Collaborative reading and writing for glocal water justice: online teacher inquiry across the Americas

Purpose This is a transnational research project meant to bring a global lens to literacy teacher education using children’s literature as a tool for building climate literacies. The research question that guided this inquiry was: In what ways do encounters among a transnational group of educators with children’s books spark dialogue, reflection, inquiry and action into themes of water justice? This study aims to focus on how a transnational collaborative inquiry into water justice through picturebooks emerged and transformed over the course of virtual inquiry sessions. Design/methodology/approach Based on the principles of critical participatory action research design, the project consisted of three virtual sessions with interactive translanguaging read-alouds and spaces for reflection and dialogue among four elementary in-service teachers from Colombia, nine in-service teachers from the USA and a group of teacher educators from both countries. Data sources included artifacts of teacher learning, virtual sessions recordings and materials from teaching, planning and debriefing. Data were analyzed using a critical discourse analysis of bilingual, multimodal, translanguaging transcripts of each session and other data sources. Findings This transnational critical inquiry collective project opened spaces for translingual and transnational meaning-making on water justice, extended the teachers’ and educators’ knowledge about glocal water problems and nurtured social actions to promote water justice across social and geographical contexts. Originality/value Most studies on climate literacies have examined learning about climate justice within a social context. This study expands this view by generating a translingual space to foster meaning-making on water justice across the Americas.