Abstract
Books play an important role in children’s socialisation as they provide a space for children to learn about how people treat each other. However, books available in schools often don’t reflect the cultural diversity of our society. A telling study carried out in Amsterdam, a city with 180 nationalities (compared to 150 nationalities in New York!) found that of the books available to children in participating schools, only 8% had diverse main characters (Severina, 2019). We will begin this workshop with an introduction to the work of Rudine Sims Bishop, the ‘mother’ of multicultural children’s literacy. In small groups we will briefly discuss the selection of books we are currently offering our students, and identify opportunities for creating a more diverse classroom library. We will then use a set of focus questions to analyze books that are currently popular amongst our students in more depth. Finally, we will explore extracts of recommended books and create a wishlist of books for our classrooms. By the end of this workshop participants will have: gained a new perspective on books as anti-bias tools; learned how to select diversity friendly books; and created a practical list of books that will help diversify classroom libraries.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2022 Special Focus: Intercultural Learning in Plurilingual Contexts
KEYWORDS
Diversity, Children's Literature, Intercultural Education
