Call for Papers
Learning and Teaching Children’s Literature in Europe
4-6 July, 2011
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
Proposals are invited for a two-day conference to be held at the University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. The conference is the culmination of a two-year research project, funded by a grant under the Comenius sub-programme of the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. The project web site can be found here: http://www.um.es/childrensliterature/site/http://www.um.es/childrensliterature/site/.
Conference participants will be drawn from teachers, academics, local education consultants, student teachers and organisations engaged in promoting and developing practice using children’s literature.
The project’s aim is to gather, analyse and disseminate information about the learning and teaching of children’s literature with children in the 8-11 age group in the United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey and Iceland. Using surveys and focus groups, the researchers studied the attitudes to children’s literature of both teachers and students, inside and outside the classroom. Amongst the areas investigated were: the amount and type of reading undertaken, at school and at home; reading choices and preferences; teaching aims and techniques; the relationship of reading to literacy; and the use of literature as a medium for information, moral or cultural values, and multicultural experience.
This conference will be, in part, an opportunity to begin to disseminate the project’s findings, an interim summary of which will be made available to all those attending. However, this is also a forum for the discussion of the issues addressed by the project. We therefore invite 20-minute papers, hour-long workshops and presentations on any of the following areas:
- The teaching of books in translation, and/or with foreign settings and characters
- The use of whole texts versus extracts in teaching
- Interactive teaching strategies using children’s literature
- Whole school initiatives to develop the use of children’s literature
- Using literature for pleasure
- Using literature in order to teach about the world (e.g. history, geography, other cultures)
- Using literature in order to teach literacy skills
- Choosing literature for school
- Children’s reading outside school
- Reading schemes
- Literature and social class
- Children’s access to literature
- Books and electronic media
We welcome papers written from the perspective of education, psychology, sociology, the humanities, literature and other relevant disciplines; workshops led by teachers, schools and local education departments/authorities, consultants and authors; presentations by teachers, student teachers and children.
Please note that we are interested in papers relating to anywhere within Europe, not merely the four countries directly involved in the project. If in doubt about the relevance of your proposal, please contact Dr Charlie Butler at Charles.Butler@uwe.ac.uk. Proposals of 200-250 words should also be sent to Charlie by 30 November 2010.
A copy of this Call for Papers can be found at: http://www.um.es/childrensliterature/site/mod/resource/view.php?id=261