Responsible Reading: Children’s Literature and Social Justice

Abstract

In high accountability cultures, primary phase literacy education tends to focus on improving children’s test scores. Driven by each country’s performance in international league tables, this results in narrow, predominantly skills-based programmes designed to address attainment gaps. While scores may have been enhanced in recent years, there is little evidence that policy directives have positioned literacy in the lives of learners in ways that have become meaningful for them or been transferred into ways of thinking that promote social equity. Indeed, teaching practices that exacerbate the challenges for those young people who are already disadvantaged by circumstance have become more prevalent. Teachers, therefore, have an ethical responsibility to redress this through their teaching. This paper argues that literature is core to more equitable literacy development. As not all reading practices are equal, developing literacy education for a more socially just society needs to challenge the dominant pedagogic hegemony. Literature has the potential to spark the kind of mindful disruption necessary to shift standardised paradigms of thought, so literacy education should have children’s literature at its heart. By examining the value of literature through a set of complementary lenses, this paper seeks to reveal its affordances in young people’s lives. Then, through commentary taken from a pair of vignettes drawn from professional learning contexts, we illuminate shifts in teacher perception gained through scaffolded introduction to reading literary texts. The insights teachers gained reveal reconceptualisation of reading and the role of literature in primary education. This has the potential to redirect their future classroom practice. Consequently, we propose that for teachers to be adept at improving literacy outcomes through productive adoption and use of literary texts, they need: an aesthetic appreciation and knowledge of children’s literature; personal experience with reading such literature as social practice; and pedagogic insight into how to use literature to teach literacy and develop volitional readers. We call this knowledge set the additive trio, noting that no ‘step’ or understanding is sufficient on its own, and that together they can enable the development of Reading Teachers who work with literature to advance the social justice agenda.

Research on Children’s Aesthetic Needs of Multinational Children’s Songs Based on Information Security

“…As a result, assistive devices do not fully meet children's needs in most cases, and research supports children's physical, emotional, and social well-being by helping designers improve assistive devices. Simpson and Cremin [18] explored children's literature and social justice issues. Shifts in teachers' perceptions gained from reading literary texts through scaffolding introductions are illuminated in accordance with comments in several vignettes extracted in professional learning settings.…”

Pre‐service teacher knowledge of children's literature and attitudes to Reading for Pleasure: an international comparative study

“…A recent paper by Simpson and Cremin (2022) proposes an approach to make teachers' engagement with children's literature more deliberate by interweaving three components into what they call the 'additive trio'. The authors suggest that development of strengths in 'knowledge of children's literature, knowledge about reading such literature and knowledge about how to teach with this literature' (Simpson and Cremin, 2022) is essential to support for good reading for pleasure practices. If adopted in ITE, these principles could help PST recognise that the value they place on children's literature will impact on their teaching practices.…”

Widening Teachers' Reading Repertoires: Moving beyond a Popular Childhood Canon

“…This aligns with a study of Finnish 10‐year‐olds, that shows recreational fiction reading (compared to reading comics, magazines, and newspapers) more effectively supports comprehension (Leino et al., 2017). Research additionally indicates that literature contributes to enhanced knowledge and language skills (Mar & Rain, 2015), prompts personal resonances (Kuzmičová & Cremin, 2021), is associated with well‐being (Clark & Teravainen‐Goff, 2018), and is perceived to be a potent tool to help address educational inequities (Simpson & Cremin, 2022). Thus, to support readers in the round, and nurture the will and the skills of reading, teachers need secure knowledge of literary texts.…”