Contemporary Children’s Literature in Education Courses: Diverse, Complex, and Critical

Contemporary Children’s Literature in Education Courses: Diverse, Complex, and Critical While research has established the importance of children’s literature in classrooms, the inclusion of children’s literature courses in teacher preparation programs increasingly faces resistance. A team of children’s literature and literacy education scholars conducted a national survey of children’s literature courses in P-8 teacher certification programs to better understand the role these courses currently serve. Survey questions centered on course types, formats, descriptions, goals/objectives, readings, and assignments. Initial analysis focused on a comparison of undergraduate and dual-degree programs, and further analysis of a subset of undergraduate courses involved cross-data comparison between course descriptions, course objectives/goals, and course assignment descriptions. Cross-program analyses largely revealed many commonalities between undergraduate and dual-degree programs. In-depth cross-data comparison resulted in two key findings: (1) significant attention to diversity in courses, and (2) striking complexity and volume of assignments requiring students to understand, analyze, and integrate quality children’s literature into classrooms. Overall, the survey results offer a compelling argument for the centrality of children’s literature courses, particularly those that focus on cultural diversity, in teacher education programs

Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English

Since 2003, RTE has published the annual “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English,” and we are proud to share these curated and annotated citations once again. The goal of the annual bibliography is to offer a synthesis of the research published in the area of English language arts within the past year that may be of interest to RTE readers. Abstracted citations and those featured in the “Other Related Research” sections were published, either in print or online, between June 2019 and June 2020. The bibliography is divided into nine subject area sections. A three-person team of scholars with diverse research interests and background experiences in preK–16 educational settings reviewed and selected the manuscripts for each section using library databases and leading empirical journals. Each team abstracted significant contributions to the body of peer-reviewed studies that addressed the current research questions and concerns in their topic area