DIGITAL CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ANTHOLOGIES: ENGAGING NEW LITERACIES WITH TEACHER CANDIDATES IN AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE

Literacy teacher education has become increasingly complex given the rapid pace of technological advances and the fluidity of what counts as literacy today.In addition to having to learn how to teach traditional print literacies, teacher candidates need to develop understandings of digital and critical literacies so they can prepare their students to negotiate life, citizenship, and work in our globally networked societies.How can we prepare teacher candidates to confidently negotiate their roles as literacy educators in this ever-shifting context?This paper reports on my approach, as a literacies professor, to the initiation of new teachers into the rich, but overwhelming, field of literacies education.In an introductory literacies course, upper-elementary-level student teachers complete a single major literacies assignment --the curation of a digital literature anthology, intended for use during practicum.The assignment requires new teachers to integrate multiple interconnected strands of literacies theory and practice.Through the lens of New Literacies Theory, student teachers engage numerous relevant areas of literacies teaching and learning.Their own learning process involves working in-between quality children's literature, social justice themes, student needs and interests, curriculum expectations, print-based literacies, and multimodal texts.The challenging experience of curating the various components of a digital literature anthology when they are in their first semester of the Teacher Education Program, allows teacher candidates to gain a quick appreciation for the nature of literacies today.They recognize the need to adopt professional dispositions open to change and complexity.Through my description of this work with new teachers, I hope to open up critical conversations on the complexities of literacies teacher education in our times.