Humanizing Immigration and Refugee Experiences
A Student-Centered Approach to Teaching with Children’s Picturebooks in the Elementary Classroom
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22042372 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mary Adu-Gyamfi (0009-0001-0645-0438, University of Missouri), Mary Adu‐gyamfi (0000-0002-1676-959X, University of Missouri, corresponding author), Sarah D Reid (0009-0009-8365-9890, Illinois State University), Angie Zapata (0000-0003-0417-1336, University of Missouri) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 730 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-05 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Education Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/educsci16050730 |
| OpenAlex | W7160266453 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 20 |
How might immigration experiences be complexified and nuanced in elementary settings? This article highlights how fourth-grade students engaged in a picturebook exploration guided by a critical social educator, Kara, centered on immigration and refugee narratives for an integrated social studies and English language arts unit. The unit spanned ten days within the sixty-minute daily literature block. We show how Kara and her 19 students engaged in exploration across 25 justice-oriented picturebooks depicting diverse immigration and refugee experiences. Kara wove various strategies together to encourage students to share their own immigration stories, connect with authors’ stories, and deepen their understanding by noticing themes such as “hard work does not always pay off,” “crossing invisible (linguistic) borders,” and “making new friends.” The students’ engagement led to deepening understandings and connections to a variety of immigration stories. Throughout this article, we illustrate how Kara and her students engaged in theme generation and exploration in ways that moved away from a single narrative of immigration and toward more humanizing, varied conceptions of immigrant experiences
Immigration · Language arts · Narrative · Refugee · Social studies · The arts · Critical Race Theory in Education · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy
Fundamentals of Qualitative Research
Literacy
Teaching Justice-Oriented Picturebooks Through Collaborative Discussion and ‘Slow Looking’
Who will remember
Picturebooks as Critical Literacy
Humanizing the Journey Across the Mexico–U.S. Border
Because I’m Smooth”
Visualizing intercultural literacy
Critical Literacy in Elementary Social Studies
The Curricular Value of Teaching about Immigration through Picture Book Thematic Text Sets
Teaching for Critical Literacy in Social Studies
So That I May Hope to Honor You”
Who is a Migrant? Abandoning the Nation-state Point of View in the Study of Migration
| Highly cited | No |
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