Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
DOI
10.1007/s13158-024-00409-x
Publication Title
International Journal of Early Childhood
Volume
Article in Press
Pages
19 pp.
Abstract
Children’s picturebooks have long been understood as a powerful medium for exploring aspects of children’s lives, experiences, and identities serving as mirrors which allow children to see themselves reflected, as windows through which they can gain insight into the experiences of others, and as sliding glass doors when children are connected to the story and characters in meaningful ways. Utilizing a critical content analytic approach, this research examined the identity markers and engineering practices found in contemporary children’s picturebooks with an engineering focus. The analysis yielded key themes that highlight the ways children can interact and connect to the characters and engineering content through both visual imagery and storyline. As the reviewed books held limited social, cultural, and personal identity representations, study findings hold implications for early childhood educators as they highlight the importance of affirming and connecting engineering and design work to the diverse, multifaceted identities of the students in their classrooms. Recommendations from this research call for extending traditional classroom building and construction experiences through the inclusion of engineering-focused children’s literature to enhance and extend children’s understandings of design and engineering work.
Rights
© 2024 The Author.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder
ORCID
0000-0003-0794-3311 (Eckhoff)
Original Publication Citation
Eckhoff, A. (2024). Representation in engineering-focused children’s literature: A critical content analysis. International Journal of Early Childhood. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-024-00409-x
Repository Citation
Eckhoff, Angela, "Representation in Engineering-Focused Children's Literature: A Critical Content Analysis" (2024). Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications. 270.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/teachinglearning_fac_pubs/270
Included in
Early Childhood Education Commons, Engineering Education Commons, Science and Mathematics Education Commons
