Analyzing Children’s Literature for Hidden Bias Helps Preservice Teachers Gain Pedagogical Practices in Critical Multicultural Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydiah Nganga
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Multicultural Education ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Critical Multicultural Education

Preservice Teachers

2021 ◽  
pp. 298-317
Author(s):  
Deanna Day
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Elementary Students ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Literature Circles ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Read Alouds ◽  
Long Read

This chapter describes how a children's literature educator provided a space for preservice teachers to select, read, and discuss diverse and social justice literature through read-alouds and literature circles. In addition, the preservice teachers questioned and challenged their own assumptions about their world during a semester-long read-aloud partnership with elementary students focusing on diverse or social justice children's literature. The college students involved the children in discussions around the texts and planned response activities for them. The findings suggest that partnerships, emphasizing diverse literature, help preservice teachers practice how to choose diverse books, experience the value of read-alouds, and discover how to encourage discussion around diverse texts.

Using the Children's Literature Course to Promote Teacher Candidates' Cultural Competence

2021 ◽  
pp. 460-481
Author(s):  
Erin Hogan Rapp ◽  
Melissa Landa
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Collective Case Study ◽  
Asking Questions

This chapter presents the results from a collective case study of 23 undergraduate preservice teachers enrolled in a Children's Literature course at a large Mid-Atlantic university. It explores how course instruction in and around high-quality, culturally diverse children's literature facilitated both displays of culturally competent dispositions and cultural knowledge of self and others. The chapter also describes how the preservice teachers under study applied their culturally competent dispositions as they rehearsed selecting texts, planning activities, and asking questions to their future students. The Cultural Competence for Teaching Framework provided a useful metric to evaluate participants' displays of cultural competence across the course of the semester. Within this chapter, the authors describe how they embedded cultural competence education inside the course including a description of the activities, texts, and pedagogy used.

Essay Review: Crossing Borders/Shifting Paradigms: Multiculturalism and Children's Literature

1995 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 634-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Multicultural Education ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Essay Review ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Critical Multiculturalism ◽  
Utopian Vision ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Broad Understanding

If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, course and sing, in all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here. We would make our language conform to the truth of our many selves and we would make our language lead us into the quality of power that a democratic state must represent. (Jordan, 1987, p. 24) June Jordan's words bring forth a utopian vision of a future in which issues of language, voice, truth, power, and democracy all come together in the creation of a culturally diverse democratic world. She speaks in the language of a critical multiculturalism, one in which words such as representation, many selves, power, and democracy are integral. In this article, I develop a broad understanding of the basic epistemological positions underlying the discourse of multicultural education and, in particular, multiculturalism in children's literature.

The Role of Children’s Literature in Cultivating Preservice Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals: A Literature Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey T. Flores ◽  
Saba Khan Vlach ◽  
Catherine Lammert
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Instructional Practices ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Methods Courses ◽  
Literacy Methods ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Literacy Educators

This review of literacy education scholarship examines the ways that children’s literature is used as a resource within literacy methods courses in the preparation of preservice teachers (PTs) as transformative intellectuals. The research indicates that the use of children’s literature in literacy methods courses has served two distinct purposes: (a) to engage PTs in learning literacy instructional practices and (b) to engage PTs in building sociocultural knowledge and learning transformative (e.g., culturally relevant) pedagogies. This review is framed by Giroux’s call for educators to disrupt technocratic approaches to instruction. The findings emphasize the importance of using children’s literature with PTs to broaden PTs’ understandings of their future student’s lives, so they might engage in transformative pedagogies as future K-12 literacy educators.

A Portrait of Chinese Culture: Investigating Perceptions Presented in Children's Books

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Giles ◽  
Susan F. Martin ◽  
Vitulli Paige
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Multicultural Education ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Evaluation Tool ◽  
Cultural Authenticity ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
Urban Educators ◽  
Multicultural Children's Literature

AbstractAdministrators, librarians, parents, teachers, and teacher educators need to be familiar with quality multicultural children's literature as a means of helping children develop an understanding of others as well as affirming their own diverse backgrounds. In this study, 31 fictional picture books identified as containing representations of ethnic Chinese or their culture were examined for literary quality and cultural authenticity. Six reviewers (three Chinese and 3 American) independently evaluated each book using a revised 10-item version of the Multicultural Children's Literature Evaluation Tool (Higgins, J. J. (2002). Multicultural children's literature: creating and applying an evaluation tool in response to the needs of urban educators. New Horizons in Education. Retrieved from http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/strategies/topics/multicultural-education/multicultural-childrens-literature/index.html) with the highest possible score being 30. Results indicated good interrater reliability with the mean score of the Chinese and American reviewers differing by less than 5 points for 24 books (80 %). Three books received a mean score of 30 by at least one group of reviewers, and three books received a mean score of below 19 by at least one group of reviewers. With results of studies such as this one at their disposal, adults are better prepared to select quality, culturally authentic literature to share with children.

What's after “What's That?”: Preservice Teachers Learning to Ask Literary Questions

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelby A. Wolf ◽  
Erikka L. Mieras ◽  
Angela A. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Instructional Strategies ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Question Types ◽  
Questioning Strategies ◽  
Response To Literature ◽  
Teacher Dialogue ◽  
Over Time

This year-long study analyzed the effects of using carefully assisted case studies to prepare preservice teachers to be more knowledgeable and skilled in supporting children's response to literature. As part of an undergraduate course in children's literature, 43 preservice teachers read weekly to individually selected children. The purposes of the assignment were (a) to expand the preservice teachers' understandings of response to literature by analyzing an individual child's responses over time and (b) to enhance their instructional strategies and critical stances toward literature. Over time, preservice teachers' question types shifted in amount and content, moving from teacher dominance to child-teacher dialogue. Within the dialogue, the preservice teachers learned to create or at least reflect on a balance between comfort and challenge. As the preservice teachers changed, the children changed as well, moving from hesitancy to confidence, even to the point of contradicting the preservice teachers. Additionally, the course emphasis on questioning as well as on detailed fieldnotes heightened preservice teachers' attention to the results of their own questioning strategies, causing them to be more reflective about the content and consequences of their queries.

Bridges to Global Citizenship: Ecologically Sustainable Futures Utilising Children's Literature in Teacher Education

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Bradbery
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Global Citizens ◽  
Sustainable Future ◽  
Value Diversity ◽  
Sustainable Futures ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable

AbstractDeveloping an understanding of the importance of a sustainable future is vital in helping children to become ‘global citizens’. Global citizens are those willing to take responsibility for their own actions, respect and value diversity and see themselves as contributors to a more peaceful and sustainable world. Children's literature — picture and story books in particular — can be used as a powerful tool to help even the youngest citizens become aware of the need to assume responsibility for creating and enjoying a sustainable future through global citizenship. Children's literature can be utilised to help children examine and change personal lifestyles to secure a sustainable future; to identify, investigate, evaluate and undertake appropriate action to maintain, protect and enhance local and global environments; to challenge preconceived ideas, accept change and acknowledge uncertainty and to work cooperatively and in partnerships with others. This article explores and examines ways in which some examples of Australasian children's literature, specifically Storm Boy (Thiele, 1963), Lester and Clyde (Reece, 1991), The Waterhole (Base, 2001), Window (Baker, 1991) and Belonging (Baker, 2004), have been used in a literacy focused preservice teacher education course to assist preservice teachers entering their internship school placements to develop children's understandings of an ecologically sustainable future. It provides further insight into methods for embedding teaching for a sustainable future into pre-service teacher education.

scholarly journals The Effects of Children’s Literature on Preservice Early Childhood Mathematics Teachers’ Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Jett
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Education Majors ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Mathematics Teaching And Learning

In this article, the author shares an intervention of using children’s literature as a pedagogical frame for an undergraduate mathematics content course with early childhood education majors to influence their thinking about mathematics teaching and learning. With this case study of 29 preservice teachers, the author found that literature increased preservice elementary teachers’ excitement about mathematics, heightened their self-efficacy in mathematics, and motivated them to design innovative mathematics lessons. By elaborating on these findings, the author makes a case for the continued need for mathematically competent teachers in elementary classroom spaces, and the author advocates for the incorporation of literature as a means to do this work. Finally, the author provides implications for future research and practice with other SoTL-related projects involving children’s literature.

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