Learning objectives
The course is conceived as professional training, and aims at providing to the student adequate knowledge of children’s and juvenile literature in its historical development and in today’s publishing landscape; to ensure pedagogical, psychological and didactic competences, essential to the choice and evaluation of the books and its best use in various educational contexts; to improve one’s own personal animation and selection abilities; to enhance one’s own human and social sensitivity to “difference” in every sense, to overcome prejudices and stereotypes.
Prerequisites
No prerequisite
Course unit content
Educational history and theory of books for children and adolescents; book and education to global dimension; the playful dimension of children’s books.
Full programme
After the debate on epistemological questions related to the subject, the history of books for people being educated will be critically revisited, from the origins to our time, with a pedagogical re-examination of some children’s literature classics, and then of new writing models and emerging genres and subgenres in this literature. Next, the multicultural facet of modern literature for children and young people will be examined, focusing on the possible role of fairy-tales from other civilizations and culture in the education to global dimension.
MODULE 2
This module will be chiefly dedicated to education to reading and to the playful dimension of children’s books, with particular attention to animation strategies in various educational contexts, through nursery rhymes, limericks, children’s songs, to enhance interest and motivation to reading. The writer and librarian Marino Cassini will be proposed as a model of educator with the book and to the book, and the potential of enigmistics as resource to attract young people to the written page will be illustrated.
Bibliography
A. Nobile, D. Giancane, C. Marini, Letteratura per l'infanzia e l'adolescenza, La Scuola, Brescia, 2011; D. Giancane, C'era una volta nel mondo. Le fiabe dei cinque continenti, Cacucci, Bari, 2007; un libro a scelta tra i seguenti: A. e C. Rodia, L'evoluzione del meraviglioso, Liguori, Napoli, 2012; C. Rodia, La poesia per l'infanzia in Italia, Pensa, Lecce, 2013.
Lettura di almeno 10 fiabe di Perrault, Grimm e/o Andersen.
Reading of at least 10 fairy-tales of Perrault, Grimm and/or Andersen.
A. Nobile, Gioco e infanzia, La Scuola, Brescia, 2002; A. Nobile (a cura di), Marino Cassini, scrittore per ragazzi, animatore, critico e saggista, Liguori, Napoli, 2011.
Teaching methods
Frontal lesson, with the support of multimedia tools, and critical discussion in groups; seminar and peer-conducted activities; simulations of didactic interventions.
Assessment methods and criteria
The final assessment will be a written open-questions test followed by an oral examination.
These will be the pass-mark criteria: Knowledge of children’s and juvenile literature in its historical development; assimilation of course contents and ability of critical re-evaluation; acquisition of pedagogical, psychological and didactical sensitivity and competence; improving of one’s animation and selection skills.
Further assessment criteria are the logic and argomentation coherence, exposition skills and vocabulary appropriateness.
Other information
During frontal lessons and seminars crucial questions of the subject matter will be discussed, and a psycho-pedagogical analysis will be conducted, in an intercultural dimension, of classical fairy-tales, fairy-tales of various cultures and civilization, recent comics, books and magazines for children aimed at promoting education to global dimension. Individual papers and dissertations proposed by students on a voluntary basis will be discussed as well. Moreover, riddles and language plays will be proposed with the aid of images, and new strategies for animatio nand motivation to reading will be proposed.
