Think outside the book: Transformative justice using children’s literature in educational settings

Abstract

Using Alexis Jemal’s conceptualization of transformative potential, founded on Paulo Freire’s idea of Critical Consciousness, a guiding transformative justice approach and accompanying questionnaire are provided here that can be adapted into any existing early childhood or elementary curriculum for children. The approach provides teachers with a methodology to search for new books and resources and use existing ones to foster their own and their students’ critical social consciousness. The transformative justice approach has two objectives: one, to enable teachers to help understand, guide, and mediate differences in the context of equity and social justice; and two, to equip children with social awareness and critical consciousness to identify stereotypes and biases, and to build solidarities between and among themselves. The transformative justice approach does not actively avoid books or resources with stereotypes or biases, but seeks to build skill sets in children and teachers to recognize and counter biases and stereotypes using texts as learning tools. It synthesizes and builds on anti-bias and culturally-sensitive pedagogies to intentionally center structural and systemic inequities, as well as fosters social awareness and critical thinking in both teachers and students by reimagining the classroom as a collaborative learning space.