engleski

Courses on Children’s Literature in Tertiary Education: Focus on Croatia

The first course on children’s literature at Croatian institutions of higher education appeared in 1961 (Majhut 2011). It became part of the education of primary teachers in Zagreb and at other teacher-training colleges in Croatia. However, the texts addressed as children’s literature were at first just passages from adult-oriented titles. Aspects concerning teaching methodology and use of children’s literature in class received most attention. The turning point of the treatment of children’s literature in tertiary study programmes was the 1967 textbook for students by Milan Crnković, which defined both the field of research and the contents of children’s literature syllabi in teacher-education curricula. Over time, these courses for future primary teachers have developed: the range of their contents has been better defined, and they have become clearly distinguished in focus from those focused on the teaching process. In the 1990s, children’s literature in English and German was included in newly introduced study programmes for primary teachers of respective foreign languages. In 2005, teacher education in Croatia was raised to the university level, which also influenced the broadening and development of children’s literature scholarship in terms of variety of topics and approaches. Unfortunately, philology study programmes still ignore the area of children’s and young adult literature in the education of teachers to students aged 11-19. There have been some elective courses for students of Croatian, mostly initiated by individuals, but there are no courses of children’s literature in any of the university study programmes of different languages, despite the fact that future teachers of children over 11 and teenagers are educated exclusively by these study programmes. This paper provides an overview of children’s literature courses in a diachronic perspective and analyses the reasons for this deficiency in education of middle and secondary school teachers at the present time.

teacher education ; children’s literature courses ; study programme ; Milan Crnković ; Croatian education

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