scholarly journals Writing a Novel with Roma Primary School Children: Tensions in Disrupting Aetonormativity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Dobson ◽  
Lisa Stephenson ◽  
Ana De Arede
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
The North ◽  
Minority Ethnic Groups

Abstract Story Makers Press (SMP) is a University-based publisher which co-constructs stories with under-represented groups of children in order to diversify representation in children’s literature and disrupt the way adult perceptions of normality pattern children’s literature (aetonormativity). In this paper we analyse six drama and creative writing workshops run by SMP with Czech and Slovak Roma children from an inner city primary school in the north of England to co-construct a story about climate change. Our analysis identifies how in developing the story, the children were often reluctant to draw upon their funds of knowledge relating to their Roma backgrounds, instead Westernising their protagonists and settings. We also explore how the children disrupt aetonormativity by interweaving magical elements into realistic narrative about climate change in order to establish a genre of magical realism. Finally, we identify how this genre of magical realism is problematic when considering stereotypical depictions of Roma characters in children’s literature and how changes were made to our story in light of a critical race theory reading of the first draft. As well as helping SMP to refine its processes, this analysis suggests that minority groups such as Roma need to be able to draw upon more literary representations of Roma in order to shape their creative outputs and that the curriculum needs to focus on developing children’s critical responses to the representation of minority ethnic groups in children’s literature.

scholarly journals The Historical and Psychological Significance of the Unorganized Games of New Zealand Primary School Children

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brian Sutton-Smith
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Small Group ◽  
School Children ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
The North ◽  
Psychological Significance ◽  
East And West ◽  
Recurrent Motifs ◽  
East West

<p>In the Spring of 1948 while teaching at a primary school, I observed a small group of girls playing a game called "Tip the Finger". During the game one of the players chanted the following rhyme: "Draw a snake upon your back And this is the way it went North, South, East, West, Who tipped your finger?" I recognized immediately and with some surprise that this rhyme contained elements which were not invented by the children and were probably of some antiquity. I knew, for example, though only in a vague and unlearned manner, that the four pattern of the North, South, East and West and the Snake symbolism were recurrent motifs in mythology and folklore. I was aware also that there did not exits any specialized attempt to explain the part that games of this nature played in the lives of the players.</p>

Teaching mathematics with children’s literature in Finland

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 253
Author(s):  
Miikka Wikholm ◽  
Juli-Anna Aerila
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Mathematics Teaching ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Mathematics Learning ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Teaching Mathematics ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Teachers Beliefs

The Finnish school system will transfer to the new Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 in 2016. The new curriculum emphasizes integration of subjects. In Finland, mathematics and the mother tongue are the two subjects which are taught the most and therefore play a significant role in every primary teacher’s weekly routine. Unlike English-speaking countries, Finland lacks children’s literature aimed towards use in mathematics teaching. This study aimed to understand teachers’ and teacher-trainees’ points of view on the extent to which they use children’s literature in teaching mathematics in primary school and how to efficiently use children’s literature in teaching mathematics in primary school. This study was a part of an international study entitled ‘Teachers’ beliefs on the integration of children’s literature in primary mathematics learning and teaching: A comparative study’, including universities from England, Hong Kong, Australia, and Finland. The aim was to determine teachers’ beliefs concerning integration of children’s literature into mathematics teaching and to the extent to which this benefits learning. Data collection was conducted via web-based questionnaires translated into Finnish from spring to autumn 2015. Mixed methods data analysis showed that teachers/teacher-trainees do not use children’s literature in mathematics teaching, but they still recognize various ways to implement it into their teaching. Previous studies on the use of literature in mathematics teaching show that children’s literature may provide a meaningful context to develop mathematical skills and foster children’s positive attitudes towards mathematics, as the stories in the literature are presented in an engaging and approachable manner.Keywords: mathematics, children’s literature, teaching

scholarly journals The Practice of Noble Values among Primary School Students in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Mohd. Zailani Mohd. Yusuff ◽  
Mohamad Khairi Haji Othman ◽  
Asmawati Suhid ◽  
Rozalina Khalid
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
School Children ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Peninsular Malaysia ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
Primary School Students ◽  
School Students ◽  
The North ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Research Designs

Social problems among students have become very serious in recent years. Therefore, the issues that need to be addressed are the practices that exist among them. This study will share a research finding that identifies the level of practice of applying noble values among primary school children. This study used qualitative research designs through interviews and observations and quantitative survey studies where data were collected through questionnaires involving 321 primary school children from four primary schools in the North Zone of Peninsular Malaysia. Overall, the findings show that the practice of noble values is admirable. This study found that there was a significant difference in values of noble practices in terms of school types. In addition, the findings also found that values of respect are the most dominant values practiced by primary school students followed by other values.

scholarly journals "You Know Very Well You're Not Real": Victorian Children's Fantasy Literature and the  Problem of Writing the Child

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Beatrice Turner
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Fantasy Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
The North ◽  
Innocent Child ◽  
Return Journey ◽  
Child Reader

<p>This thesis examines eight "Golden Age"children's fantasy narratives and uncovers their engagement with the "impossibility" of writing the child. Only recently has children's literature criticism recognised that the child in the text and the implied child reader cannot stand in for the "real" child reader. This is an issue which other literary criticism has been at pains to acknowledge, but which children's literature critics have neglected. I have based my reading on critics such as Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, Jacqueline Rose and Perry Nodelman, all of whom are concerned to expose the term "child" as an adult cultural construction, one which becomes problematic when it is made to stand in for real children. I read the child in the text as an entity which contains and is tainted by the trace of the adult who writes it; it is therefore impossible for a pure, innocent child to exist in language, the province of the adult. Using Derrida's conception of the trace and his famous statement that "there is nothing outside of the text," I demonstrate that the idea of the innocent child, which was central to Rousseau's Emile and the Romantic Child which is supposed to have been authored by Wordsworth and inherited wholesale by his Victorian audience, is possible only as a theory beyond language. The Victorian texts I read, which include Lewis Carroll's Alice texts, George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind and the Princess texts, Kingsley's The Water Babies and Mrs. Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock and The Tapestry Room, all explore different ways in which the child might be successfully articulated: in language, in death, and through the return journey into fantasy. While all the texts attempt to reach the child, all ultimately foreground the failure of this enterprise. When a language is created which is child-authored, it fails as communication and meaning breaks down; when the adult ceases to write the narrative, the child within it ceases to exist.</p>

scholarly journals The Use of Discourse Markers in Academic Writing by In-Service Primary School Teachers of English

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-229
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Kapranov
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Literature And Linguistics ◽  
Primary School Teachers

AbstractThis paper presents and discusses a computer-assisted study that seeks to investigate the use of discourse markers (“DMs”) in academic writing in English as a Foreign Language (“EFL”) by a group of in-service primary school teachers (“participants”). The aim of the study is to establish whether or not there would be differences in the use of DMs in the corpus of academic writing in EFL in literature and linguistics written by the participants, who concurrently with teaching EFL at a range of primary schools are enrolled in an in-service tertiary course in English. The corpus of the study consists of the participants’ i) reflective essays in English linguistics and children’s literature in English, respectively, and ii) analytic explanatory essays in English linguistics and children’s literature, respectively. The corpus of the participants’ essays was analysed quantitatively in order to identify the frequency of DMs per 1,000 words. The results of the quantitative data analysis indicated that the participants’ use of DMs seemed to be, primarily, determined by i) genre conventions of academic writing in English associated with reflective essays and analytic explanatory essays and ii) the participants’ individual preferences. These findings are further presented and discussed in the paper.

Cultural Understanding: Teaching about Race Relations in the Primary School

1989 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McDougall ◽  
Peter Hastie
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Minority Students ◽  
School Children ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Primary School Children ◽  
Cultural Understanding

Racism certainly exists amongst primary school children in Australia. Through both experience in school and teaching, the authors have noted marked prejudice amongst students. This prejudice takes the forms of slurs, name calling, recitation of myths and stereotypes, and occasionally violence, and is directed at all minority groups, but notably Aborigines and Asians.Students in minority groups have most likely been on the receiving end of this prejudice during their school lives and, because of this, may have felt alienated and humiliated. In this paper it is proposed that the teaching of race relations and cultural understanding is one method teachers may use to decrease the racial attitudes of the white non-minority students.

SHAPING SPIRITUALITY THROUGH CHILDREN’S LITERATURE INTENDED FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL – DISCUSSION OF SELECTED EXAMPLES

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Weronika Baracz
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books

The aim is to learn about the spirituality like a part of education. Spirituality is understood as values, attitudes and traditions choosing by man. It also refers to the integral, holistic upbringing of the human being. In this article, attention is paid to the comprehensive, multidimensional pupil development. This objective will be achieved by analyzing selected children's books. Short outline of the research problem and novelty.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document