Tracing cosmopolitan literacies: a case study of transnational literacy curricula.

This case study explored the institutional, programmatic, and classroom literacy curricula of a Canadian offshore school in Macau (school pseudonym: MCS). Undergirded by the conceptual tool of cosmopolitan literacies, this study specifically examined the network effects that influenced the forms of cosmopolitan literacies in MCS's three levels of curriculum. In exploring the English immersion-based programmatic curriculum for MCS, data show a universalistic vision of literacy that foregrounds essentialism and universalism in world and Canadian literature in English. Yet school policy-makers and teachers concerted efforts to adapt the parochial, Canadian programmatic curricula and responded to students' diverse needs and fluid identities in the local/global intersections. Findings also relate English and Mandarin literacy teachers' agency, collaboration, and creativity in enacting cosmopolitan literacy practices in the transnational education classrooms. The paper ends with a reconfiguration of cosmopolitan literacies for curriculum-making, pedagogy, and assessment in the 21^st century interconnected schooling contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]