Term of Award
Winter 2023
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)
Document Type and Release Option
Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Committee Chair
Ming Fang He
Committee Member 1
Alma Stevenson
Committee Member 2
Robert Lake
Committee Member 3
Amina Chaudhri
Committee Member 3 Email
a-chaudhri@neiu.edu
Abstract
Voices from people of color are, and have been, historically silenced. In addition, voices of young children are overlooked and undervalued. This dissertation is an ethnographic inquiry in which I work alongside ten, diverse children in a first grade classroom, with the intent to explore how multicultural children’s literature helps these first graders to develop their cultural empathy towards those who are different than themselves and accept one another’s differences. Theoretically my dissertation work build upon three major bodies of literature such as the critical literacy (Comber & Simpson, 2001; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Luke, 2012, 2018; Nieto, 2010; Vasquez, 2004; Vasquez, Janks, & Comber, 2019); cultivating cultural empathy through multicultural children’s literature (e.g., Bishop, 1990; Verducci, 2000; Botelho & Rudman, 2009; Noddings, 2010; Gopalakrishnan, 2011);, and culturally responsive/relevant/sustaining pedagogy (Gay, 2000/2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 1994/2009; Paris & Alim, 2017), Methodologically my dissertation builds on the ethnographic works of Valdés (2001), Vasquez (2004), Igoa (!995), Schultz (2008/2018), and Carger (1996). These works inspired my research with young children and helped me realize my work could fill the gap in the literature by listening and amplifying the words and voices of my young students. I hope my work will inspire other educators to pursue culturally responsive/relevant/sustaining curricula for their own students in order to value students’ funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) and intentionally hear what their students have to say.
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Marianna L., "Expanding Cultural Empathy Through Multicultural Children’s Literature: An Ethnographic Inquiry with First Grade Children in Rural Georgia" (2023). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2653.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/2653
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
