Refugee-themed picture books for ethical understanding in curriculum English

ABSTRACT

This study looked at the curricular resource potential of refugee-themed picture books for embedding an ethics of responsibility for linguistic diversity into the subject of English studied by all students in English-dominant western societies. Selected picture books were analysed in terms of a Levinasean ethics of responsibility for alterity in order to probe the possibilities of a supplement or alternative to the ethics of empathy long established in the literary component of English. The analyses looked at the books as multimodal artefacts, understanding the linguistic modes of the texts from a translingual perspective. This perspective construes language as mobile semiotic resources that are rendered meaningful through the performances of interlocutors in a given communicative situation. From the analyses, findings were produced about (1) representations of the monolingual sameness of everyday life in Australia as an English-dominant society and (2) the translingual dispositions called forth when language variation enters into the linguistic text. It is concluded that the ethics of responsibility for alterity holds out promise for tapping the curricular resource potential of refugee-themed picture books for embedding ethics into the language awareness component sometimes incorporated into English.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• English
• ethics of responsibility for alterity
• Levinas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Dooley

Karen Dooley is an Associate Professor in the School of Curriculum, Queensland University of Technology. She lectures in English curriculum and is interested in pedagogy for high diversity, high poverty schools. Karen’s previous research includes classroom studies of provision for refugee students.

Gordon Tait

Gordon Tait is an Associate Professor in the School of Cultural and Professional Learning, Queensland University of Technology. He lectures in Philosophy and Sociology, and is interested in youth studies, suicidology and the pathologisation of educational difference.

Hora Zabarjadi Sar

Hora Zabarjadi Sar is a Masters Research graduate of the School of Curriculum, Queensland University of Technology. Hora’s research interests are in ethical education in multicultural contexts and philosophy for children programmes.