Term

Summer 2022

Capstone

Thesis

Degree Name

MAT

Primary Advisor/Dissertation Chair

Trish Harvey

Secondary Advisor/Reader One

Rebecca Brown

Peer-Reviewer/Reader Two

Katrina Neff

Abstract

This study investigated cultural representation in children’s picture books located in classroom libraries. The literature review explored what is culture, the history of children’s books, what past studies have found on representation in books, and why this topic is important. The research methodology was a qualitative study that involved inventorying classroom teachers’ libraries, as well as interviews with teachers about diversity and their libraries. The results included each of the individual teachers’ libraries as well as all the libraries’ data together; data revealed that the majority of characters were animal or non-human characters. Additionally, most of the books in these classroom libraries were books that were only in English. The major learnings I had were that classroom libraries have changed and now include electronic reading sources for students. Additionally, while there is still a lot of underrepresentation happening in classroom libraries, the white percentage was lower than in Dahl’s 2018 study and hopefully, books will continue to become more culturally diverse in who they represent.

Research Methodology

Interview, Library Inventory

Keywords

ESL/ ELLs, Literacy, Multicultural Education, Reading

dc_type

text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

School of Education Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

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