curriculum includes the notions of responding to and making art.
o Canada: Digital arts have been a strong focus in the curriculum: virtual reality,
augmented reality
o France: Art and Cultural Education (ACE):
▪ education about art: students’ acquisition of genuine artistic
knowledge
▪ education through art: allows students to develop themselves as
cultural citizens that contribute to society.
- Relevance of Invisible Literacies:
o it is time to make ‘invisible’ literacies visible
o Researchers around the world have spent decades looking at the
relationships between the arts, well-being, and the ways we perform literacies
on a daily basis. Philosophers of education such as Maxine Greene and Elliot
Eisner have defended the need to pay more attention to the arts in both
teaching and learning, and research, as it would have positive impact in the
schooling of all students.
o In classrooms: more focus on important general capabilities such as personal
and social capabilities, critical and creative thinking, and ethical and
intercultural understanding.
o Canada, Professor Jennifer Rowsell: expanding the way educators
understand the teaching of literacy and at the same time revitalised the
literacy and arts community in Southern Ontario.
o Turning the classroom into an opportunity for learners to create, and the time
to create, and to dialogue with their peers about what they enjoy in the
creative process without any other distractions (CAZ visual arts teacher
participant, December, 2013)
o In other words, communities develop their meaning-making skills by “doing
stuff,” and playing with materials, sounds, video, images in order to make
sense of the world and engage in contemporary understandings of what
reading and writing.
o What will happen if teachers and researchers do not adopt these types of
practices: there is a high probability that educators will further marginalise
young people who struggle with finding their “best mode” or modes of
communication so they can articulate their motivations, goals, needs, and
interests.
- Arts-based approach:
o the arts incorporate the five areas of Dance, Drama, Media, Music and Visual
Arts.
o positive impact of arts-based approaches (from various researches):
▪ Drama and arts-based learning programs can have a significant
impact on improving language arts and academic learning programs.
▪ drama strategies improved student motivation, narrative cohesion and
language acquisition.
▪ impacts on so-called ‘soft skills’ or ‘non-academic’ areas such as
empathy building, confidence, motivation and engagement.

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▪ children become confident in using language and literacies within real
and imagined contexts.

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