Reading and Writing Pathways through Childrens and Young Adult Literature

This book provides masters students, teachers and researchers with a toolkit and theoretical framework for teaching literacy through children's literature. It features ideas for developing student and teacher experiences with literature and popular culture texts in the classroom, providing practical examples and teaching aids throughout.

This thought-provoking book will provide masters students, teachers and researchers with a toolkit and theoretical framework for teaching literacy through children's literature. It features innovative ideas for developing student and teacher experiences with literature and popular culture texts in the classroom, providing practical examples and teaching aids throughout.

Taking a collaborative approach, Curtin explores how teachers and learners can engage with literature and its authors for the development of literacy in classroom practice. Connecting reader and writer identities and worlds through interviews with and suggested classroom activities from authors themselves, this text combines author, teacher and learner perspectives in the development of creative pedagogies that extend understandings of literacy beyond reading, writing and text.

Exploring fairy-tales, comic books and graphic novels, children living in literature (i.e., texts which portray children, their lives and experiences), popular culture, young adult fiction, and non-fiction and digital texts such as blogs etc, this text develops a sociocultural understanding of literacy as a lived and contextually dependent practice where meaning is derived through relationships between people, settings and culture. Different contexts for literacy are explored, including reading and writing strategically (to learn about literacy and literature), widely (for personal purposes) and deeply (to transform understanding) (Short, 2011).

This text will be an invaluable resource for teachers, researchers or anyone interested in reading and writing stories. The author interviews will also be of particular interest to older learners themselves as a way to develop their understanding of their own reading and writing practices. Pedagogies can be adapted to any age group, ranging from the early years to young adult.

Autorentext

Alicia Curtin is a Lecturer at the School of Education, University College Cork, Ireland, and researches and writes in the areas of learning, identity, assessment, neuroscientific perspectives on literacy, creative approaches to pedagogical design and innovative pedagogical research methods. Her work employs sociocultural theories to problematise and explore these central aspects of learning in ways highly relevant to education, teaching and our understanding of learning itself in all of its forms, inside the classroom and beyond.

Inhalt

Part 1: Reading and writing stategically to learn about literacy and literature 1. Understanding reading and writing as multimodal literacies: Mapping literary and literacy pathways through text 2. Exploring multiple perspectives on reading and writing in culture: Arts as storied inquiry into aesthetic literacy and personal identity practice Part 2: Reading and writing widely for personal purposes 3. Reading, writing and genre as personally resonant and sociocultural practices: Telling the human story of literacy as personal and social practice 4. Reading and writing for pleasure in reciprocal and affinity based story communities: Exploring digital literacies, humour and authentic spaces for the sharing of stories Part 3: Reading and writing deeply to transform understanding 5. eading and writing through the lenses of critical literacy, social justice and historical perspective: Cultural, social and historical contexts for literacy and identity 6. Culturally sustaining reading and writing practice: Engaging with funds of knowledge and popular culture literacies to negotiate curriculum design with learners 7. Reading and writing about dark knowledge: Exploring alternative ways of knowing through philosophy, psychology and mental health literacy