During the COVID-19 pandemic teachers have been expected to learn new digital literacy skills, often applying them immediately. While professional development structures within school districts and professional associations are organized to offer supports, teachers may be challenged to gain digital skills within existing professional development models. Within our study, teachers explored technologies with the aim of rethinking frames for teaching and learning literacy. Following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic they shared their experiences, insights and challenges. In our article, we address implications for digital literacy teaching and learning and the need for new ways of approaching teacher development.

Canadian multicultural and Indigenous picturebooks greatly influence both children’s and educators’ being and becoming. Identity is closely related to our engagement with literacy practices, including book reading. In this paper, two researchers who immigrated from Mainland China engage in autobiographical narrative inquiry, a methodology that asks the researchers to self-face, and to “world”-travel to our earlier landscapes, times, places, experiences, and relationships. In personal, educational, and academic settings, we tell and retell our storied experiences of critically reading four multicultural and Indigenous Canadian picturebooks, to fight the hegemony of the Canadian dominant culture. Our article sheds light on the importance of negotiating one’s identity in multicultural and Indigenous picturebooks, as little work presents minority educators’ and adult newcomers’ voices of reading diverse Canadian picturebooks. By making visible our critical reading experiences, this inquiry opens space to maximize the outcomes of utilizing children’s literature in teaching and learning.

COVID-19 has created significant changes in the everyday lives of teachers, children and parents. Due to school lockdowns in the spring semester of 2020, teachers shifted from in-person classroom teaching into “emergent remote teaching” (Hodges et al. 2020, para. 5), where digital tools and software were used for instruction and teacher-student communications. Many children have also shifted their social lives from face-to-face to virtual interactions (Hutchins 2020); for example, engaging in online family story reading, social media participation, and joining after school activities digitally. This pandemic has highlighted the importance of being literate in digital environments for children. Digital literacy, that is, literacy practices undertaken across multi-media, involving “accessing, using and analysing digital texts and artefacts in addition to their production and dissemination” (Sefton-Green et al. 2016, p. 15). The importance of the digital world and digital tools for the post-COVID future where digital literacy could become more prominently featured for teachers, children, and parents must not be underemphasized.   In this presentation, I reviewed the literature on young children’s digital literacy practices at home. Many studies have illustrated the benefits and various kinds of learning that children get from their digital play at home, including emergent literacy learning (Neumann 2016), digital citizenship (Bennett et al. 2016), etc. Moreover, I presented the complex trajectories of children playing with their digital devices and toys at home (Marsh 2017). In the 21st century children’s home play, the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds are blurring (Marsh 2010; O’Mara and Laidlaw 2011; Carrington 2017).   More importantly, this literature review suggests a gap and an opportunity for future researchers to explore home digital literacy of children, who are from minority backgrounds in Canada, as literacy practices are socially and culturally situated. This presentation illustrates the importance of my proposed doctoral research, as my research aims to explore Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) children’s digital home literacy practices in Canada.

This comprehensive qualitative examination of two groups of Canadian picture books, 57 titles published in 2005 and 120 titles published in 2015, offers comparative data that demonstrate patterns related to authors, illustrators, characterization, genres, audiences, and particular elements of Radical Change. Following book collection, content analysis was conducted with a consideration of Dresang’s notion that books for children are evolving with respect to forms and formats, perspectives, and boundaries. Our process for analysis was developed from Berg’s framework of systematic content analysis based on predetermined as well as emerging categories. There is much recent research exploring particular content in children’s literature, supporting the central importance of literature in the classroom and community. Comparative Canadian studies across decades, however, are rare, and are increasingly important as a way to track and describe the changes that are taking place with respect to books for young people. It is interesting that in both 2005 and 2015, picture books tended to feature children as protagonists, with the highest number of books from the 2005 set utilizing the fantasy genre (at 34%) or realistic fiction (at 28%) and the highest number of books from the 2015 set occurring in non-fiction (at 34%, up from 16% in 2005) or fantasy (at 31%). Historical fiction in both years presented comparatively low, at 12% and 3%, respectively.Findings of this study support and extend the notion of Radical Change. The research team noted marked innovations within the 2015 group related to forms and formats, boundaries, and perspectives. Of particular note are the increasing numbers of books that present Indigenous content and perspectives. While many of the changes appearing in Canadian picture books between 2005 and 2015 might be predicted through the standard categories of Radical Change (Dresang, 1999), other findings also emerged that suggest new Radical Change considerations. Continuing to examine children’s literature as artifacts of a culture can illuminate particular aspects of that culture and offer opportunities to engage authors, illustrators, and publishers in filling gaps where particular perspectives or topics are missing. Advocacy is important as children’s literature continues to be a source of tension for what it portrays and presents as well as its missing voices. A knowledge of patterns and trends in relation to available content and resources supports classroom practice as well as encourages classroom research and further explorations of the evolving landscape of children's books.

The 13th Annual Graduate Research Showcase was held by the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education Graduate Students’ Associations on May 1, 2021. As our first virtual research showcase, graduate student presenters and participants gathered in virtual spaces to celebrate and share our research, and engage in conversation with colleagues. We appreciate and are grateful for the opportunity provided by the Alberta Academic Review to publish a special issue to present the conference proceedings.