Learning and Teaching Literature with the Arts for Social Justice

By: Karen Spector and James S. Chisholm and Kathryn F. Whitmore

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Synopsis: This text invites pre-service teachers to explore arts-informed practices that showcase the transformative potential of literature in the classroom. Through the lens of "stories-we-live-by," the authors recognize literature as interference, capable of disrupting the habitual patterns through which we interpret the world in order to reawaken the capacity of students and teachers alike to change. Chapters are designed to inspire students’ love of literature by fostering literary and artful encounters that provoke their thinking and sense-making. Each chapter includes engaging pedagogical features that spark thinking and analysis of literature and invite readers to further engagement. The appendices include directions for instruction as well as additional resources. An essential text for courses on children’s and adolescent literature and English methods, pre-service teachers will come away with plenty of text recommendations and arts- and social justice-informed practices to use with their future students. Through artful encounters with visual learning analyses, visual-verbal journals, drama, soundscapes, poetry, and so much more, readers examine their own transformative experiences with literature. Readers will learn to craft and curate practices that encourage engagement, imagination, experimentation, and self-awareness in and beyond the classroom.