Values and Intercultural Experiences Through Picture Books

Abstract

When entering a primary education classroom, María (first author) has observed students from diverse cultures with different customs and ways of living and understanding inherited from their parents. Some colleagues have told her about conflicts that have arisen in their classes because of the lack of understanding between students who are culturally different. Although those conflicts do not normally become alarming, they show the necessity of a preventive education that develops competences in intercultural students that allow them to coexist in a peaceful atmosphere. Since María was a child, her fondness for picture books has helped her understand reality in a coherent way. Picture books transmitted and reinforced values that were important for her personal growth. As she is currently working with primary school students, she took the opportunity to use this type of book. In one of these classrooms, there is a 10yearold boy whose name is Ahmed and whose family comes from Morocco. Sometimes he is treated badly by other students because of his cultural and racial background. These uncomfortable and conflictive situations reaffirmed the need for an education based in intercultural values and led María to research the existence of picture books that represent the values of help, friendship, and empathy, among others. Maria had to find stories that, through intercultural characters, were able to ensure the literary empathy needed to address these issues. As a teacher, her task was to read the books to analyze the responses of fifthgrade primary education students from a school in southern Spain, so she carried out semistructured interviews to do so. Review of Literature The Importance of Picture Books for an Intercultural Education Since ancient times, human beings have used the didactics of stories to explain different realities, first orally and later by writing. Literature became one of the main tools for acculturation because reality is reinterpreted through it, contributing to the knowledge and reflection of interculturality (Hoff, 2019; Yokota & Teale, 2017). Currently, literature is useful to prevent educational conflicts. For example, in culturally diverse societies, literary texts can be used to show collective diversity. Literature can also provide students with necessary strategies to embrace the pluralism that is present in those societies, advocating its democratic development (Coto & Stewart, 2017). In the difficult path toward interculturality and inclusion, different authors have recognized the great power of literature (Gilmore & Howard, 2016; Kim, Wee, & Lee, 2016; Monoyiou & Symeonidou, 2016; Wang, 2014; Yulita, 2017). According to Martens et al. (2015), through reading literary texts, students acquire FEATURE ARTICLE