This study examined the potential of a residency/concurrent enrollment program to support rural s... more This study examined the potential of a residency/concurrent enrollment program to support rural students that are interested in the field of education. With 17 students in the program, the goals were to make a career in teaching more accessible to rural high school students through concurrent enrollment, to help future teachers solidify their career choice, and to establish partnerships with rural districts to continue expanding concurrent enrollment and ultimately fuel the teacher pipeline. For the purposes of this study, we investigated how these efforts might influence high school students’ understanding of teaching as a profession and examined if and how the program might be able to facilitate participants’ first steps toward becoming culturally aware, highly effective educators who can return and give back to their own communities. Using an interpretivist model of qualitative research, we found that community was an essential thread that was multifaceted, complex, and extended ...
Romanticized rural storytelling creates difficulties for rural children in finding mirrors, seein... more Romanticized rural storytelling creates difficulties for rural children in finding mirrors, seeing people like themselves and places like their homes as principal characters and settings in picturebooks. The same romanticism likewise makes it unlikely for picturebook readers in cities and suburbs to find realistic windows into rural life. Despite children’s book publishers’ purposeful increases in realistic representations of children across racial and cultural groups in recent decades, realistic and diverse narratives within rural spaces remain underrepresented, if not invisible. Drawing on critical rural theory (Fulkerson & Thomas, 2014; Williams, 1973) and tenets of nostalgia and the rural idyll (Boym, 2001, 2007; Sanders, 2013), this article examines representations of rural life in picturebooks with integral rural settings, focusing on stereotypical representations of isolation, nostalgia, and rural childhoods. The analysis highlights how depictions of movement have a direct ef...
Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer a... more Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer an interpretive space where readers are positioned to construct meanings in transaction with the written language, visual images, and design elements created by authors, illustrators and publishers (Serafini & Ladd, 2008; Sipe, 1999). This study was designed to better understand how readers navigated the multimodal landscape of historical fiction picturebooks and constructed meanings in transaction with the various semiotic resources made available in these multimodal texts.
Youngs describes how fifth graders interpreted Japanese American Internment picturebooks and deve... more Youngs describes how fifth graders interpreted Japanese American Internment picturebooks and developed awareness of injustice and irony as presented in the visual and written narratives.IDEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT childhood play into the production and selection of children's literature. Various ideologies proclaim that children should be happy and free from stories of evil, children's literature should help children encounter the joys in life, it should be filled with bright colors to keep children's attention, and it should teach a good lesson (Nodelman & Reimer, 2003; Tunneil & Jacobs, 2008). However, many authors and illustrators of historical fiction challenge mainstream or traditional ideologies by telling stories that shed light on some darker moments in human history. They challenge the notion that children should only be exposed to literature that has a happy ending or mirrors dominant ideologies.Authors Allen Say, Yoshiko Uchida, Amy Lee-Tai, and Eve Bunting ...
Learning to question power relationships, symbols of power, and how power is used and negotiated ... more Learning to question power relationships, symbols of power, and how power is used and negotiated in children’s literature through critical dialogue can support young readers to move toward a social justice mindset. The authors of this article share critical strategies and analytic tools to support teachers and readers to analyze types of power, power shifts, potential injustices, and how characters gained power and agency in contemporary picturebooks. We highlight how to attend to the visual design elements and peritextual features to analyze power structure across the visual narrative as well. The authors model using these strategies and tools through their own analysis of a cornerstone text showcasing how to use these strategies in an interpretive, interactive read-aloud. A text set is provided that describes the types of power, symbols of power, and themes within each book. To promote opportunities to dive deeper into the analysis we included some older, popular children’s pictur...
The way readers read, share, discuss, and analyze children’s literature has been affected by the ... more The way readers read, share, discuss, and analyze children’s literature has been affected by the emergence of multimodal and digitally based texts. Unlike traditional, print-based texts, multimodal and digitally based texts require readers to attend to visual images, design elements, and hypertextual elements in addition to written language (Serafini, 2010). Because of these changes, new instructional approaches and resources will be required to support the development of young readers in a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment. Making a shift to a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment requires educators to consider the following three questions: (1) How will the role of children’s literature be affected by a shift to a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment? (2) What new abilities and skills will readers need to navigate and comprehend multimodal and digitally based texts and resources? (3) How do teachers incorporate multimodal and digitally based resources into an already crowded reading curricu...
ABSTRACT As readers encounter children's literature in new formats and modes of delivery,... more ABSTRACT As readers encounter children's literature in new formats and modes of delivery, the basic processes of reading, sharing, discussing and analyzing texts will change. Because of these changes, new instructional approaches and resources will be required to support the development of young readers in a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment. In a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment, readers might read children's picturebooks and novels on e-readers, share their ideas on web-based discussion boards and analyze texts using digital tools and resources.
This study examined the potential of a residency/concurrent enrollment program to support rural s... more This study examined the potential of a residency/concurrent enrollment program to support rural students that are interested in the field of education. With 17 students in the program, the goals were to make a career in teaching more accessible to rural high school students through concurrent enrollment, to help future teachers solidify their career choice, and to establish partnerships with rural districts to continue expanding concurrent enrollment and ultimately fuel the teacher pipeline. For the purposes of this study, we investigated how these efforts might influence high school students’ understanding of teaching as a profession and examined if and how the program might be able to facilitate participants’ first steps toward becoming culturally aware, highly effective educators who can return and give back to their own communities. Using an interpretivist model of qualitative research, we found that community was an essential thread that was multifaceted, complex, and extended ...
Romanticized rural storytelling creates difficulties for rural children in finding mirrors, seein... more Romanticized rural storytelling creates difficulties for rural children in finding mirrors, seeing people like themselves and places like their homes as principal characters and settings in picturebooks. The same romanticism likewise makes it unlikely for picturebook readers in cities and suburbs to find realistic windows into rural life. Despite children’s book publishers’ purposeful increases in realistic representations of children across racial and cultural groups in recent decades, realistic and diverse narratives within rural spaces remain underrepresented, if not invisible. Drawing on critical rural theory (Fulkerson & Thomas, 2014; Williams, 1973) and tenets of nostalgia and the rural idyll (Boym, 2001, 2007; Sanders, 2013), this article examines representations of rural life in picturebooks with integral rural settings, focusing on stereotypical representations of isolation, nostalgia, and rural childhoods. The analysis highlights how depictions of movement have a direct ef...
Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer a... more Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer an interpretive space where readers are positioned to construct meanings in transaction with the written language, visual images, and design elements created by authors, illustrators and publishers (Serafini & Ladd, 2008; Sipe, 1999). This study was designed to better understand how readers navigated the multimodal landscape of historical fiction picturebooks and constructed meanings in transaction with the various semiotic resources made available in these multimodal texts.
Youngs describes how fifth graders interpreted Japanese American Internment picturebooks and deve... more Youngs describes how fifth graders interpreted Japanese American Internment picturebooks and developed awareness of injustice and irony as presented in the visual and written narratives.IDEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT childhood play into the production and selection of children's literature. Various ideologies proclaim that children should be happy and free from stories of evil, children's literature should help children encounter the joys in life, it should be filled with bright colors to keep children's attention, and it should teach a good lesson (Nodelman & Reimer, 2003; Tunneil & Jacobs, 2008). However, many authors and illustrators of historical fiction challenge mainstream or traditional ideologies by telling stories that shed light on some darker moments in human history. They challenge the notion that children should only be exposed to literature that has a happy ending or mirrors dominant ideologies.Authors Allen Say, Yoshiko Uchida, Amy Lee-Tai, and Eve Bunting ...
Learning to question power relationships, symbols of power, and how power is used and negotiated ... more Learning to question power relationships, symbols of power, and how power is used and negotiated in children’s literature through critical dialogue can support young readers to move toward a social justice mindset. The authors of this article share critical strategies and analytic tools to support teachers and readers to analyze types of power, power shifts, potential injustices, and how characters gained power and agency in contemporary picturebooks. We highlight how to attend to the visual design elements and peritextual features to analyze power structure across the visual narrative as well. The authors model using these strategies and tools through their own analysis of a cornerstone text showcasing how to use these strategies in an interpretive, interactive read-aloud. A text set is provided that describes the types of power, symbols of power, and themes within each book. To promote opportunities to dive deeper into the analysis we included some older, popular children’s pictur...
The way readers read, share, discuss, and analyze children’s literature has been affected by the ... more The way readers read, share, discuss, and analyze children’s literature has been affected by the emergence of multimodal and digitally based texts. Unlike traditional, print-based texts, multimodal and digitally based texts require readers to attend to visual images, design elements, and hypertextual elements in addition to written language (Serafini, 2010). Because of these changes, new instructional approaches and resources will be required to support the development of young readers in a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment. Making a shift to a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment requires educators to consider the following three questions: (1) How will the role of children’s literature be affected by a shift to a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment? (2) What new abilities and skills will readers need to navigate and comprehend multimodal and digitally based texts and resources? (3) How do teachers incorporate multimodal and digitally based resources into an already crowded reading curricu...
ABSTRACT As readers encounter children's literature in new formats and modes of delivery,... more ABSTRACT As readers encounter children's literature in new formats and modes of delivery, the basic processes of reading, sharing, discussing and analyzing texts will change. Because of these changes, new instructional approaches and resources will be required to support the development of young readers in a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment. In a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment, readers might read children's picturebooks and novels on e-readers, share their ideas on web-based discussion boards and analyze texts using digital tools and resources.
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Papers by Suzette Youngs