Date of Award
12-2020
Degree Type
Certificate of Advanced Study
Program
Connecticut Literacy Specialist
Advisor
Dr. Karen C. Waters
Abstract
The purpose of this study, focusing on diversity in children’s literature, was to assist teachers in choosing quality multicultural literature for students. Quality multicultural literature lacks bias, avoids discrimination, racism, prejudice and sexism, and accurately portrays social issues, historical details, and dialects in both the words and the illustrations. The goal of this project was to provide teachers with criteria to use when evaluating multicultural literature. Howlett and Young’s (2019) instrument for evaluating multicultural literature, Literary Criticism and the Absence of Bias, was used to assess multicultural literature. The survey included questions pertaining to inherent racism, bias, prejudice, and discrimination, and items emphasized the acknowledgement of stereotypes, culturally relevant and historical contexts, and appropriate use of dialect. By completing this work, teachers were better equipped to evaluate, choose, and recommend multicultural literature to provide books for classroom use that reflect students’ lives. This action research project utilized interviewing to determine participants’ experience for incorporating multicultural literature in their classroom libraries. A thorough examination of the multicultural literature in teachers’ classroom libraries revealed that texts were generally unbiased, which offered students windows into other cultures and mirrored their own lives.
Recommended Citation
Krafick, Kori, "Cultivating Classroom Libraries that Promote Multicultural Literature: Helping Our Students See Themselves in the Books that They Read" (2020). Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy. 13.
https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/lit/13
Appendix D
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Included in
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons
Comments
Prepared for EDR 692 Applied Reading and Language Arts Research. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the coursework required for the post-masters' Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy.