Connecting Teacher Beliefs to the Use of Children’s Literature in the Teaching of Mathematics

This article presents examples that illustrate how teachers use childrens literature in the teaching of mathematics. The examples are related to four curriculum ideologies that have influenced mathematics education in the USA for the last 75 years. It discusses why it is relevant to help teachers understand the ideological positions that influence their use of childrens literature during mathematics instruction, summarizes the four ideological positions, and presents results of a study of how teachers ideological positions relate to their use of childrens literature in the teaching of mathematics. The study examines two research questionsCan an instructional tool be developed that will highlight for teachers the different ways in which they and others use childrens literature to teach mathematics? and Can that instructional tool stimulate teacher discussion and reflection about their own beliefs and the ideological nature of the instructional environment in which they learned (as students) and teach (as teachers)? Study results indicate that both questions can be answered in the affirmative.     

Motor Impairment in Children’s Literature: Asking the Children

How do schoolchildren respond when they encounter a wheelchair user in a fictional text? This article describes a doctoral project where groups of children were presented with excerpts from books by Hilary McKay and Jacqueline Wilson in which wheelchair users play a significant role. The pupils were asked to discuss issues arising from these readings. The views pupils expressed were relevant, imaginative and positive. Only on two rare occasions did the pupils respond in ways that could be categorised as prejudicial towards disabled people. The article describes the methodology adopted for the study, directly quotes from and explores the views of the pupils. The teaching of children about disability and disabled people currently in the English curriculum for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) is alleged to be inadequate; a weakness which could be addressed in the manner described, using literature for sensitive educational debate. This study is unusual in that the research subjects include a group of children who are motor impaired. The Doctor of Education who conducted the research for her thesis and authored this article is also herself a fulltime wheelchair user.     

Families’ Selection of Children’s Literature Books

This study examined families’ choices of children’s literature books for joint story reading. Teachers, parents, and their children from five kindergarten classrooms participated in the study. Over a 4 months period, family members joined other parents twice a week to learn and practice story reading techniques. They selected children’s literature books that were of interest to both of them and their children and were developmentally appropriate. Family members were interviewed and responded to a questionnaire before the intervention. The results provided insight in relation to the parents’ perceptions about literacy, reading with families, and story reading. All members of the families read to their children frequently or daily and engaged the children in conversations about the books read. The books chosen to be read to the children were categorized by genre, with modern fiction being the most popular genre.     

Children’s Literature and Education: A Memoir of Dr. Lawrence Sipe

A personal reflection about Dr. Sipe as a teacher and a mentor.     

“Don’t Sell Me the Enemy’s Literature”: A Self-Study of Teaching Literature in Politically Fraught Contexts

This article describes a self-study pursuant to a clash between a lecturer and a student concerning the teaching of literature in a politically fraught context. The learning group is composed of Arab and Jewish teachers at a college in northern Israel. The work read by the group expresses a Palestinian perspective. The incident, discussed with reference to the concepts of ethical reading and in-between space, is explained against the background of the lecturer’s professional views and the complexity of teaching literature in a polarized and conflicted society. Analysis of the incident, accompanied by a look at the professional literature, reveals the lecturer’s blind spots as well as the complexity of the situation in which she was acting. Details of the case and the process of its interpretation may serve to enrich the perspectives of literature teacher educators who believe in ethical reading and in constructing an in-between space in their lessons, providing them with insights regarding teaching in contexts fraught with cultural tensions.     

Reading Poison: Science and Story in Nazi Children’s Propaganda

Children’s books of Nazi propaganda prove that a society can venerate science to the point of making biology the organizing principle of its educational system yet nevertheless produce children’s literature shot through with fabrication and falsehood. Three children’s books of Nazi propaganda that are frequently mentioned in accounts of anti-Semitism but seldom analyzed are discussed: Elvira Bauer’s Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid (1936), Ernst Hiemer’s Der Giftpilz (1938), and Hiemer’s Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher (1940) illustrate the ways in which racist science and ideological narrative tautologically reinforce each other in an extreme version of how “narratives play a key role in communicating science” (Pauwels, 2019, p. 434) in children’s nonfiction. These texts of lurid racism, all issued by the book publishing arm of Julius Streicher’s virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, offer a monitory case study of how bad science and toxic narrative can coalesce into a literary poison intended to indoctrinate young readers. This analysis of Nazi nonfiction for children demonstrates how science and story can be exploited to promote a racist agenda.

     

Cooperation Through Movement Education and Children’s Literature

This article demonstrates evidence-based practice that integrates movement education with children’s literature, in order to promote cooperation among Bengali kindergarteners, from an urban public school in Midwestern USA. First, the authors argue the need for this integration based on limitations of previous scholarship. Second, authors present their developmentally and culturally appropriate conceptual framework based on Bhavnagri and Samuel’s research, along with the theory of cooperation and schema development. Third, children’s understanding of cooperation concepts (helping, turn taking, sharing, dividing labor, negotiating, coordinating, exchanging information, and perspective taking) embedded in literature are analyzed. Concomitantly, children demonstrated same cooperation sub-skills during four movement activities related to the stories. Fourth, authors reflect that cooperation was successful because activities met Johnson and Johnson’s guidelines of high social interactions, high emotional involvement, and effective communication. Finally, the authors recommend that integration of cooperation and movement education is beneficial for educational programs in diverse settings.     

The United Kingdom Children’s Laureate: The Story So Far

Britain’s Children’s Laureate Scheme has now been running for 14 years. This article asks Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, Anthony Browne, Michael Rosen and Julia Donaldson for their views on their own experience of taking up this post. It concludes with a discussion of the recurring issues raised by these Laureates along with a look at possible future developments.     

Introduction to the Issue: Exploring Affect in Children’s Literature

Children's Literature in Education -     

Empire and Children’s Literature: Changing Patterns of Cross-Cultural Perspective

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Foreign Children,” Rudyard Kipling’s poem “We and They,” and Frances Temple’s youth novel The Beduins’ Gazelle are the texts submitted to detailed analysis in this article, which examines cross-cultural perspectives in relation to imperial and post-imperial social contexts. Stevenson is shown to portray the basic structure of an imperial cross-cultural perspective, which Kipling problematizes and calls into question. Analysis of Temple reveals her awareness of the problems and limitations that inhere in an imperial perspective and shows that her work presents innovative, contemporary approaches to the representation of cross-cultural perspectives.     

Do Children and Adults Take Social Relationship Into Account When Evaluating People’s Actions?

Two studies examined whether children (5- and 6-year-olds; 8- and 9-year-olds, n = 214) and adults (n = 72) consider social relationship when evaluating unhelpful or helpful actions. Participants learned about a person-in-need who was (or was not) helped by someone they knew (a friend) and someone they did not know (a stranger). Older children and adults judged an unhelpful friend as meaner than an unhelpful stranger, and judged a helpful stranger as nicer than a helpful friend. Younger children did not judge an unhelpful friend as any meaner than an unhelpful stranger, and they judged a helpful friend as nicer than a helpful stranger. These findings suggest that a mature appreciation of how social relationship matters for evaluation emerges relatively late in development.     

Multicultural Children’s Literature as a Context for Teaching Mathematics for Cultural Relevance in Urban Schools

This article reports on a teacher-research study that used multicultural texts as a context for teaching mathematics for cultural relevance during an elementary mathematics methods course. The results of the study reveal that 28 % (5 out of 18) of the teacher candidates (TCs) chose books that were culturally contextual or culturally amenable. However, 89 % (16 out of 18) of the TCs chose texts that were mathematically robust or mathematically peripheral. Four focal TCs were selected to examine how they used the texts with children to teach mathematics concepts. Math lessons fostered academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Overall, the results of the study are mixed. We conclude that some TCs’ choice of texts may reflect indifference, passive resistance, low self-efficacy, school culture, and mixed messages from the teacher–researcher. Additional studies that include follow-up interviews and classroom observations are needed to determine the factors that influence TCs’ selections of multicultural texts and their implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy with students.     

Traveling the World with Outstanding International Children’s Literature

In 2005, the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) and the Children’s Book Council, Inc. (CBC) formed a committee to evaluate, select and publicize books of exceptional quality which were originally published outside of the United States and subsequently released by an American publisher. This article offers brief annotations of the 2006 and 2007 Outstanding International Children’s Book Award winners for the K–2 age group—17 titles from nine different countries. In addition, the work of USBBY and the CBC, Inc., is briefly explained.     

Representations of Dictatorship in Contemporary Chilean Children’s Literature

This article addresses the disturbing fact that few contemporary Chilean children’s books deal with Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990). It explores why dictatorship has such an elusive presence in contemporary Chilean children’s literature, how it has been represented in general, and how children are portrayed in books that do address Pinochet’s oppressive regime. Four Chilean children’s books are examined in detail: two that represent the dictatorship from an outsider perspective, produced by authors in exile, and two written from an insider perspective by authors that grew up under Pinochet’s dictatorship. While the former represent children as superheroes whose actions transcend the dictatorship’s repression, the latter depict children who are politically aware, but do not make the adults’ political fight their own. This key difference is problematized in terms of the implications for narratives of dictatorship produced for a young audience.     

Beyond Borders: Reading “Other” Places in Children’s Literature

The author analyzes two texts, Gloria Whelan’s Homeless Bird and Deborah Ellis’s Parvana’s Journey, in an attempt to explain some of the problems and difficulties associated with those texts. The author examines Whelan’s representations of India and finds troubling binaries associated with that text. In comparison, the author finds Ellis’s depictions of Afghanistan more nuanced and complex. The author also discusses student reception of both texts and offers ways to problematize some of their reactions.

Look Again: Pedagogical Demonstration Facilitates Children’s Use of Counterevidence

In learning about the world children must not only make inferences based on minimal evidence, but must deal with conflicting evidence and question those initial inferences when they appear to be wrong. Four experiments (N = 144) found that young children were significantly more likely to revise their initial inferences when conflicting evidence was explicitly demonstrated for them. Four- and five-year-old children saw deterministic evidence about which objects had causal powers, and then saw counterevidence conflicting with that initial pattern. Critically, the conflicting evidence was either demonstrated communicatively and pedagogically, or produced in an intentional but nonpedagogical manner. Only when evidence was explicitly demonstrated for them did children revise their initial hypothesis and use a subtle clue to infer the correct rule.     

Why is the Use of Films in the ESL Literature Class a Good Idea?

In the 15th century,Johannes Gutenberg introduced mechanical movable type printing to Europe,causing an explo sion of knowledge that changed the world.This new way of printing enabled the masses to be exposed to works of literature that would have been inaccessible to them previously.The rapid development of technology in the 21st century presents educators with similar opportunities to expose an ever-widening circle of students to previously inaccessible works of literature.Although controversial with some,the use of films in the ESL literature classroom is one such opportunity.This paper aims to show that the use of films in the ESL literature classroom is a good idea because it is inexpensive,effective in developing listening,speaking,reading and writing skills,exposes students to authentic cultural information,helps students to absorb English,and develops the habit of reading for pleasure.Finally,some tips on the effective use of film in the ESL literature classroom are given.     

Teachers’ Practices of Inquiry When Teaching Investigations: A Case Study

Teacher practices are essential for supporting learners in scientific inquiry practices of framing research questions, designing and conducting investigations, collecting data, and drawing conclusions. This study examines instructional practices of two Grade 11 Physical Science teachers engaged in teaching practical investigations. Data were collected from video recordings of teachers?? enactment of pre-laboratory, laboratory and post-laboratory practical investigation lessons. Other data sources included video-based classroom observations, teacher and learner interviews, and artefacts, such as teacher handouts, supplemental materials and learner work. The results suggest that when teachers introduce practical investigations, they vary in the practices they engage in as well as the quality of their use of these practices. Implications for teacher practices of scientific inquiry are explored.