Multiliteracies and Picturebooks: A Gender-Based Critical and Aesthetic Engagement with Social Justice Through a Nonfictional Heroine

From a sociocultural perspective, the idea that language learning is not only a linguistic and cognitive activity, but also a lived, participatory social practice within specific cultural contexts is a principle of pedagogies conceptually anchored in multiliteracies. Such pedagogies offer second language (L2) teachers a new paradigm to reconsider the role of students as active co-constructors of knowledge. This approach, imbricated with the use of picturebooks in L2 education, offers pre-service teachers of English in primary schools the opportunity to design multimodal learning paths based on identity development and social justice that also contribute to female empowerment. The main objective of this chapter is to discuss ways in which picturebooks can be used as cultural artifacts in L2 teacher education to foster reflective practices on how to promote L2 primary school students’ sense of citizenship, understanding of social justice and active engagement with democracy from a gender perspective on three different levels: personal, close relationships, and collective (Aguayo and Lamelas in Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies 12:123–132, 2012). To this end, we carry out a qualitative content analysis of the picturebook I look up to… Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by Anna Membrino and Fatti Burke (I look up to…Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Penguin Random House, 2018), in order to explore its literary, artistic, and didactic elements. This study allows us to examine the collective level of female empowerment by using the synergetic didactic power of words and images in a unique cultural form of art in the L2 classroom. As will be shown, this picturebook recreates the life of the American Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who fought for Civil Rights, especially in favor of traditionally silenced groups, like women.