The Teacher Educators’ Journal

Latest TTEJ Issue, Volume 19

Volume 17 (April 2024) Guest User Volume 17 (April 2024) Guest User

Starting with Stories: Leveraging Children's and Adolescent Literature to Teach for Anti-Racist and Global Competence

As we consider the growing number of children from immigrant and refugee backgrounds that our schools serve, the importance of fostering anti-racist educators through teacher education is of the utmost importance. While anti-racist work can be a challenging and ongoing persona journey for every educator, engaging teacher education students with diverse children’s and adolescent literature can lead to meaningful self-reflection that can foster empathy and global competence. This article shares how online university course modules were designed, with funding from the Longview Foundation, to support pre- and in-service educators to engage with children’s and adolescent literature centered on the lived stories of immigrant and refugee families through scaffolded reading and thinking protocols as a model for using literature to encourage empathy and global competence with young learners. Pre- and in-service teachers reported several benefits, including an increased awareness of the importance of diverse literature, deepened self-reflection and empathy, and meaningful connections to classroom practice, thereby benefiting educators and their learners alike.

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