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This study explores the factors contributing to the imbalance between fiction and nonfiction materials in primary school classrooms, with a specific emphasis on the perspectives of prospective teachers. Employing a qualitative research approach, the investigation involved 30 student teachers who had completed the Children's Literature course at a Spanish university. Semi-structured interviews, with questions validated by expert judges, were utilized to gather responses, which were subsequently transcribed and analyzed through coding, following a categorical framework refined post-response analysis. The primary findings indicate a restricted exposure to nonfiction picturebooks in familial and educational settings. Despite positive emotional responses from trainee teachers, the study reveals an inadequacy in their training, hindering the development of a comprehensive understanding and the reinforcement of self-efficacy for integrating nonfiction materials into future teaching practices. Furthermore, the research underscores a disparity between the perceived significance of nonfiction picturebooks for enhancing children's multimodal reading and the inclination of trainee teachers to prioritize fiction due to a lack of confidence and previous exposure. As a result, the study proposes a reassessment of teacher training programs, recommending a more thorough focus on nonfiction materials and continuous professional development to address the disparity between beliefs and actual classroom practices.

Narrative is fundamental to human thought, yet in many classrooms, expository texts are commonly used to support learning in content-based subjects, such as history. Given the importance of narrative, it might be harnessed as a powerful tool to support learning. This research compares the impact of narrative nonfiction (NNF) and expository text (ET) on the development and retention of conceptual understanding relating to World War I (WWI). In an experiment involving 78 participants (mean age = 10.2 years, standard deviation = 0.29), pupils were placed into one of two conditions: in one, information about WWI was conveyed primarily through NNF texts, and in the other, through ETs. Participants completed written pre-, post- and delayed post-assessments to assess development and retention of conceptual understanding. It was found that participants in the NNF condition showed greater chronological and causal thinking skills. In addition, participants in the NNF condition retained significantly more conceptual understanding at delayed post-assessments than those in the ET condition. Overall, these findings suggest that narrative texts have the potential to be powerful learning tools. Implications for how texts are selected and utilised to support learning in the primary, history classroom are discussed.

International studies have established that reading for enjoyment is linked to higher reading outcomes however there are local variations of the relationship and nuances associated with gender and economic contours. The aim of this study was to examine 318 Australian Year 3 (7 to 8-year-olds) boys' and girls' self-reported enjoyment for reading, reading frequency, and achievement on national reading tests. Findings showed that students who indicated higher levels of enjoyment for fiction and non-fiction, and who read more frequently, indicated higher reading achievement. Students attending schools in higher demographic communities tended to attain higher reading scores. An unexpected and significant finding was that fiction was the most favoured reading genre for boys and that more girls had higher levels of enjoyment for non-fiction than boys. These findings challenge the long-standing myth that boy's prefer non-fiction. The study demonstrates the importance of promoting reading enjoyment--particularly fiction--early in students' schooling trajectory, with special consideration for boys and students from economically marginalised communities.

Few studies examine young children's multimodal responses to nonfiction picture books, and even fewer examine teaching practices that encourage these responses. This case study of a kindergarten class illustrates how one teacher regularly conducted interactive whole-group read-alouds using nonfiction picture books. After examining the multimodal teaching strategies employed by this teacher, the findings of this study highlight the social and physical nature of reading with young children. A discussion of this teacher's multimodal teaching practices suggests that understanding information from nonfiction picture books for young children requires readers to continually negotiate multiple modes of information over time and with the actions and opinions of those around them. Considerations for teachers reading nonfiction picture books are provided.

This study examines the understandings and beliefs about disability of teacher candidates in a credential program to teach students with extensive support needs and shows how reading first-person narratives by disabled authors in a course influenced these understandings and beliefs. The study used deductive thematic coding to analyze reflective assignments from 21 teacher candidates and semi-structured interviews of seven candidates. Four themes were developed through the coding process including current beliefs, expressing discomfort at disabled authors' experiences, the reflective process, where they made deep connections to personal experiences in their work, family, and community settings, and a resolve to change their teaching practice. The study recommends adding the perspectives of the disabled individual in teacher preparation texts, creating cognitive dissonance in teacher preparation programs as a first step toward changing ableism in the educational system, including veteran teachers in this conversation through university-school partnerships to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion for all students.

Nonfiction has long been left out of the discourse on literacy and little is known about the affective experiences that children seek when they choose to engage with facts via reading and otherwise. We have conducted an interview study in which children of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in Czechia (N = 20, age 9-11) reflected on the world of facts as a springboard for affective engagement. Bespoke creative props were developed for the study. First, children made collages of their real-world interests and then reflected on the different activities (e.g. reading, viewing, talking, playing) through which they nurture these interests. Second, children engaged in the design of an imaginary nonfiction book on a topic of their choosing, a process that involved laying out a double page, leafing through sample books, and sorting picture cards representing different book design features. We present the interview toolkit and its holistic rationale and offer two contrasting case studies of children whose engagement was characterised respectively by a 'learning' and 'wonder' focus. Their differences showcase the interview toolkit's flexibility for further research and practice and expose the underexplored complexity and diversity of children's nonfiction experience.

Educators who take an inclusive, anti-ableist stance value human variation. Teaching in pursuit of anti-ableism requires open dialogue about aspects of human diversity, complex social identities, and the contributions of people with disabilities. In this column, we build from the rich work exploring ableism via children's literature in order to push beyond representation and into the critical work of directly confronting and disrupting ableism in the classroom.

This study explores the factors contributing to the imbalance between fiction and nonfiction materials in primary school classrooms, with a specific emphasis on the perspectives of prospective teachers. Employing a qualitative research approach, the investigation involved 30 student teachers who had completed the Children's Literature course at a Spanish university. Semi-structured interviews, with questions validated by expert judges, were utilized to gather responses, which were subsequently transcribed and analyzed through coding, following a categorical framework refined post-response analysis. The primary findings indicate a restricted exposure to nonfiction picturebooks in familial and educational settings. Despite positive emotional responses from trainee teachers, the study reveals an inadequacy in their training, hindering the development of a comprehensive understanding and the reinforcement of self-efficacy for integrating nonfiction materials into future teaching practices. Furthermore, the research underscores a disparity between the perceived significance of nonfiction picturebooks for enhancing children's multimodal reading and the inclination of trainee teachers to prioritize fiction due to a lack of confidence and previous exposure. As a result, the study proposes a reassessment of teacher training programs, recommending a more thorough focus on nonfiction materials and continuous professional development to address the disparity between beliefs and actual classroom practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the syntactic complexity of various text-types in the Czech language by analysing the mean dependency distance (MDD), a measure that quantifies the average distance between syntactic heads and their dependents within a sentence, and average sentence length (ASL). Using data from the SYN2020 corpus, a large and balanced collection of contemporary written Czech, we calculate the MDD and ASL for different text-types. Our findings reveal distinct patterns in the MDD and ASL values across genres, suggesting that syntactic complexity varies among different types of texts. We observe a clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction genres, with fiction exhibiting lower MDD and ASL values, indicating a more compact syntactic structure. Non-fiction genres, particularly scientific literature, display higher MDD and ASL values, reflecting more complex syntactic constructions. Journalistic texts, such as newspapers and magazines, fall between fiction and non-fiction in terms of MDD and ASL values. These results demonstrate the potential of MDD and ASL as quantitative measures for characterizing and differentiating text-types based on their syntactic complexity. Furthermore, our analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of the syntactic variations across diverse genres in the Czech language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a non-fiction essay overtly about three methods used in overwintering physiology, set in the context of my first learning them, along with associated thoughts and ideas as I began working on my PhD. * The mathematics shows up mainly in the final section of the essay whose subtitle plays on a poem by Wallace Stevens called “Anecdote of the Jar”. This section is fable-like in its explanation of protein purification and begins with an impossible statement that is slowly adjusted to make sense by words and math. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonfiction has long been left out of the discourse on literacy and little is known about the affective experiences that children seek when they choose to engage with facts via reading and otherwise. We have conducted an interview study in which children of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in Czechia (N = 20, age 9–11) reflected on the world of facts as a springboard for affective engagement. Bespoke creative props were developed for the study. First, children made collages of their real-world interests and then reflected on the different activities (e.g. reading, viewing, talking, playing) through which they nurture these interests. Second, children engaged in the design of an imaginary nonfiction book on a topic of their choosing, a process that involved laying out a double page, leafing through sample books, and sorting picture cards representing different book design features. We present the interview toolkit and its holistic rationale and offer two contrasting case studies of children whose engagement was characterised respectively by a 'learning' and 'wonder' focus. Their differences showcase the interview toolkit's flexibility for further research and practice and expose the underexplored complexity and diversity of children's nonfiction experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, there are not comprehensive studies on the idioms used by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his vast literary and non-fiction production. There is only one essay, although rich in data and starting points, on a proverb cited in an article published in the weekly «Il mondo» in 1975 (Rondinelli 2017). This paper, therefore, essentially has three objectives: 1) to trace the idioms used by the Emilian writer, also referring to other interesting phraseology for the purposes of the research; 2) to provide information on the identified idioms, retracing the most significant elements of their history; 3) to identify the clues that explain their use in Pasolini. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]