Education Commons^™

Contamination Of Childhood Fairy Tale: Pre-Service Teachers Explore Gender And Race Constructions, Wan-Hsiang Chou

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This study explores the possibilities of challenging European-American middle-class social codes perpetuated by fairy tales through creative writing and artmaking. For centuries, writers and artists have continued to create new versions of old tales. Critiquing through recreation of fairy tales can reveal biases of personal and cultural constructions of race and gender. Like authors and illustrators of children's books, 25 pre-service teachers were invited to "contaminate" fairy tales from their childhood, through which to become aware of metaphors they live by and explore where and how pre-existing codes entered their lives. Their retellings of traditional tales and accompanying illustrations show …