Abstract:

In February 10, 2003 framework paper Integration of Spanish Higher Education in European Higher Education Area, counselling and career advice is established as one of the formative aims in degrees; that is, the necessity to provide "a Higher Education integrating basic competences in harmony, transversal competences related to individual's integral development, and more specific competences to enable counselling and career advice in order to integrate graduates in job market" (2003: 8).

According to this idea, a relevant question for Literary Education research becomes evident: which is the professional profile for Literary Educators in future K-12 and Kindergarten teachers studying in Colleges of Education; which roles and areas for action in Literary Education and definition of Competences should be developed during future teachers training.

This paper reflects on future K-12 and Kindergarten teacher training in College of Education, due to the importance of these stages to guarantee proper Literary Competence of students during Secondary Education and University. Relevance of teachers during first stages of writing and reading skills takes into consideration other topics like teachers as facilitators of literature readings, or teachers as catalysts of reading habits in children, or teacher as discoverers of the pleasure in reading literature.

However, other factors should be considered to achieve proper Literary Education during Kindergarten and K-12: family (main relation area for children at early years); school as institution (school board, facilities, libraries, support resources…); and texts (Literary texts provided). Literary Education will be successful only with the right balance of these elements.

The main question discussed in this paper is the appropriate sequence and amount of credits in new curricula derived from the Bologna Process in the College of Education at the Universidad de Valencia (Spain) and how this distribution of credits and topics affects Literary Education.

Are there credits enough in new curricula to guarantee Literary Education training for future Kindergarten and K-12 teachers?

In spite of the slight improvement in the amount of credits in new curricula, 4.5 credits in Kindergarten Major and 6 credits in K12 Major, it does not seem to be enough to fulfil the needs of Literary Education for future teachers. Acquiring knowledge about corpora of texts, developing a rigorous and critical thinking about these corpora, or learning pedagogical techniques for promoting reading in children, require more time for fixing concepts and methodologies. In this paper, we claim more presence for Literary Education and we study the history of Literary Education in Curricula at different universities in Spain.

Keywords:

Literary education, curriculum.