There has been much recent scholarship on the importance of engaging students of all ages in the critical readings of texts. This study explores a group of pre-service teachers' responses to a set of experiences designed to encourage them to respond critically to several picture book versions of the American-Japanese conflict in World War II, focusing particular attention on Sadako by Eleanor Coerr (1993). Although a presentation by a visiting scholar from Japan highlighted the “constructedness” of the Sadako myth and outlined the historical and cultural inaccuracies of Coerr's telling of the story, the pre-service teachers in the study chose to believe the truth of the story and based their choices about teaching this literature to children on their pre-existing assumptions. The study examines reasons the pre-service teachers may have responded as they did and challenges teacher educators to develop more effective methods to support pre-service teachers as they select literature and develop their own pedagogical strategies to promote thoughtful critical conversations.
References
1.
AllenA. M. A. (1997). Creating space for discussions about social justice and equity in an elementary classroom. Language Arts, 74, 518–524.
2.
ApolL. (1998). “But what does this have to do with kids?”: Literary theory in the children's literature classroom. Journal of Children's Literature, 24 (2), 32–46.
3.
ApolL.RopS. (2001, December). Challenging preservice teachers' assumptions about children's responses to literature through the use of videotape examples. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Reading Conference, San Antonio, TX.
4.
BeachR. (1993). A teacher's introduction to reader-response theories. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
5.
BeachR. (1997). Critical discourse theory and reader response: How discourses constitute reader stances and social contexts. Reader, 37, 1–26.
6.
BeachR. (2000). Critical issues: Reading and responding to literature at the level of activity. Journal of Literacy Research, 32, 237–251.
7.
BeckC.Nelson-FaulknerS.PierceK. M. (2000). Historical fiction: Teaching tool or literary experience. Language Arts, 77, 546–555.
8.
BrucknerK. (1961/1962). Sadako wants to live. (LoobF., Trans.). Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Co. Inc. (Original work published in German, 1961).
9.
CannonJ. (1993). Stellaluna. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
10.
CliffordJ. (1979). Transactional teaching and the literary experience. English Journal, 68 (9), 36–39.
11.
CoerrE. (1977). Sadako and the thousand paper cranes. New York: Putnam.
12.
CoerrE. (1993). Sadako. New York: Putnam.
13.
ComberB. (2001). Critical literacy: Power and pleasure with language in the early years. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 24, 168–181.
14.
EncisoP. (1994). Cultural identity and response to literature. Language Arts, 71, 524–533.
15.
EncisoP.JenkinsC.RogersT.TysonC.MarshallE.RobinsonD.WissmanJ.Price-DennisD.CoreE.MorssB.CordovaC.Youngsteadt-ParrishD. (2000). Historical facts and fictions: Representing and reading diverse perspectives on the past. The New Advocate, 13, 279–290.
16.
FaustM. (2000). Reconstructing familiar metaphors: John Dewey and Louise Rosenblatt on literary art as experience. Research in the Teaching of English, 35, 9–34.
17.
FreireP. (1991). The importance of the act of reading. In MitchellC.WeilerK. (Ed.), Rewriting literacy: Culture and the discourse of the other (pp. 139–145). Toronto: OISE Press.
18.
GaldaL.BeachR. (2001). Theory and research into practice: Response to literature as a cultural activity. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 64–73.
19.
GrossmanP. L. (1991a). Overcoming the apprenticeship of observation in teacher education coursework. Teaching and Teacher Education, 7, 345–357.
20.
GrossmanP. L. (1991b). What are we talking about anyway? Subject matter knowledge of secondary teachers. In BrophyJ. E. (Ed.), Advances in Research in Teaching: Vol. 2. Teacher's subject matter knowledge and classroom instruction (pp. 245–264). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
HartP.RowleyJ. (1996). Different, but alike: An exploration of pre-service teacher decision making with regard to the selection of children's literature for classroom use. Reading Research and Instruction, 35, 209–222.
HollindaleP. (1988). Ideology and the children's book. Signal, 55 (1), 3–22.
25.
Holt-ReynoldsD. (1992). Personal history-based beliefs as relevant prior knowledge in course work. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 325–349.
26.
JungkR. (1958). Brighter than a thousand suns. (CleughJ., Trans.). New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World. (Original work published in German, 1956).
27.
JungkR. (1961). Children of the ashes: The story of a rebirth. (FitzgibbonC., Trans.). New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World. (Original work published in German, 1959).
28.
KodamaT. (1995). Shin's tricycle. (Hokumen-JonesK., Trans.). New York: Walker. (Original work published in Japanese, 1992).
29.
LewisC. (1999). The quality of the question: Probing culture in literature-discussion groups. In EdelskyC. (Ed.), Making justice our project: Teachers working toward critical whole language practice (pp. 163–190). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
30.
LewisC. (2000). Critical issues: Limits of identification: The personal, pleasurable, and critical in reader response. Journal of Literacy Research, 32, 253–266.
31.
LortieD. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
32.
McGeeL. M.TompkinsG. (1995). Literature-based reading instruction: What's guiding the instruction?. Language Arts, 72, 405–413.
33.
MacLeodA. S. (1991). American childhood: Essays on children's literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Armonk, NY: North Castle Books.
34.
ManyJ. E. (1994). The effect of reader stance on students' personal understanding of literature. In RuddellR. B.RuddellM. R.SingerH. (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 653–667). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
35.
MarshallJ. (2000). Research on response to literature. In KamilM. L.RosenthalP. B.PearsonP. D.BarrR. (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: vol. III (pp. 381–402). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
36.
MarukiT. (1980). Hiroshima no pika. New York: Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard.
37.
MayJ. (1995). Children's literature and literary theory: Reading and writing for understanding. New York: Oxford University Press.
38.
McGillisR. (1996). The nimble reader: Literary theory and children's literature. New York: Twayne.
39.
McGillisR. (1998). Learning to read, reading to learn: Or engaging in critical pedagogy. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 22, 126–132.
40.
McLarenP. (1988). Culture or canon? Critical pedagogy and the politics of literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 58, 213–234.
41.
MellorB.PattersonA. (2001). Teaching readings? In ComberB.SimpsonA. (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in classrooms (pp. 119–134). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
42.
MosenthalP. B. (1998). Reframing the problems of adolescence and adolescent literacy: A dilemma-management perspective. In AlvermannD. E.HinchmanK. A.MooreD. W.PhelpsS. F.WaffD. R. (Eds.), Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents' lives (pp. 325–352). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
43.
NasuM. (1991). Children of the paper crane: The story of Sadako Sasaki and her struggle with the A-bomb disease. (BaldwinE. W.LeeperS. L.YoshidaK., Trans.) Armonk, NY: North Castle Books. (Original work published in Japanese, 1984).
44.
NicholsonD. (1993). Pearl Harbor child: A child's view of Pearl Harbor from attack to peace. Kansas City, MO: Woodson House.
45.
NodelmanP. (1996). The pleasures of children's literature (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.
46.
PaleyV. (1997). The girl with the brown crayon: How children use stories to shape their lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
47.
PfisterM. (1992). The rainbow fish. New York: North-South Books.
48.
RahnS. (1991). An evolving past: The story of historical fiction and nonfiction for children. The Lion and the Unicorn, 15, 1–26.
49.
RobertsS. K. (1998). Literary and personal criticism for pre-service teachers: A pedagogical imperative. Reading Horizons, 38, 171–179.
50.
RosenblattL. (1938/1984). Literature as exploration (4th ed.). New York: Modern Language Association.
51.
RutledgeM. (1997). Reading the subtext on gender. Educational Leadership55 (7), 71–73.
52.
SakamotoS.Director (1999). Sadako: A girl in Hiroshima in the twentieth century [Film]. (Available from Japan Broadcasting Corporation).
53.
SantayanaG. (1905). Life of reason, reason in common sense. New York: Scribner's.
54.
SchweikartP. (1986). Reading ourselves: Toward a feminist theory of reading. In FlynnE.SchweikartP. (Eds.), Gender and reading: Essays on readers, texts, and contexts (pp. 31–62). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
55.
SipeL. R. (1999). Children's response to literature: Author, text, reader, context. Theory into Practice, 38, 120–129.
56.
SipeL. R. (2000). The construction of literary understanding by first and second graders in oral response to picture storybook read-alouds. Reading Research Quarterly, 35, 252–272.
57.
StephensJ. (1992). Language and ideology in children's fiction. London: Longman.
58.
TsuchiyaY. (1988). Faithful elephants: A true story of animals, people and war. (DykesT. T., Trans.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (Original work published in Japan, 1951).
59.
WedmanJ.SmithN.JaredE. (1994). Demonstrating strategy application and goals from a learner's perspective: Examining pre-service teachers' talk during literature discussion. Innovative Higher Education, 19, 139–156.
60.
WolfS.CareyA.MierasE. (1996a). “What is this literachurch stuff anyway?”: Pre-service teachers' growth in understanding children's literary response. Reading Research Quarterly, 31, 130–156.
61.
WolfS.CareyA.MierasE. (1996b). What's after “What's that?”: Pre-service teachers learn to ask literary questions. Journal of Literacy Research, 28, 459–497.
62.
Wollman-BonillaJ. (1998). Outrageous viewpoints: Teachers' criteria for rejecting works of children's literature. Language Arts, 75, 287–295.
