Abstract
This article addresses the need for student teachers to experience how to engage ecocritically with children’s literature to be able to support and develop the sustainability competencies of their future students. In order to respond to this need, we designed a research project examining how Norwegian and Catalan student teachers express and negotiate their ideas about an Italian–French picturebook in a teacher–researcher designed ecocritical literature conversation (ELC). The collected material, consisting of students’ notes and sound recorded and transcribed group discussions, was analysed following the steps of content analysis with an emphasis on finding evidence of dialogic competencies and ecocritical competencies. Although the students did not explicitly integrate ecocritical terminology in their discussions, we found that when structured in line with ideas of dialogic teaching, ecocritical thinking, and literature didactics, literature conversations proved to be a useful tool for these students to critically engage with and negotiate about representations of nature and ecological wisdom from the selected picturebook.
Highlights
A recent Norwegian study revealed that even though literature plays an important role in Language Arts education in school, little time is spent on students’ own discussions on literature [1]
Among the eight cross-cutting key competencies for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identified by the United Nations, we find collaboration competency and critical thinking competency [8] (p. 10)
In addition to the two modes mentioned, we found that, we directed the students towards expressions like I see, I think, I expect/believe in the way the tasks were presented, indicating actions of interpretation, there was frequent use of such expressions in the group discussion and some in the final reflection at the end of the ecocritical literature conversation (ELC)
Summary
A recent Norwegian study revealed that even though literature plays an important role in Language Arts education in school, little time is spent on students’ own discussions on literature [1]. To secure future students’ access to more varied ways of engaging with literature, student teachers need to experience and learn about these manifold approaches and perhaps to experience [2] and learn how to implement literature discussions and conversations so that when they become teachers, their pupils become familiar with these activities. Engaging with literature through dialogue and discussion can serve various purposes. One is to activate literary concepts in analytical approaches to text [3], and another is to identify specific themes and questions at stake in the text and discuss them in relation to the readers’ own lives [4]. A third purpose is to explore and experience how dialogues and discussion related to literature may enrich, challenge, or adjust one’s assumptions about and interpretations of the text [5]. Dialogues can impart or improve the negotiation and meaning-making skills of those who take part in the dialogue
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