Heightening Awareness about the Importance of Using Multicultural Literature.

Using multicultural literature in the classroom has become a focus in recent years as classrooms have become more diverse. While offering teachers and students many opportunities to gain broader understandings about the world, the use of multicultural literature also presents challenges. The challenge is not only obtaining high quality multicultural texts, but the greater challenge may be creating an awareness among teachers of the important role multicultural literature plays in the lives of children. Multicultural literature helps children identify with their own culture, exposes children to other cultures, and opens the dialogue on issues regarding diversity. As instructors who teach language arts methods courses, these challenges became evident through an assignment given to our preservice teachers in which students were prompted to examine their beliefs and practices regarding the use of multicultural literature in the classroom. It is not uncommon for preservice teachers to have unexamined beliefs about cultural diversity and to have little understanding of the impact of their beliefs on classroom interaction, discussion and practices (Sleeter, 2001; Wiggans & Folio, 1999; Willis & Harris, 1997). This became apparent as our students shared their ideas after reading and reflecting upon “African American children’s literature that helps students find themselves: Selection guidelines for grades K-3” (Hefflin & Barksdale-Ladd, 2001). In this article, Hefflin and Barksdale-Ladd (2001) discuss the importance of children relating to characters and situations found in books reflective of their own culture. The absence of African American characters and culture in books found in many primary classrooms is discussed and its impact on children of color is highlighted. Students need to be able to make connections between literature and their everyday lives. Children need to receive affirmation of themselves and their culture through literature (Bieger, 1995/1996), and be able to connect text to self in order to promote greater meaning (Dietrich & Ralph, 1995; Keene & Zimmerman, 1997; Rosenblatt, 1978). With this in mind, we set out to explore prospective teacher’s understandings of the use of multicultural literature in the classroom. Specifically, we examined changes in their beliefs and proposed practices based on new understandings regarding the importance of using literature in the classroom that portrays a variety of cultures, themes and views. Our students were asked to respond to the Hefflin and Barksdale-Ladd article using one or more of the following prompts (adapted from Reif, 1992): quote and discuss, ask questions, share experiences/memories, react, and/or connect. Upon reading these reflections, we were struck by the Heightening Awarness about the Importance of Using Multicultural Literature