National Identity and the Ideology of Canadian Multicultural Picture Books: Pre-Service Teachers Encountering Representations of Difference

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is an excerpt from this article: Since texts written for children and young adults both mirror cultural attitudes and play a part in acculturating young readers, we decided to explore the extent to which contemporary multicultural Canadian picture books may act as sites for interrogating shifting understandings of nationhood and identity. We pursued our investigation by means of a study involving students in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. One of the central aims of the study was to consider how these future teachers responded to literary representations of Canadian identity and how they planned to incorporate their understandings of multiculturalism in their future teaching.