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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. [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]

Children often prefer nonfiction to fiction books but historically, teachers have neglected nonfiction books during reads alouds. The present study examined how young readers collectively make meaning of nonfiction picturebooks with the help of the teacher and their peers during a whole group interactive read-aloud in one kindergarten classroom. Using Bakhtin's dialogism and Rosenblatt's reader response theory, this study captured videos of nonfiction read-alouds, interviews, and formal observations to examine how children make sense of nonfiction picturebooks during whole group read-alouds. This study exposes the social nature of learning. Findings indicate that readers of nonfiction consider the responses of those around them in their takeaways, that making sense of nonfiction is a continual and discursive process, and that children used nonfiction books as a way to connect with one another. Implications for conducting nonfiction read-alouds with young children are discussed. This research exposes the power and potential for interactive read-alouds using nonfiction picturebooks with kindergarteners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of reading aloud to children is ubiquitous in early childhood classrooms. Teachers read aloud to young children to entertain, to build early literacy skills, to develop domain specific content knowledge and vocabulary, to promote social and emotional development and well-being, and to draw children into community with each other and the world. The types of texts teachers decide to immerse children in matters: children need opportunities to examine fiction and nonfiction texts, to learn from and about history, to wonder about phenomena in their natural, physical, and social worlds. This study explores the range of titles that 445 early childhood teachers reported reading with their students at a single timepoint. It describes the variety of fiction and nonfiction texts teachers reported reading and surfaces rich culturally relevant literature selections use with young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Koreans have relied on the shadow economy since the collapse of socialism in the 1990s, but little is known about the degree to which informal markets have influenced the country's everyday politics. Based on a large-scale survey of defectors, as well as interviews with almost 100 defectors, including some who had been high-ranking officials prior to leaving North Korea, this article finds that the shadow economy has elicited many changes. First, informal marketisation has affected social practices in the workplace, such as reduced job attendance, decreased participation in mandatory organisational meetings, and a strengthened public perception that official job allocations are unfair. Second, the shadow economy has spread unfavourable views of the official welfare system, leading people to prefer life in the market to their past reliance on the command economy. Third, the shadow economy has led to rampant corruption, strengthening popular perceptions that officials are corrupt and law enforcement is unfair. Finally, the shadow economy has negatively affected public views of the North Korean regime, decreasing loyalty to the leadership and reducing public trust in political institutions. Despite these social transformations, people remain sceptical about the idea of regime change due to tight social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I use two literary works from two distinct genres and with two very different narratives - a satirical techno-thriller and a historical non-fiction piece - to show how they can both convey the same bioethical message - donation of human body parts - to their audience. The two books I examine and contrast here are Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) and Michael Crichton's satirical techno-thriller Next (2006). The main question this article will try to answer is obviously not why The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a carefully researched nonfiction book, belongs on the list of essential works on bioethics, but rather why Next, a satirical techno-thriller that continuously blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, belongs on the list as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Story telling is one of the most time honored methods for conveying ideas, inspiring action and offering insights into the foibles and ferment of the human condition. This editorial offers a glimpse into what is sparking the imaginations and passions of health promotion professionals by simply asking them 'what are you reading?' Those who shared the books currently sitting alongside their reading chairs were not asked to select books that were related to improving health and well-being. Still, it came as no surprise that contributors to this article uniformly described plots, characters and narratives that illuminate how life circumstances can accost health and jeopardize well-being. What's more, you will see that in fiction, non-fiction and fanciful fables alike, health promotion professionals extract inspiration from these books and find ways to apply the moral of these stories toward the improvement of our profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Melissa Harrison, nature writer, podcaster, and author of the novels "Clay," "At Hawthorn Time," and "All Among the Barley," is presented. She discussed whether she find fiction and nonfiction to be very different things to write, insight on her novel "All Among the Barley," and information on her novel "At Hawthorn Time."

Queerfeminist strategies in the reconstruction of memories, such as performative uses of fantasy in (auto)biographical (non)fiction texts, can bring out what has been repressed by androcentric narratives of History. Through memory dispositives, which trigger frictions between past and present, fiction and reality, creators manage to confront trauma. This is illustrated by close reading two works dealing with (post)memories of the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship: Carmen Martín Gaite's novel El cuarto de atrás (1978) and Maite García Ribot's documentary film Cartas a María (2015). While Martín Gaite navigates through her own fictionalized memories, García Ribot reconstructs her grandfather's exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "The Matrix of the Argentine Secondary School. Comparative Historical Analysis between the 19th and 20th Centuries" by Felicitas Acosta, published in Cuadernos de Educación, examines the secondary school in Argentina from a historical and comparative perspective. The author uses the Theory of World Culture and studies on the internationalization of schooling to analyze the configuration, expansion, and organization of the secondary school in the country. The notion of Institutional Model is highlighted as a tool to understand the processes of genesis and change in the secondary school. The article analyzes transnational historical trends and the processes of configuration of educational systems, and mentions the humanistic schools of the 15th century as a model of institution from which the secondary school originated. The transformations in the secondary school in the 20th century are also mentioned, and the origins of the Argentine secondary school are analyzed. The continuous expansion of the secondary school is highlighted, but also a high dropout rate. [Extracted from the article]

Elizabeth Bowen's Collected Impressions (1950), out of print since soon after its initial appearance , has been wrongly disregarded by Bowen's readers and critics. The volume, comprising over fifty pieces of criticism, models Bowen's distinctive critical process—a process that is characterized by self-reflection, by deliberate and artful arrangement of her essays, and by her strategic revisionary return to a decade's worth of her nonfiction. Archival research at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin reveals that Bowen develops a "scrap screen" approach to writing criticism in an effort to make of her literary impressions something permanent. Besides re-envisioning nostalgia as part of her critical process, Bowen composes a text that serves as a unifying record of her development as a literary critic, despite her self-doubt regarding her legacy as a critic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, it is aimed to investigate impact of science activities applied with nonfiction science picture books on 21st century skills of 60-72 months old children. The study was conducted with a total of 58 children, in other words 29 children in the experimental group and 29 children in the control group. In the research, quantitative data were obtained with the 21st century skills scale which as given to children before and after the application, and the obtained data were construed by using statistical analyzes. In the light of the results obtained from the research, it can be observed that applying science acitivities through/via the non-fiction science books positively supported the 21st century skills and their sub-dimension skills such as "learning and innovation", "living and career", and "information-media and technology" skills of the children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]