“Zebra world”: The promotion of imperial stereotypes in a children’s book

Abstract

Learning materials have become significant determinants of quality learning environments for young children. This study presents an example of such learning material in the Finnish context -a children's book entitled: Bibi muuttaa Suomeen (translated: Bibi Moves to Finland) by Katja Kallio and Maggie Lindholm (2005). The main concern of this article is how the 'us' and 'them' (Finland vs. Africa) meet or co-exist together in the book, which describes a young girl, Bibi, her life in a 'traditional' African village and subsequent move to Finland. The positive intention of the book is to familiarize Finnish children with different cultures and the life of immigrant children. In this study concepts such as 'Whiteness', normality and belonging are discussed within a critical approach to intercultural education. The data consist of a focus group interview conducted for student teachers and our own analysis as two experts in the book. The material was analysed with the help of critical discourse analysis and a critical incident approach. The results show that despite good intentions to educate children about immigration and other people in a more positive light, the book serves to maintain the social structure of Finnish society as White, modern and superior to 'others' in Africa. It is important that teachers and teacher educators are able to challenge this type of representation of the world and of immigration in children's books and learning materials.

DramatVis Personae: Visual Text Analytics for Identifying Social Biases in Creative Writing

“…Since then, several studies have reported that males are often portrayed as active and dominating, while females are instead described as passive and soft [50,65,72]. Other studies have found the presence of racial bias [53], stereotypes against disability [6], and occupation [36] in children's books. Researchers have argued that the presence of such stereotypes in children's books is severely problematic as children are susceptible to inheriting stereotypes at an early age [50,91].…”

“…Thus, it is imperative for written stories to not promote biased representation of minority and marginalized groups. However, current literature is filled with tired, unoriginal, and sometimes harmful stereotypes related to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, such as the trope of the angry African-American woman, the studious Asian person, or the helpless damsel in distress [6,24,41,45,50,53,67,69].…”

A lesson in teaching English while White

“…Some studies exist in the Finnish context that have documented the need for multicultural education and respective teacher training (e.g., Acquah & Commins, 2013), but research that explicitly addressed racism is harder to come by. Although the recent past has seen important attempts to bring antiracism education into the public debate and into schools (Alemanji, 2016; Alemanji & Dervin, 2016; Alemanji & Mafi, 2018; Armila, Rannikko, & Sotkasiira, 2018; Layne & Alemanji, 2015), such studies remain scarce. Similarly, CWS is still in its infancy in Finland.…”

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Examining and Confidence-Boosting the Experiences of Chinese Teachers of Chinese in Finland

“…When the teachers talked about their teaching experiences and practices, many mentioned the importance of knowing the characteristics of their learners. Several teachers' comments about Finnish learners echoed stereotypes about Finns: They are quiet, shy perfectionists (Layne & Alemanji, 2015). These characteristics were regarded as obstacles for effective, fun intercultural teaching of Chinese.…”