Teaching for global competences through biographies in primary school using English as an additional language

In today’s complex multicultural societies, it is imperative that people become globally competent citizens. This is a life-long process educational systems are expected to trigger and develop through globally competent teachers preparing children for a rapidly changing world (OECD, 2018; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2019). Pupils and students need to go beyond the learning of disciplinary contents to build the ability to communicate across cultures, understand and recognize others’ perspectives, develop linguistic and cultural awareness (Boix Mansilla, 2020) adopting an inclusive position. To promote and support learning English for global competencies and cultural/linguistic awareness in primary school EAL (English as an Additional Language) learners, the authors propose designing activities linked to citizenship education. The activity referred to in the paper is the writing of narrative biographies of immigrant people to be used in Italian 5th grade class. Biographies are suited for language learning (La Luzerne-oi & Kirschermann, 2018) in terms of linguistic outcomes, content specific vocabulary and fluency development, but they can also introduce learners to more complex understandings in an engaging way: by exploring some of the context of that person’s life, and any events that influenced them, pupils can increase their cultural awareness, divergent and critical thinking to address inequities and social justice (Johnston et al., 2021). Teachers can promote intercultural competences creating cross-cultural learning opportunities for pupils using stories of people from different cultures to write narrative biographies as a way to promote global competences.