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Global Citizenship Education and English Learning through Picturebooks

own equipment, such as laptop microphones) and required time to be opti-
mised – time that was therefore not devoted to teacher education activities.
As regards the sharing of documents produced as part of group-work, ‘inter-
nal’ Teams users were able to do this fast and efficiently through Teams; this
was not possible for external or ‘guest’ users, leading to the less smooth use
of alternative modalities.
The complexity of the educational aims underpinning the European DivA
project arguably demand both research which may explore suitable ap-
proaches to teacher education and training in a variety of global contexts,
and classroom-based research, likewise in differing instructional contexts. A
lack of fine-grained research on how teachers deploy interactional strate-
gies which may support read-aloud practices in the language classroom
has been highlighted by Mourão (2023). Given the importance attributed to
creative teacher talk and child-directed modified speech in ELT and in such
multifaceted educational approaches with young language learners, future
research can beneficially focus on longitudinally investigating manifold as-
pects of authentic classroom interactions, with specific regard to those en-
tailingtheadoptionofpicturebookstosupportYLs’developingawarenessof
GCEDthemesandvaluesinmultilingualinstructedcontexts.Furtherareasar-
guably in need of investigation relate to teacher education and training pro-
grammes to prepare teachers for integrating GCED and holistic approaches
in ELT and multilingual environments, as well as to the multifaceted roles
of teacher educators. Children’s responses to picturebook-related and/or
GCED activities and tasks are a further area of interest. This is as YLs’ reactions
may vary, and sometimes be challenging or demonstrate an ‘empathetic dis-
connect’ (Valente, 2022, p. 261) – knee-jerk rejections of teacher-suggested
themesperhapscausedbylinguisticand/orculturaldistance,perceivedinac-
curacies and stereotypes, or even by (intergenerational) traumas. Arguably,
negative reactions need dealing with expertly and sympathetically rather
than with reprobation. When teachers – sustained by teacher educators who
are themselves adept at scaffolding others’ development, by transforma-
tional story-based pedagogical activities, and by coherent programmes –
can congruently voice and embody hope, enthusiasm, and inclusion, such
efforts may powerfully affect children’s mindsets and therefore actions. The
power of story and children’s literature lies in their being transformational.

Conclusions and Future Prospects
This chapter has explored issues pertaining to GCED with YLs, including the
rationale for adopting picturebooks in language education, the reasons for

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