幼児期の障害理解教育における絵本の教材化と指導の課題

本稿は，幼児期の障害理解教育における教材としての絵本について考察し，その教育的価値や課題を明確にするものである。絵本によって障害理解教育を推進する立場と，限定的な目的のための読み聞かせに反対する立場からの多様な意見を整理・対照し，以下の結論を得た。①幼児にとって身近な絵本により，障害者に対する擬似的接触と同化をもたらし，肯定的態度が形成される可能性があるが，幼児の障害者像の固定化の危険性もある。②絵本の読み聞かせによって，幼児の気づきを誘発し，疑問を解決しうるが，その指導の効果には保育者の障害観が影響する。今後の課題は，障害を主題とした絵本の内容を分析しながら，それらを整理し，その絵本を読む際の留意点を明確にすることである。保育者が選ぶべき絵本は個々の障害理解指導に応じて変わるため，そのねらいや目的に合わせて，適切かつ円滑に絵本を選択できるように，関連する絵本を体系的に整理し一覧化を試みる。

This study discusses children’ s books as teaching material for disability awareness education in the preschool period and elucidates their educational value and challenges. The following two conclusions were drawn after organizing and comparing diverse opinions from those who promote disability awareness education using children’ s books and those who are against reading children’s books to preschoolers for a limited purpose. 1. While children’s books, which are a familiar item for preschoolers, have the potential to enable preschoolers to pseudo-contact and assimilate with disabled people and to form positive attitudes toward disabled people, they also have the risk of causing preschoolers to form a fixed image of people with disabilities. 2. Although reading relevant children’s books to preschoolers can likely induce awareness and solve their questions, the outcome of this educational activity is influenced by the preschool teacher’ s view of disabilities. The next step of this study is to analyze and organize the content of disability-themed children’ s books and to elucidate the points to note when reading each book to preschoolers. Since the appropriate choice of children’s books depends on the type of disability awareness education to be provided by the preschool teacher, related children’ s books will be systematically organized and listed so that teachers can appropriately and smoothly select children’ s books according to the purpose and targets of the disability awareness education they plan to provide.