Making A/r/tographic Novels to Construct Subjects and Build Critical Thinking About Asylum-Seeker and Refugee Learners

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Arts-Based Educational Research as Provocation Within Teacher Education

Abstract

I present an ABER project that consists of an a/r/tographic novel and picture books created by Early Childhood Education students to investigate critical thinking on beliefs and values about social justice in education, and about young refugee and asylum-seeker children.

The project theorizes on learner subjectivities placed on refugee and asylum-seeker children in a host country. The novel and picture books explore how a character as a ‘constructed subject’ can help in critical thinking about refugee and asylum-seeker identities, rights and issues.

Constructing picture books with pre-service teachers helps them make connections with critical issues in education, and develops empathy skills about the experiences of others on an individual basis through fantasy, metaphor, drawn imagery and sequential narrative.

Author

• Linda Michelle Knight, Queensland University of Technology