Program Design

Designed with working professionals in mind, this two-year degree program offers the opportunity to obtain a high-quality master's degree. Our cohort-based model allows students to work through the program and coursework together (18-24 students).

Working with a cohesive and interdisciplinary faculty team, students will benefit from a rich curriculum and experience that will balance theoretical trends in the study of children’s and young adult literature with hands on teaching strategies. The program was designed to provide opportunities for students to:

• understand children’s and young adult literature as a genre with its own traditions and histories;
  
• analyze compositional elements of visual images and how graphic narratives like picturebooks, comics, cartoons, and film communicate;
  
• understand the relationships between texts for youth and shifting cultural constructions of “childhood” and “adolescence” and what kinds of stories adults believe youth need and/or should be shielded from;
  
• develop knoweldge about BIPOC children’s and YA authors and illustrators and how to select and teach engaging culturally responsive texts in B.C.’s culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms;
  
• demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of Indigenous children’s and YA literature and develop strategies for teaching First People’s literature, especially to meet the new requirement (beginning 2023-24) set out by the B.C. Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the First Nations Education Steering Committee, that secondary students complete Indigenous-focused coursework before graduation.

Additionally, students will learn directly from authors/illustrators to understand the craft of creating narratives for youth and for communicating that creative process to young people via 1-day workshops with authors and illustrators.

Courses

Students complete:

Program courses and order of delivery subject to change.