We are delighted to announce the release of the Routledge volume on 'Global Citizenship for Adult Education: Advancing Critical Literacies for Equity and Social Justice', edited by Petra A. Robinson, Kamala V. Williams, and Maja Stovanovic. The volume comprises a collection of a groundbreaking projects in the field of youth and adult education, in which 43 scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States, examine how to promote equity and social justice through global citizenship and lifelong learning, that integrates the development of critical literacies as integral to adult education.

In its Chapter 11 the volume hosts the article titled "Is Literacy a Multidimensional Concept?" by CRADALL members, Prof. Georgios Panos, Prof. Michael Osborne, and affiliates from the University of Glasgow, Dr. Theocharis Kromydas and Professor Robert Wright. The authors empirically examine literacy as a multidimensional concept integrating seven potential dimensions: (1) Mathematical literacy, (2) Foreign language literacy, (3) Digital literacy, (4) Financial literacy, (5) Political literacy, (6) Environmental literacy, and (7) Health literacy.

They use data from the Integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project by the Urban Big Data Centre at the University of Glasgow. Using unique novel Glasgow-based data, they find that there are gender differences in all the dimensions of literacy. There are large advantages in favour of males with respect to political, digital, financial, and environmental literacy, health and mathematical literacy. The only advantage in the favour of females is foreign language literacy. The authors suggest that the design of training programs, suitable for gender-neutral adult education and the generation of opportunities for ‘robot-proof’ lifelong learning, as well as targeted interventions for challenged and vulnerable groups are of utmost importance in this new era of the 4th and the forthcoming 5th industrial revolution.

The volume is available at Routledge.