Chapter Educare a nuovi immaginari e a nuovi linguaggi. I libri per l’infanzia come veicoli di contronarrazioni di genere

Abstract

Promoting gender education pathways requires embracing the notion that girls and boys, young women and young men, are competent social actors who do not passively absorb the influences of their social context but are instead capable of reworking, deconstructing, and critically analyzing them. This is contingent on providing them with the necessary educational and cultural tools to undertake this sophisticated process. When learners become co-protagonists and co-constructors of cultural and cognitive processes, new possibilities for cultural change and renewal emerge. In the context of gender education, this means that individuals can continuously renegotiate socially established gender expectations, with each person’s transformation contributing to shifting boundaries and opening new spaces for reimagining norms. Children’s literature is a valuable and inexhaustible resource for identity formation, social initiation, and the development of individual and collective imagination. It thus represents a powerful tool for educating new generations of girls and boys to transcend gender boundaries and to position themselves as active participants in a cultural transformation that is already underway, but which must be continually foregrounded and encouraged.