Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This study constructs an inter-culturally based approach to education and investigates the feasibility of working with Black children’s literature for the affirmative construction of Black identities during the first years of primary school. It is based on the theoretical assumption that the “scaffolding” models of literary reading, in a logic that favours the aesthetic experience, can have an impact on the reading reception, among them, the readers’ identification with fictional characters. This aspect plays an important role in their cultural identities formation. An action research with participant observation and pedagogical intervention in a third-year class of a public primary school in Natal, Brazil, was implemented. It included a training stage of the classroom teacher and cooperative planning/implementation of thirteen reading sessions of six Black children’s literature books. The results point to a diversity of subjects’ responses due to the complex problems ensuing from ethnic identity, as the readers are immersed in a socio-historical and psychological process that updates racism. This situation poses a great challenge to mediators, that, on the other hand, find in literature a promising field to face racism itself, as this research demonstrates.