Serra Húnter Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education Sciences of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She coordinates the Master in School Library and Reading Promotion (UAB/UB) and has also coordinated at UAB the Erasmus Mundus Master on Children’s Literature, Media and Culture. The focus of her research articulates various interests such as the study of the vernacular literary practices of children and young people, research in the areas of reading promotion and the improvement of literary training at school. She has just published, in collaboration with David Poveda, the edited book Artefacts for collaborative research with youth (2024, Autonomous University of Madrid).
Training reading promotion professionals: pillars, challenges and strategies that work.
The essence of reading promotion is connecting books and readers in diverse sociocultural contexts. This is done through cultural activities that pursue diverse goals and adopt multiple and imaginative formats requiring specific types of mediation. However, not everything works everywhere when it comes to reading promotion. It is a localised, context-sensitive task, so teaching professionals at university level is inevitably a practice-oriented endeavour that involves adaptability, creativity, reflection, and critical thinking, in addition to the transversal task of constant evaluation. The teaching challenge lies mainly in the ability to articulate all these elements in specific situations. In this presentation, I will be discussing the guiding pillars of training, including, among others: (a) the need to focus on competency elements regarding book selection, design, mediation, assessment and analysis, (b) the value of partnerships in the local sphere that serve as models and inspiration, and (c) the importance of raising awareness about the role that place, space and materialities play when thinking of reading promotion activities. I will also share some examples of good practice and reflect on the challenges in the Catalan university-level context.