Working with children using picturebooks in contexts of displacement
Approximately 28 million children in the world are living in forced displacement. Few resources have been specifically developed for facilitating learning for those living in transient conditions. UofG-led research on picturebooks has resulted in the development of a new Toolkit, which has changed the practice of ‘mediators’ in Mexico, Egypt and Chile.
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Contact: Evelyn.Arizpe@glasgow.ac.uk 07855 885280
The research
The Mediator Toolkit is underpinned by pioneering UofG research with picturebooks which has been led by Professor Evelyn Arizpe for over two decades.
A key finding from the research is that the specific aesthetic features of picturebooks (a genre of children’s literature created by authors and illustrators through the unique interlocking interaction between words and images) offers children opportunities to access and engage with the narrative.
The use of visual and other creative modes of response, mediated by a more experienced reader (e.g. a teacher or mediator), allows for learning and emotional expression, regardless of the level of literacy or knowledge of the language.
These findings led to the creation of the Mediator Toolkit, which includes criteria for selecting picturebooks, mediation strategies and the creation of arts-based, ethical response activities suitable for the context.
The impact
In Mexico, mediators working in areas of high concentration of migration were trained to use picturebooks and the Mediator Toolkit in order to work more effectively.
Training was initially completed by 264 mediators working in 10 states, who subsequently worked with approximately 4,000 readers in refuges for migrants or community spaces.
In Egypt, the reach of the Toolkit has been extended by delivering workshops to NGOs. For example, Catholic Relief Service shared the training with 12 colleagues, so that they could cascade it on to a further 120 kindergarten teachers and 1,250 village librarians.
Catholic Relief Service reported that teachers had changed their practice to include the use of picturebooks, so that, “children who were often silent could express their ideas through the pictures and make up new stories in their own words to express themselves”.
In Chile, a pilot programme was rolled-out to 50 schools with a high percentage of foreign students in 2018. The programme was positively valued by mediators and subsequently expanded to 100 additional schools in 2019.
A project website, which contains resources including a searchable database of books, provides a platform for the training of new partners who cannot benefit from in-situ training.
