engleski

What will I be when I grow up? An analysis of occupations found in children picture books

Picture books are an important media through which preschool children acquire values and norms of a certain culture as well as acquaint themselves with the social world in different aspects. These books appear as co-shapers of children's reality and one of the starting points for the construction of relations and attitudes in the future. Alongside the picture books, children acquire basic assumptions of the grown-up world as well as adult occupations. In the 100 picture book samples, different occupations of main and supporting characters were analyzed. The method used was a content analysis. Since there is very little text in picture books the focus of the research is based on a quantitative analysis, but also doscourse analysis was used. We found a relatively wide spectrum of various occupations but predominantly we found occupations dealing with traffic, regular working class, agricultural occupations, as well as occupations relating to social services. We found a huge discrepancy between male and female characters in specific occupations, namely, males appear in a much larger number than females whether it be in main or supporting roles. We also found that males appear in a much wider range of different kinds of occupations. Characters who have specific occupations basically prove the gender stereotypes and the reinforcement of gender stereotypes was confirmed by the analysis of language used since it showed how the females were often found grammatically and lexically imperceptible.

picture books, occupations, education, gender stereotypes

nije evidentirano