La literatura infantiluna investigación sobre su concepto, consideración social y estatus en la formación de educadores

Resumen

The aim of this doctoral thesis was to reflect on the results obtained after a quantitative and interpretive study was conducted using pre-service teachers. The research problem concerns the concept of Children's literature. Its present state and, above all, the opinions of the participants about its different aspects, helped us to find interesting data so what we were able to reach conclusions in our search for the place of Children's literature in society. In this doctoral thesis, above all, we have reflected on the importance of the word related to childhood, on the relations between Children's Literature and canonical Literature, or the implications of using the classic fairy tales in the Preschool and Primary Education classrooms. Several objectives are treated in the thesis, focused on the actitudes and perceptions of teachers' training on Children's Literature concept; on their capacity of establish diferences between children's literary texts and pedagogical materials or merchandising products; on their knowledge of classic fairy tales; and, on the aplication of these tales to the classroom without gender gap. All of them intend to solve the research problem, centered on the social and educative perception of Children's Literature and, whether this notion will have influence in understanding it as minor Literature. The thesis has eight chapters in which a theoretical part is combined with an empirical one. The first part includes six chapter where we justify the necessity of these research; the previous studies are analized; also it is included the reflection on Children's Literature concept, its relation to the audiovisual context; its treatment within the framework of the reading plan; or, the potential presence of sexism in its aplication to the classrooms. The second part concerns to a field work in diferent data are collected. After their analysis, they are connected to the theoretical part. The final section of the thesis includes the conclusions and references which allow the reader to have a globalized idea of an alternative to the aforementioned research problem. Using a survey methodology, the sample used was more than three hundred students from different courses of the preschool and Primary Education teacher's speciality (University of Murcia and University of Castilla-La Mancha). The results will encourage us to go further into such aspects as a better knowledge of characters and plots by these students; the quality of children`s literature texts; or, to study questions related to the definition of this discipline, taking into account the influence that the audiovisual element has on it. The achieved conclusions state, from our point of view, that Children's Literature cannot be labelled as a set of works concibed for children but also for adults. Regarding this point, we highlight teachers' role as fundamental to connect different generations and, above all, to preserve these artistic demonstrations as something valuable in society. Also, we conclude that a new educative approach is needed, one which either includes written and audiovisual formats as a source of knowledge for new generations.