In this study, we explored the extent to which Australian, Chinese, and Korean middle school students perceived themselves to have scientific literacy as global citizens and attempted to identify differences and/or commonalities in their perceptions. A total of 655 middle school students (8th and 9th grades; 358 girls and 297 boys) from the three countries participated in the study. We used Global Scientific Literacy Questionnaires (GSLQ) as a survey instrument to assess the students’ perceptions. The GSLQ was developed based on a conceptual framework of Scientific Literacy suggested by Choi, Kim, Lee, Mun, Choi, Krajcik & Shin (2011) and Choi, Lee, Shin, Kim & Krajcik (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(6), 670–697, 2011) for citizenship education in the 21st century. The results indicated that most of the students from the three countries showed a tendency toward higher scores for Science as human endeavor; the lowest scores were in Meta-cognition and self-direction. A pattern of gender difference was also examined among the three countries. We suggest future research questions based on a cross-cultural perspective in order to explore the reasons for the existence of these similarities and differences.