Challenging the Poverty Narrative Through Children's Literature

2022 ◽  
pp. 191-212
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Strong Sense

Poverty and homelessness are often portrayed in children's literature as an individual problem rather than a larger systemic issue involving societal inequities. Children's literature can be used as a means of self-affirmation and as an opportunity for dialogue around social justice issues in the classroom. Through thoughtful planning, identity work, and the use of critical frameworks, educators can evaluate the quality of children's literature, monitor their students' textual experiences, and plan for dialogue to promote change. This intentional planning will help students build a strong sense of self-agency and a broader understanding of how to think critically around improving the overall human condition.

scholarly journals When Authenticity Goes Missing: How Monocultural Children’s Literature Is Silencing the Voices and Contributing to Invisibility of Children from Minority Backgrounds

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Helen Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Day Care ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Long Day ◽  
Day Care Centres ◽  
Book Collections ◽  
The Impact

The importance of recognising, valuing and respecting a child’s family, culture, language and values is central to socially just education and is increasingly articulated in educational policy worldwide. Inclusive children’s literature can support children’s human rights and contribute to equitable and socially just outcomes for all children. However, evidence suggests many educational settings provide monocultural book collections which are counterproductive to principles of diversity and social justice. Further, that educators’ understandings and beliefs about diversity can contribute to inequitable provision and use of diverse books and to inequitable outcomes of book sharing for many children. This paper reports on a larger study investigating factors and relationships influencing the use of children’s literature to support principles of cultural diversity in the kindergarten rooms of long day care centres. The study was conducted within an ontological perspective of constructivism and an epistemological perspective of interpretivism informed by sociocultural theory. A mixed methods approach was adopted, and convergent design was employed interpret significant relationships and their meanings. Twenty-four educators and 110 children from four long day care centres in Western Australia participated. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, video-based observations, field notes, document analysis and a book audit. This study firstly identified that current book collections in kindergarten rooms of long day care centres promote mono-cultural viewpoints and ‘othering’ of minority groups through limited access to books portraying inclusive and authentic cultural diversity. Secondly, that educators had limited understandings of the role of literature in acknowledging and valuing diversity and rarely used it to promote principles of diversity, resulting in a practice of “othering” those from minority group backgrounds. The key challenges which emerged from the study concerned beliefs, understanding and confidence of educators about diversity and inclusion, and the impact of these on their approaches to promoting principles of diversity through the use of children’s books. This research contributes to discussion on the value of children’s literature in achieving international principles of diversity. These findings have important social justice implications. The outcomes of this study have implications for educators, policy makers, early childhood organisations and those providing higher education and training for early childhood educators.

Supporting Teacher Candidates as Social Justice Change-Makers

2021 ◽  
pp. 398-421
Author(s):  
Anne Homza ◽  
Tiffeni J. Fontno
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Shared Goal ◽  
Support Teacher ◽  
Future Work

Critical consciousness, teacher agency, intellectual freedom, and equity-informed practices are vital aspects of a collaboration between a faculty member and an educational librarian, whose shared goal is to support teacher candidates' capacity to use diverse children's literature to teach for social justice. In this chapter, teacher educator Homza and head librarian Fontno share ways to help teacher candidates use diverse children's literature to develop their own critical consciousness, explore issues of equity, and teach for social justice in their future classrooms. Grounding their work in conceptual frameworks, the authors discuss their positionalities, how the literature collection is built, and course activities that use diverse children's literature. Teacher candidates' reflections suggest that these efforts have an impact on their critical consciousness and capacity to engage in the challenging work of transformative pedagogy. The authors share implications for other teacher educators and librarians and questions to explore in future work.

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.

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.

Arabic Children's Literature Today: Determining Factors and Tendencies

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Dünges
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Arab Culture ◽  
Determining Factors ◽  
Modern Arabic

Dedicated to the memory of Muḥiyy al-Dīn al-Labbād (1940–2010)In spite of great obstacles, modern arabic children's literature has seen remarkable developments lately, both in quality of text and illustrations and in breadth of subject matter. Moreover, the intricate question of which variety of Arabic to use in writing for children can now be answered in different ways, closely linked to different conceptions of Arab culture.

Faulkner Upside Down: On The Wishing Tree – the Writer’s Only Children’s Story

Tekstualia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (44) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Maciej Skowera
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Bakhtinian Theory

The paper discusses selected aspects of The Wishing Tree, William Faulkner’s only published children’s story. It presents the circumstances of publication and the subsequent reception this literary work. Then it examines the key themes and the plot of The Wishing Tree in the light of the Bakhtinian theory of carnavalization as it applies to children’s literature. The Wishing Tree displays the quality of carnivalesque oddity; it is ridiculous, unserious, and facetious in comparison with Faulkner’s works for adults.

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