Picture Books and Social Justice

Children’s Picture Books and Social Justice by Jo Panckridge and Anne-Louise O’Donoghue Abstract: Children's picture books have an increasingly significant place in early childhood classrooms.

Picture books that depict the variety of ethnic, racial, and cultural groups allow young children opportunities to develop their understandings of self, while affirming children of diverse backgrounds. A project, undertaken with a group of 5-6 year old students, aimed to explore the relationship between children’s picture books and social change and the role of children’s literature in supporting a more inclusive society. In response to the Australian Curriculum and the Early Years Learning Framework’s principles of diversity and intercultural awareness, we sought to develop our ability to select culturally inclusive literature to share in meaningful ways with our students. We were keen to understand how the sharing of culturally inclusive children's literature could assist in developing children's diverse perspectives and intercultural awareness and support children in becoming citizens with a strong sense of identity, social justice and sense of place in the world. The selection of picture books representative of diversity provided provocations for awakening children's social conscience and empathy. They explored the communities and environments around them and considered contexts and information that was beyond their immediate experience.

They considered how and why other times and places were different from their own. To share their thinking, the children had opportunities to draw, write and create using multiliteracies. Documentation of their critical and creative thinking took the form of discussion transcripts, photographs and children's work samples (writing, drawing, painting, sculpture, media, drama and movement). This provided qualitative data and an authentic record of our student’s growing understandings, metacognitive thought processes and developing awareness of cultural diversity.