My Place: Exploring children's place-related identities through reading and writing

Identities and Subjectivities

“…Using young adult fiction as a methodological tool impelled the adolescent readers to think critically about their own and others' place-identities, as suggested by Charlton et al (2011Charlton et al ( , 2014, Arizpe (2009Arizpe ( , 2010 and others. The participants' individual understandings of the world, their subjectivities, were the lenses through which they interpreted place, within and beyond the research texts.…”

“…There are numerous educational studies that interpret the pedagogical role of place in classroom settings (see Matthewman and Morgan 2006;Taylor 2009). The project involved an empirical case study of two Grade Five classrooms in contrasting British locales, where interviews and the creation of visual and verbal texts were used to apprehend the students' identifications with place (Charlton et al 2014). Motivated by her concern that her students' lives were "displaced from reality" (p. 279), due to prolonged periods of screen time, she sought ways of reconnecting students with their local place via reading.…”

“…Exploring local, place-based picturebooks, while simultaneously visiting local places, facilitated the students' critical thought in terms of the sensitivity and specificity of immediate surroundings. The wRePlace project researchers concluded that, through reading, their participants reflected on the role of place within their everyday lives (Charlton et al 2014). argues that the teacher brought his own rural biases into his teaching, limiting the class' ability to be critical about their own construction of place.…”

Maps in picturebooks: cognitive status and narrative functions

“…In this regard, the map sequence introduces the reader to the environmental, historical, and cultural changes in a specific Australian place, thus highlighting the strong connection between space, time, and history (cf. Charlton et al 2014).…”

“…Although there is much research on the mental concepts connected to maps and their acquisition and use, just a few studies focus on the presentation of maps in children's literature (Baker 2006;Charlton et al 2014;Druker 2012;Goga 2014;Honeyman 2001;Pavlik 2010;Rogers 2008;Sundmark 2014). While these articles mostly deal with the narrative and aesthetic impact of maps or how they might be used in the classroom, there is virtually no investigation into the interrelation of maps as parts of children's books and children's understandings of the mental concept of a map at a certain developmental stage (cf.…”