Università Roma Tre

The educational objectives of the Children’s Literature Course include disciplinary study, accompanied by teaching strategies useful for fostering meaningful learning both in terms of scholastic motivation and affective and socio-relational profile. Furthermore, they include the study of the cognitive, affective and socio-relational aspects of learning to read literary texts for children, so that the teacher can analyze and manage these aspects, thus contributing to the overall education of the child, in a class atmosphere positive that promotes individual and social well-being.
In particular, the Children’s Literature promotes in the student:

- reflection on the role of reading texts and images in culture and contemporary society, based on a critical knowledge related to the evolution of contemporary publishing production, also with international openings;

- specific competence in welcoming children in kindergarten and guiding their training up to primary school, promoting and developing autonomy and awareness of symbolic thought and intellectual maturation by starting a dynamic relationship and creative with the book and narration;

- advanced preparation in the fundamental themes of educational sciences, with particular regard to the knowledge and skills of the psychological, pedagogical and social aspects relating to children and their development, from birth to adolescence, and related to learning and teaching in kindergarten and primary school;

- competence in teaching methods and teaching techniques characteristic of kindergarten, such as play, listening, reading aloud and practical experience;

- the historical-critical analysis of the fundamental nodes of the literature for western children, which favors an autonomy of judgment and an aptitude to search for new solutions and didactic proposals suitable for the various classes.



With the course of Children’s literature, students will be able to achieve the following educational goals:
In terms of knowledge and understanding:
- knowledge in the field of children's literature, with particular attention to the historical development of this discipline and the aspects of research and the interpretative criticism of literary text for children
- knowledge of the prospects and theoretical models of children’s literature
- knowledge of the main models of didactic design and evaluation methods of the child-narrative-book relationship.
- knowledge of IT tools and technologies for innovation-based teaching, in particular relating to the use of paper and digital texts
In terms of ability to apply knowledge and understanding:
- ability to create an authentic educational relationship aimed at emotional-emotional, socio-cultural and cognitive maturation gained through a conscious use of pre-reading and reading in both primary and secondary schools;
- ability to design and realize training paths that use narrative and book with a variety of methodologies and organizational solutions appropriate to child development and learning progression;
- ability to take care of documentation, to monitor teaching and to devise instruments for verifying and evaluating student learning, taking due consideration of INVALSI trials and those resulting from the major international surveys on learning levels (IEA TIMSS and PIRLS).
In terms of autonomy of judgment:
- Attitudes to problematize situations and educational events, to analyze them deeply and to elaborate them in a reflective way, putting children in the condition of always elaborating a personal reading perspective;
- Aptitude to consider alternative solutions to problems and to make decisions that respond to the student's training needs, stimulating them, for example, from switching from verbal to graphic language when approaching narratives;
- Aptitude to renew didactic practices through openness to research, experimentation and innovation through the use of appropriately selected editorial products.
In terms of communicative abilities:
- ability to expose in an organized manner the objectives and the nature of the teaching activity through educational and educational planning, with particular reference to the use of illustrated stories;
- the ability to entertain positive relationships with pupils' families, showing openness and genuine interest in dialogue and adopting the humanistic-affective log of communication, with particular reference to families of pupils of different culture or religion;
- the ability to use digital communication tools in school contexts both to use teaching technology and to reduce the distance between formal languages of scholastic and informal languages.
In terms of lifelong learning:
- Aptitude to always extend their knowledge of editorial novelties in the field of literature for children and adolescents.