Dialogic literary gatherings and out‐of‐home child care: Creation of new meanings through classic literature

Abstract

Research on out-of-home child care has revealed that foster care programmes focused on educational attainment and reading have the potential to improve the academic outcomes of children in care. However, no studies have examined which elements of these programmes positively benefit children's emotional well-being. This article presents evidence of the positive effects of implementing a successful educational action, dialogic literary gatherings, in a children's residential care institution. A qualitative study using a communicative-oriented methodology was conducted and involved five participant observations and eight daily life stories with children in out-of-home care in Catalonia (Spain). The children's reflections demonstrated that reading classic books, such as Dickens' Oliver Twist, deeply influenced their feelings and self-conceptions and created new and exciting meaning in their lives. KEYWORDS academic skills, classic literature, dialogic literary gatherings, emotional well-being, out-of-home child care

Implications for Social Impact of Dialogic Teaching and Learning

“…The efforts and dedication of countless researchers in the field of educational psychology to provide answers and solutions to educational and social challenges have been consolidated over the last decades. In particular, the potential benefits of dialogic teaching and learning have been explored through a series of small-scale (Díez-Palomar and Olivé, 2015;Aubert et al, 2017;García-Carrión et al, 2018;Garcia Yeste et al, 2018) and largescale studies (Mercer and Sams, 2006;Flecha, 2015;Alexander, 2018;Howe et al, 2019). Currently, we count with enough evidence supporting the dialogic approach to ultimately provide effective pedagogical responses in which no child is excluded from classroom discourse.…”

“…Some of the main results of the analyses conducted throughout such research point that SEA have contributed to high quality education at the different educational levels and contexts they have been implemented in, from early childhood education to adult education or out-of-home child care centers (Pulido, 2015;Aubert et al, 2017;Garcia Yeste et al, 2018). For instance, research has shown that interactions based on egalitarian dialogue operating in small heterogeneous groups of students known as interactive groups (IGs) boost children's learning of mathematics, particularly in terms of mathematics understanding and problem-solving, contributing to the improvement in mathematics performance (Díez-Palomar and Olivé, 2015;Flecha, 2015;García-Carrión and Díez-Palomar, 2015).…”

Transforming students’ attitudes towards learning through the use of successful educational actions

“…Readings come from classic literature, such as works by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Kafka, Tagore, etc. [38,39]. Students read at home the assigned number of pages (it either could be a whole chapter or a certain number of pages, according to the teacher's criteria).…”

Impact of the Interactive Learning Environments in Children’s Prosocial Behavior

“…Some forms of dialogic-based teaching and learning have been shown to improve students' academic achievement and social cohesion, creating an inclusive climate in marginalized communities [22][23][24]. These studies provided evidence of positive results in academic achievement and social cohesion when implementing two forms of dialogic-based instruction in small mixed-achievement groups and in whole class settings; these two forms of dialogic-based instruction are known as Interactive Groups (IG) and Dialogic Literacy Gathering (DLG).…”

“…Students provide intricate explanations and formulate questions that elicit high level thinking and reasoning [29]. In DLGs, students frequently relate the text to their own lives, thus sharing their personal views, feelings and emotions; this has been implemented, for example, in contexts of vulnerability such as that of children living in institutional care or prisons in Spain [23,30]. While these features may lead to higher order interactions, no research has explored the extent to which these positive interactions in classroom may help develop prosocial behavior.…”