Complex Picturebooks in Secondary Literary Education

Complex Picturebooks in Secondary Literary Education is a research project at the Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies at Åbo Akademi University. The project explores the role and use of complex picturebooks in secondary literary education, both theoretically and empirically. Previous research calls attention to picturebooks as a challening art form, containing complex themes and sophisticated literary qualities. However, previous research shows that picturebooks in educational settings are still mainly explored with emergent readers. The project brings together research on complex picturebooks with research on complex texts in literary education by exploring the picturebook as a complex text in secondary literary education. The project contributes with knowledge about the role and use of complex picturebooks in secondary literary education, for example, by systematically reviewing previous research, by theoretical explorations of the complexity in picturebooks, empirical explorations of students’ interpretative work with complex picturebooks as well as teachers’ key strategies for using picturebooks in secondary literary education.