Encountering Diversity through Young Adult Literature: Preservice Teachers’ Empathic Engagement in Book Club Discussions

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Literacies of Care, Culture, and Community

Abstract

This study examined how PSTs discourses on emotions demonstrated their awareness of diversity and how their empathic engagement informed their perspectives as future educators. This study analyzed PSTs’ asynchronous discussions on young adult literature addressing immigrants and refugee characters’ border-crossing journeys. Discourse analysis focusing on empathic framing revealed that PSTs expressed both cognitive empathy and emotional/affective empathy in multiple different ways. Their empathic comments highlighted the complexities in immigrants and refugees’ experiences, their resilience, and familial resources. PSTs’ discourse strategies impacted their group dynamics while facilitating PSTs’ emotional engagement. This study urges teacher educators to create a dialogic space in which PSTs collaboratively develop their emphatic mindset and imagine their roles in educating children from nondominant backgrounds.

Authors

• Kwangok Song, University of Kansas

• SoonAh Lee, Gwangju National University of Education