Ways of Understanding Fairy Tales among Teacher Candidates

Abstract:The goal of this article is to discuss the meanings given to fairy tale texts by teacher candidates in preschool and primary education. Identifying meanings allows prediction of future strategies for designing tasks based on texts, the foundation of literary education, and to assign the activities of future teachers to a particular pedagogical discourse. Fairy tales—read in school as typically didactic works—are deprived of their potential effect on the emotions, the development of aesthetic sensitivity, and the imagination. This understanding implies creating tasks for the reader in the form of simple instructions not referring to the deepest value of the text: showing human inner reality. This vision also emerges from analyzing reconstructions of fairy tale stories prepared by 91 students in primary and preschool education programs at the University of Łodź.