Exploring Social Issues Through Youth Literature

Course Catalog Description 

This course explores social issues of identity, power, and equity by reading and responding to youth literature through a humanist perspective to consider how to take action and create hope in dark times.  

Expanded Course Description  

This course explores social issues by reading and responding to youth literature set in local and global communities through a humanist perspective. By pairing scholarly readings with children’s and young adult literature reflecting multiple cultural perspectives, students will critically examine their understanding of social issues and how youth are positioned in society. Students will develop an understanding of childhood/adolescence as socially constructed concepts, and how social identity categories such as race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class, shape the experiences of youth across social locations. Students will critique the cultural worlds in youth literature and their responses to these books through inquiring into how their understandings are socially and culturally constructed. Students will build on their understanding to conceptualize how social issues impact their own communities and how they might use a humanist perspective and their social locations to effect change toward a more equitable society and world–thus creating hope in dark times.  

Students will be immersed in a humanist perspective by exploring youth literature through three humanist lenses:  

Students will use these frameworks to write three critical essays using each lens to reflect on their understanding of social issues in local and global contexts, drawing on course readings, class discussions, and journals.  

Equity & Diversity Attribute 

This course centers the experiences of culturally diverse and historically marginalized/resilient communities as reflected in children’s and young adult books. Students will read widely from novels, picturebooks, poetry, and nonfiction by U.S. and international book creators that reflect how social and political identities such as age, race, gender, sexual orientation, (dis)ability and citizenship intersect to influence levels of discrimination and privilege. Books will be accompanied by related professional articles, videos, blogs, podcasts, social media posts and online chats that support students' understanding of the systemic issues raised in the books. Students will draw from the three critical frameworks to understand and explicate how they and others experience privilege and oppression/marginalization.  

This course also centers the experiences of globally diverse communities. Texts (i.e. novels, picture books, poetry, and nonfiction) will include translated, bilingual, and works in languages other than English by book creators from within these global communities as well as supplemental professional and media texts that support students' understanding of global systemic issues raised in the books. Students will draw from the three critical frameworks to explore how issues of equity and diversity are embedded within the traditions and institutions of global cultures. Students will discuss/propose meaningful action aimed at transforming inequitable structures in their own campus/community contexts as well as consider how local action can extend to global contexts.

Essential Question: How can we take action to change our world for the better? 

The signature assignment is designed to help you consider different youth social positions, to think conceptually and critically about scholarly and literary texts, and to work towards solving social problems. You will examine how global or national issues impact your local community and develop solutions to address these issues with the goal of creating a more equitable society and world.  

In groups of 3-4, students will select a local or global social issue to examine in depth. The issue can be one explored in the course or a new social issue of interest that fits within the scope of the course.  

Social issues of diversity, equity, and justice as they play out within and across cultural communities to create privilege and oppression are often presented to students in our university courses as distant academic issues. Youth literature can invite students to consider these issues through fiction and nonfiction books that are directly relevant to their lives and challenge their understanding. Through stories, students can experience the ways in which youth from diverse cultural communities are socially located, including the privileges and inequities stemming from these social locations.  

The signature assignment is designed to move students from engaging in critical and conceptual thinking about social issues through youth literature to taking action on similar issues at play in their communities through inquiry.  Students will synthesize their understandings of humanist perspectives as described in the three lenses and humanities research explored in the course by conducting an inquiry around a selected social issue, creating a multimodal text set, and developing an action plan. 

How is the assignment framed to students in the class setting?  

The signature assignment will overlap with a module on cosmopolitanism as students consider a local or global issue to examine in more depth in a small group and generate solutions to address the issue locally. By the time this module begins, students will have negotiated with each other to form a group of 3-4 members around a local or global issue. This issue can be one that was identified in the previous modules or a new social issue within the scope of the class. Class time will be used for students to meet in their groups and for course experiences around strategies and skills students need for their research – e.g. primary research sources such as interviews, surveys, and field observations as well secondary sources such as scholarly articles, new media, youth literature, and visual arts.   

How does the assignment encourage students to engage in perspective-taking?  

Students will write individual reflections in conjunction with their group project that addresses their own learning process and new understandings about diversity and equity related to the social issue the group explored. Specifically, students will reflect on the connections between one or more of the three theoretical lenses from the class and the social issue that they explored. They will also indicate what new questions have arisen as a result of the learning experience and what new actions are they taking as a result of their learning.  

Does your assignment draw from established best practices in teaching and learning? If so, please explain. 

The pedagogical approach for this assignment is rooted in inquiry, which allows for the facilitation of critical thinking and creativity. It emphasizes the active creation of knowledge with students and positions them as problem posers, capable of sharing in the authority and authorship of the course. Explorations of social issues will be driven by students’ connections, questions and the tensions that arise for them as they grapple with culturally diverse literature for youth throughout the semester. Scaffolding for the signature assignment will include breaking the project down into manageable tasks that are due over time and providing feedback at each stage of the process. Students will also turn in a self-evaluation in which they state their goals for that project and evaluate their process for reaching these goals. The instructor will add evaluative comments based on students’ goals.