Exploring teachers' knowledge of children's literature

In the context of the current debate about teaching reading, research to ascertain primary teachers' personal and professional reading practices was undertaken. The study explored teachers' reading habits and preferences, investigated their knowledge of children's literature, and documented their reported use of such texts and involvement with library services. Questionnaire responses were gathered from 1200 teachers. The data were analysed and connections made between the teachers' own reading habits and preferences, their knowledge of children's literature, their accessing practices and pedagogic use of literature in school. This paper reports on part of the dataset and focuses on teachers' knowledge of children's literature; it reveals that primary professionals lean on a narrow repertoire of authors, poets and picture fiction creators. It also discusses teachers' personal reading preferences and considers divergences and connections between these as well as the implications of the teachers' limited repertoires on the reading development of young learners.

'Response and Responsibility: Theories of the Implied Reader in Children's Literature Criticism'

Reader Response Theory remains popular within Children's Literature Criticism. It seems to offer a sensible resolution to the question of whether meaning derives from text or reader. Through a close reading of one example of this criticism, I suggest that its dualisms are constantly collapsing into appeals to singular authority. at various stages the text or the reader is wholly responsible for meaning. I further suggest that the criticism bypasses the question of interpretation through claiming knowledge of a child reader whose opinions and reactions can be unproblematically accessed. We do not have to worry about reading texts, because we can, apparently, know the child's response to them with certainty. Anything other than this claim to certainty is taken to be a failure of responsibility, a wallowing in the subjective, obscure and perverse. My intention is to reinstate reading as the responsibility of criticism.

Dissonant Voices : Philosophy, Children's Literature, and Perfectionist Education

Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different. The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children���s literature. Reading children���s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children���s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting. The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction. The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy.

'In Charge of the Truffula Seeds' : On Children's Literature, Rationality and Children's Voices in Philosophy

In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations-not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as well as let them speak for us and our rational community. In order to argue this I turn, first, to Gareth Matthews' philosophy of childhood and suggest a reconstruction of some of his concepts in line with the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Second, in order to examine more closely our conceptions of rationality and our pictures of children, I consider the children's books, The Lorax and Where is My Sister? and Henrik Ibsen's play, The Wild Duck.

Use of dental implants in children: A literature review

The aim of this literature review is to discuss the use of dental implants in growing patients and the influence of maxillary and mandibular skeletal and dental growth on the stability of those implants. It is recommended to wait for the completion of dental and skeletal growth, except for severe cases of ectodermal dysplasia.

Um percurso teórico-metodológico para leitura de “O isqueiro mágico” e “A rainha da neve”, de Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)