Cultural Erasures in Curricular Materials Containing Racial Diversity

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Analyzing Literature for Missing and Misrepresented Stories (Table 9)

Abstract

This paper focuses on a subset of data from a larger critical multicultural analysis examining the racial, ethnic, gender, and class representations of the read aloud content in the McGraw-Hill Wonders first grade curriculum (2020). Drawing on Bishop’s (1992) model of cultural specificity of children’s literature and Aho & Alter (2018) notion of narrative erasure, our findings indicate that racial and ethnic diversity was primarily represented in images and rarely in textual descriptions. Additionally diverse characters were primarily represented as peripheral characters. Our analysis indicates that the set of curriculum materials inadvertently centers Whiteness in its erasure of ethnic and cultural nuance and contemporary experiences of historically marginalized populations. Implications for teacher education and curricular development are included.

Authors

• Stacey J Korson, Eastern Kentucky University
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca E. Linares, Rowan University
  Presenting Author

• Dorian Harrison, The Ohio State University - Newark
  Presenting Author