Fostering Cultural Awareness Through Picturebooks in the Norwegian English Classroom

Abstract

The primary focus of this master´s thesis is to explore if three chosen picturebooks may potentially contribute to foster cultural awareness in the light of the interdisciplinary topic Democracy and Citizenship that were added in the new curriculum put into action in 2020. The three chosen picturebooks used in this research are The Proudest Blue created by Ibtihaj Muhammad, S. K. Ali and Hatem Aly, Ali´s Story: A Real-Life Account of His Journey from Afghanistan created by Andy Glynne and Salvador Maldonado, and The Invisible created by Tom Percival. All of these three picturebooks have narratives that tackle societal and cultural issues such as war, migration, religion, poverty, minorities, identity, racism and human rights, as well as the narratives are told from children´s points of views. To analyze the selected picturebooks I have used multimodal discourse analysis based on Painter´s framework. To guide what to look for in the analysis, Nikolajeva and Scott's narrative theory and The Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) of The Council of Europe were added. Combining Painter, Nikolajeva & Scott and The Council of Europe made it possible to analyze the selected picturebooks in the light of the interdisciplinary topic, Democracy and Citizenship. This thesis found that the picturebooks contain important cultural aspects such as democratic values and attitudes and have narratives that tackle societal and cultural issues and events that may evoke cultural awareness. To help pupils to be aware of people around them, no matter their life situations, cultural background and differences, these picturebooks can be a start to achieve that goal. As in an educational context, it is important to use a material that the pupils find interesting and manageable, on a level that they can comprehend. The format of picturebooks is therefore suitable in the context to learn a new language, as well as learning democratic skills as values and attitudes that benefit democracy and citizenship.