Critical Literacies for Peace-Building: Envisioning Social Transformation Through Children's Literature

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Fourteen
  In Roundtable Session: Transformative Pedagogical Spaces: Critical Literacies, Racial Literacies, and Translanguaging in and Beyond the Classroom (Table 3)

Abstract

Guided by a consequential view of literacy education, our study aimed at fostering peace education through critical literacies with young children in the Colombian Caribbean region. Using Critical Participatory Action Research, we worked with teachers from a public school to dialogically design and implement a pedagogical intervention featuring a list of curated children’s storybooks in Spanish, which dealt with issues affecting peacebuilding in their school community. Findings demonstrated that a consequential approach to literacy development allowed for children’s critical and socially transformative responses. Teachers could also approach their schools’ and their students’ social realities more significantly, as well as exercise reflective practice in their communities, contributing to close inequality gaps in the access and quality of education through their work.

Authors

• Jesus Guerra-Lyons, Universidad del Norte
  Presenting Author

• Lina Trigos-Carrillo, Universidad del Norte
  Presenting Author

• Luzkarime Calle Díaz, El Recuerdo School
  Presenting Author

• Jorge Herrera, Universidad del Norte
  Presenting Author