How can multicultural children’s literature be utilized in the classroom to support transnational students to be border-crossers?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using Border Pedagogy (Giroux, H. 2005. Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York, NY: Routledge.) as a guiding lens, this study examines the third-grade Korean American students’ responses to multicultural children’s literature that illustrates different kinds of borders (i.e. racial, religious, linguistic, and physical). 14 different multicultural children’s picture books (Asian, Hispanic, European, and African) are introduced to the Korean students from transnational families in a Korean heritage language school in the U.S. throughout the semester. The findings present that the students’ responses during book discussions showed that using multicultural children’s literature supported the value of facilitating their border crossing. The findings provide implications for educators that using multicultural children’s picture books can be an influential pedagogical instrument to provide experiences of crossing borders between cultures of themselves and others. This border crossing perspective can potentially help the students construct their own cultures, experiences, and histories to better understand those of others.