From Answers to Questions: A Beginning Teacher Learns to Teach for Social Justice: A teacher’s commitment to social justice challenges her to move from literature response as answers to literature response as inquiry

A novice teacher educator and a novice teacher describe their evolving understandings of teaching children’s literature with a social justice perspective. These understandings are based on an analysis of their curriculum planning and whole class literature discussions across two school years with third graders and fifth graders. The authors chart this evolution as moving from “answers to questions.” They describe a shift from thinking about children’s response to literature as seeking solutions to thinking about response as cultivating questions and inquiry topics.