Children's literature and child development

Just coming up for air after handing in Assignment 1b and thought I'd post a few things I've learned so far in this unit with regards to children's literature and child development.
* Rosenblatt's theory of reader response is an excellent guide to how a child will respond to a book. There are two types of responses to a text-
1) efferent responses in which readers are reading for information, looking for answers within the literature, drawing conclusions and generating opinions from what they have read and                                        
2) aesthetic responses which are more emotionally based and ask the reader to communicate how they felt or what they experienced as they were reading a text.

* Erikson's 8 stages of development can help with book selection: (only looking at the first 5 stages)
1) Trust vs mistrust (birth- 1and1/2yrs.) - books about parents bonding with children
2) Autonomy vs shame (1 and 1/2 - 3yrs) - books about independence
3) Initiative vs guilt (3-5yrs) - books about mastering skills, demonstrating responsibility and sense of purpose, children and increasing initiative
4) Industry vs inferiority (5-12 yrs) - books about developing new relationships beyond the family, positive peer relationships, adventure and intrigue, world around them
5) Identity vs identity confusion (Adolescence) - books about coming of age, searching for own identity etc.

* Piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development:
1) Sensory motor
2) Pre-operational (2-7 yrs) - look for stories about relationships, constructive play, asking questions, following rules, make-believe
3) Concrete - operational (7-11 yrs) - stories about problem solving, combining ideas to solve problems, mentally retracing steps, how appearances can be deceiving
4) Formal - operational (11 -    ) - books with themes about abstract and logical thinking

Children's Literature - ETL402 - the beginning!

This week I started the subject that I have been most looking forward to in this entire course, Children's Literature. I have always had a love of picture books and sharing my favourite books with my own kids has been a lot of fun. We have all come to love The Jolly Postman series by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. Surprisingly though, my love of the Hairy Maclary series (I love the rhyme, rhythm and illustrations) has stopped at me. My son, from early on has shown a love for Pamela Allen and will still occasionally bring home one even though he is nearly 9 and they aren't in his "section" of the school library. My daughter is more of a mystery when it comes to books. Early on she liked any character that she saw on tv that was on the cover of a book, now, at 5 and a half there is no one author in particular she just likes any book about fairies or princesses. 

Some of the readings for ETL 402 deal with the history of children's literature and this, which I thought was going to be quite boring and tiresome, turned out to be very interesting. 
Some highlights are:  
* Middle Ages - stories were passed down orally and acted out in plays
* 1440's - Gutenberg invented the printing press
* 1476 - Caxton introduced the printing press to England
* 1500's - Illustrations began to accompany text
* 1689 - 1800's - The New England Primer, that taught the alphabet and lesson in morality, became popular and is thought to have sold between 6 to 8 million copies
* 1697 - Charles Perrault published French fairy tales titled "Tales of Mother Goose" and children started to read for enjoyment
* Early 1770's - adventure books became popular with Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe, 1719) and Gulliver's Travels (Swift, 1726) being published
* 1744 - Newberry published "A Pretty Little Pocketbook", written and illustrated exclusively to entertain and teach children. Illustrations became coloured, not woodcut.
* 1812 - Grimm brothers published their book of fairy tales
* 1846 - Lear published the first book of limericks and humour, "The Book of Nonsense"
* From 1860's genres in children's literature began expanding with stories about , family (Little Women by Alcott in 1867); animals (The Jungle Book by Kipling in 1894); fantasy ( Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Carroll in 1865); science fiction (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Verne in 1870); and poetry ( A Child's Garden of Verse by Stevenson in 1885).
* 1860's - Evans mastered mutiblock wood engraving and colour printing became less expensive and picturebooks for children began being published
* 1906 - Anderson's original fairy tales were published
* Early 1900's - separate divisions for children's literature were created in publishing houses. Children's rooms were created in libraries
* 1920's - Book week was established
* Late 1920's - children's books cost aproximately $2 and were usually onlt bought as Christmas or birthday presents. Simon Shuster began publishing Golden books for 25c
* 1930's - the offset press which developed. This enabled books to be printed in colour, inexpensively and in large quantities
* 1934 - comic books were introduced and crossword puzzle books began to be published
* 1950's - information books flooded the market
* 1971 - Scholastic began to market book clubs to Australian schools
* 1980's - Children's books were linked with popular tv shows and videos and audio tapes were released 
* 1990's - digital books began to emerge

(Information from: Barone, D. M. (2011). A brief history of children's literature. Children's literature in the classroom : engaging lifelong readers (pp. 8-19). New York: Guilford Press and Madej, K. (2003). Towards digital narrative for children: from education to entertainment, a historical perspective. ACM Computers and Entertainment, Vol. 1, No. 1.)

Bogged down ...moving on

Unfortunately I got bogged down in EER500, the reading, the research question, the refining of the research question and the re-refining of the research question that I forgot to add to my blog. Whoops!! Now that Assignment 2 has been handed in I can reflect on my learning. I found it really hard to go through all the motions of the research but finishing it with no real end. For those of you who have done the subject you will know, you don't go through with the research you just write about it. It's a little frustrating and I must admit, I didn't do a thorough job as I should have. By the time I had written 2000 words I was exhausted. There is a lot of reading and justifying of why you would use a particular research method over another. My downfall, of course, the justifying. So by the time I got to the last 1000 words I was checking ever paragraph..am I there yet?? Not good.

I cannot rave enough about our lecturer though. Bev is the first lecturer who made me feel like an actual student and not just a name in the forum. She reached out and was concerned about your progress, she emailed you back straight away, she made herself available for any little query and for that I am very thankful. The topic was hard but the lecturer, the best! I am hoping that I run across her again at some stage but who knows, 5 subjects down now, 3 to go!!!!!!! :)

Research topic dramas

I am a big fan of Bev's policy, "Don't stew" but have found myself doing just that. Honing in on a research topic has been tricky. According to Cresswell (2012), to begin your research you need to identify an educational issue that needs to be resolved. Well, I have a few doozies to choose from. My main concern is that the Teacher Librarian will become a thing of the past, replaced by library technicians or teachers aides. Secondly I am concerned about the NSW government's idea, proposing that the Principal should be in charge of allocating funds at their school. But how to turn these issues into research questions has got me "stewing". With less than a week until this part is due to be handed in, I'm going to have to go with option 3..... to be continued...

The semester begins.....

After losing my study mojo last year, I am back and ready to go!
I must admit that this subject scares me - Introduction to Educational Research. After reading the subject outline, it seems extremely daunting. On the plus side though, the lecturer, Bev Moriarty seems fabulous! I am a big fan of her positive outlook and go-get 'em attitude. Quite refreshing really. This is something that I need to remember myself, when entering a classroom, that positive energy goes a long way towards a great day of learning.
 I am off to tackle Assessment 1 (Part A) due in 2 weeks.... yikes! Wish me luck!