Author URLs
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Subject: LCSH
Teachers in literature
Disciplines
Education
Abstract
This study explores cultural messages about teachers and teaching, as delivered by current children's literature. Our findings confirmed that teachers are still portrayed, in text and picture, as White, kind, conservative, women who teach for the love of children. More surprisingly, we also found that: 1) the stories conveyed strong themes of students acting as agents of teachers’ identity work, 2) that students often position teachers as sex objects, and 3) that teachers’ social class is characterized as working class. The results imply ambivalence about teachers’ identities and suggest that the teaching profession keeps women in a powerless and objectified job.
Repository Citation
Niemi, Nancy S., Brown, Nancy & Smith, Julia B. (2014). The portrayal of teachers in children's popular fiction. Journal of Research in Education Vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 58-80.
Publisher Citation
Niemi, Nancy S., Brown, Nancy & Smith, Julia B. (2014). The portrayal of teachers in children's popular fiction. Journal of Research in Education Vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 58-80.
Comments
Posted by express permission of the journal editors. The article is also available via a free link here.