Transcending and Transacting: Children's Literature Pedagogy

While many scholars have considered how young people read and respond to multicultural children s literature, few studies have contributed to our knowledge about how adult readers make sense of these texts. This research investigates how preservice teachers in an undergraduate children s literature class read and responded to multicultural children s literature. Teacher educators have been struggling to understand how to prepare teacher candidates for the diverse classrooms they will enter. This qualitative project emerged from a constructivist paradigm and involved narrative methods. Data sources included: student writing, whole class and small group discussions, artifacts from class activities, fieldnotes, and a researcher reflective journal. Analysis and interpretation was conducted to develop understandings of the ways preservice teachers map their personal stories onto the stories in multicultural books and what those maps can teach us about preparing them for diverse classrooms.