Children’s literature as a coupling point between global sustainability issues and local agency in children: Analysis of dialogical reading courses in a kindergarten in Denmark

TY - JOUR

T1 - Children’s literature as a coupling point between global sustainability issues and local agency in children

T2 - Analysis of dialogical reading courses in a kindergarten in Denmark

AU - Kolmos, Marie

AU - Skyggebjerg, Anna Karlskov

AU - Nielsen, Anne Maj

PY - 2025

Y1 - 2025

N2 - This article is about how educators' dialogical–creative presentation of children's picture books has the potential to make global sustainability concerns accessible to young children. Thematization around climate change and the biodiversity crisis are global phenomena that are difficult to translate to the local settings where children spend part of their lives. This article argues that various dialogical and creative reading activities based on relevant children's literature may serve as gateways to developing young children's agency and understanding related to some of the sustainability concerns that they may have to address when they grow up. This article's analysis is based on two literature courses at a Danish early childhood education and care centre, where educators invited children to creatively explore literary narratives in various ways, through visits to the surrounding area and the creative processing of the stories’ message. The analyses show how children's potential agency is developed through a dialectical process of becoming based on a sociocultural and phenomenological understanding of artefacts, mediating means and place as an event, the analyses show how children's potential agency is developed in a dialectical process of becoming.

AB - This article is about how educators' dialogical–creative presentation of children's picture books has the potential to make global sustainability concerns accessible to young children. Thematization around climate change and the biodiversity crisis are global phenomena that are difficult to translate to the local settings where children spend part of their lives. This article argues that various dialogical and creative reading activities based on relevant children's literature may serve as gateways to developing young children's agency and understanding related to some of the sustainability concerns that they may have to address when they grow up. This article's analysis is based on two literature courses at a Danish early childhood education and care centre, where educators invited children to creatively explore literary narratives in various ways, through visits to the surrounding area and the creative processing of the stories’ message. The analyses show how children's potential agency is developed through a dialectical process of becoming based on a sociocultural and phenomenological understanding of artefacts, mediating means and place as an event, the analyses show how children's potential agency is developed in a dialectical process of becoming.

KW - Children’s Literature, Kindergarten, Place, Sustainability

U2 - 10.23865/nbf.v22.594

DO - 10.23865/nbf.v22.594

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1890-9167

VL - 22

SP - 86

EP - 105

JO - Nordisk Barnehageforskning

JF - Nordisk Barnehageforskning

IS - 1

ER -