| This study examines the impact of Critical White Studies on teacher education and children's literature. Teacher education literature dealing with white privilege and its effects on pre- and in-service teachers are examined for common themes and ways teacher educators work to expose and mitigate the effects of white privilege. The study also offers educators who work with children's literature a way of assessing white privilege issues in those texts, through the use of Janet Helms' White Racial Identity Development theory. The culminating aspect of the study is an in-depth analysis of a popular children's novel, Maniac Magee. Application of the Helms' approach to this novel delineates how the main character progresses though stages of development as he contacts characters who come from backgrounds both similar to and different from his own. |
