“I Would Like to See How They Got Poor and See What It's Like to Be Poor”: An Analysis of Young Children's Responses to a Critical Literacy Text About Poverty
Sixty-four 8-year-old children listened to a reading of a critical literacy text about poverty and then responded to interview questions about the story. The content on which the children focused their attention, the processes that they employed to engage with the text, and the particular stance(s) taken varied significantly by ecological setting or socioeconomic status for some categories of response. These findings are consistent with Rosenblatt's (1994) theory and have important implications for practice. Mindful of variations in response, practitioners can become more sensitive to children's constructed meanings about poverty and scaffold accordingly.
Problem-posing with Multicultural Children’s Literature: Developing Critical Early Childhood Curricula
Problem-posing with Multicultural Children's Literature documents an ongoing qualitative study of early childhood teachers using a problem-posing method with multicultural children's literature. Grounded in critical theory, the text has been written for use in upper-division undergraduate- and graduate-level classes that study infants, toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners, and students in grades one and two. The book uses examples from both early childhood and elementary teacher education students, and practicing teachers' work as they study critical literacy, multicultural children's literature, and integrated early childhood curriculum. This structure provides insights into guided research in child development, cultural and linguistic contexts, learning theory, strategies for teaching young children, family advocacy, and all related aspects of early childhood teacher education as the learners move through the activities.
Children's perceptions of deviance and disorder.
First-, fourth-, seventh-, and eleventh-grade boys and girls were interviewed on the topic of deviant behavior among their peers. They were also asked to make deviance judgments on 2 story characters whose behaviors exemplified qualities that typically evoke an attribution of psychological disorder on the part of adult judges. 1 story described loss of control and aggression, the other a distorted and paranoid perception of social reality. The pattern of reaction to the stories was consistent with age-related shifts in the basic for deviant status. First graders largely failed to think in terms of group norms. The transition from the middle grades to adolescence was marked by greater emphasis on social consensus--both in psychological perspective and group behavior.