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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 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.

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.

The study focused on the use of video clips as instructional material and its impact on learning Creative Non-Fiction among Humanities and Social Sciences students in Subic National High School. The researchers used an experimental research design that involved a control group and an experimental group with a total of 60 participants. The researchers utilized a researcher-made pre-test and post-test and a survey questionnaire. The pre-test and post-test results of the control group and experimental group both showed a significant increase. Results show that the experimental group achieved a very satisfactory remark after receiving treatment which is the use of video clips presentation in learning Creative Nonfiction. Moreover, students perceived that video clips with subtitles will serve as better instructional material because they help them in learning Creative Nonfiction, understand difficult concepts, keep them engaged, and motivate them to suit their learning style. The study concluded that there is a significant difference in learning Creative Nonfiction according to the students' gender and age profile. The researchers strongly recommend that teachers should be encouraged to use video clip presentations as a supplementary tool for better academic achievement and teachers can also integrate the use of video clips in other subjects if it is applicable and suitable.

We examined how using five different simplified texts on the same subject would affect reading comprehension. 335 students in grades four through eight read one of five texts retrieved from Newsela.com and then completed a comprehension test. Results from a 3-way ANOVA showed no significant interaction among grade, reading level and text condition. Pairwise comparisons showed that below-level readers' scores improved only with extremely lower levels of text and on-level and above-level readers' scores did not significantly change regardless of text level. Regression analysis showed no statistically significant contribution of text level to overall comprehension scores. The findings of this study have implications for choosing leveled texts for reading instruction.

Informational text (IT) is a type of nonfiction designed to convey information about the natural or social world. Reading IT with young children increases knowledge of content area vocabulary and concepts and helps children build the background knowledge for success with future reading. However, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may struggle to understand IT. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss how young children with ASD can be supported to comprehend IT. Instructional strategies discussed include (a) providing physical and temporal access to IT, (b) enhancing comprehension of IT within the context of Interactive Shared Book Reading (ISBR); and (c) promoting child engagement during ISBR. The theme of the life cycle of a frog is used to illustrate how the instructional strategies can be used in a kindergarten classroom.

Rural students pursue post-secondary education at a lower rate than their urban and suburban counterparts. While the college choice process is complex for all students, it is important to further examine this process for rural students because they are an underserved population. This study utilized Perna's (2006) college choice model to examine the unique experiences of rural students in Kansas through narrative inquiry. This research sought to answer how rural students described their college choice process as well as the lived experiences that they believed affected their choice in college majors. This research found that the college choice process for rural students is incredibly complex and interrelated. This report utilizes creative nonfiction to showcase that while there are many important factors in the rural student college choice process, previous experiences as well as high school supports/people were two of the most influential factors for the participants.

University libraries globally launch coronavirus memory archival projects inviting the documentation of personal experience. Elicitations such as journal entries and oral history interviews fall under the category of life-writing. This Narrative Inquiry focuses on creative nonfiction stories produced by an online high school community and edited by the EFL teacher during the first full lockdown in Greece. The shift to distance education caused students to use ELF as a means of contrasting their local archival endeavors with global ones. The EFL teacher as researcher used mentor texts, collected the coronavirus stories on e-me online platform, engaged the online members in a peer-reviewing process and reauthored a collective narrative. Narrative writing analysis was employed to reflect the teacher's initiative to commemorate a student community's physical disconnectedness from onsite learning. The use of e-me for this collaborative venture offers practical implications for EFL practitioners such as going beyond the bounds of the traditional curriculum whilst identifying self-regulation as indication of resilience among students experiencing unprecedented circumstances.

Minimum Competence Assessment resembling PISA and Characters Survey replace National Examination in 2021. However, the Indonesian students' score in PISA is still left behind the international average scores. This study aims to find out the extent of the relationship between science informative text and science fiction text skills in secondary school. This research is a quantitative correlational study carried out by distributing online tests of science informative texts and science fiction texts. The participants of this study were 133 students of grade ten at 4th Pematangsiantar Senior High School and they were selected using simple random sampling technique. A bivariate correlation test with the Pearson Product Moment method was implemented to analyze the data. The result found that the value of the correlation coefficient was 0.96 (r = 0.96) meaning that the alternative hypothesis is accepted. In other words, there is a very strong positive correlation between the students' reading skills in fiction text with the students' reading skills in informative text. In short, the result indicates that when the students' ability to read science fiction text increases, their ability to read science informative text will also increase.

This research conducted with third graders examined a teacher and her students as they transformed their traditional writing workshop to a designing workshop. Using the New London Group's (1996) pedagogy of multiliteracies and Katie Wood Ray's (2006) units of study as frameworks, students participated in a unit of study on informational texts. After immersing themselves in a study of both traditional print-bound informational books and interactive electronic informational books, the students designed multimodal digital compositions using iBooks Author. The study focused on the teacher's transformation, the students' design process, and students' final compositions. Preliminary results demonstrated that students designed using a cyclical process, transforming to seeing themselves as designers employing a variety of modes. The study has many implications specifically in the areas of students' design process, students' multimodal compositions, and teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge.

Twenty adult ESL students at a community college participated in a semester reading intervention. Participants received a modified extensive reading treatment, and some participants received an additional repeated reading direct instruction reading intervention. The author examined the impact of the reading interventions on ESL students' reading fluency and reading comprehension. Within the two reading groups, students were selected randomly and placed into either the modified extensive reading group or the repeated reading intervention and modified extensive reading group. ESL students in the modified extensive reading group read graded readers; ESL students in the repeated reading and modified extensive reading group read graded readers and 12 nonfiction "Read Naturally" passages. Results of the quasi-experimental quantitative study indicated no significant difference between the intervention and comparison groups regarding reading fluency and reading comprehension; however, within group results were statistically significant regarding student reading rate and accuracy.

This paper shows how a significant, but short-lived, episode in Scotland's educational history--the rise and decline of Socialist Sunday Schools (SSSs) in the first half of the twentieth century--provoked controversial debates about issues that continue to have relevance today. The first half of the paper explains the origins of SSSs, their links to adult political groups, the form and content of their meetings, and publications designed to advance their agenda. It also describes the criticisms they received from religious leaders and Conservative politicians, on the grounds that they undermined faith and preached revolution. This leads into the second part, which considers whether SSSs might be regarded as agencies of indoctrination, promoting a version of citizenship that sought to subvert existing institutions and disrupt the social order. It is argued that complete neutrality in educational systems is not possible and that a study of the SSS movement has considerable potential as an educational resource, particularly for teachers of history, politics and social studies.

This article engages speculatively with Rachel Tonkin's award-winning work of children's literary non-fiction "Leaf litter: Exploring the mysteries of a hidden world" as a potential text for study in the primary or secondary literacy/English classroom. It considers the affordances and issues that may accompany teaching this text, and the pedagogical moves that might make it useful in contemporary times and in pursuit of racial and planetary justice. This work foregrounds the role of the pedagogical imagination in curriculum design, in anticipating how teachers, students and texts perform in the classroom. A more inclusive pedagogical imagination might be pursued, not through reliance on white, Western epistemologies, but through a First Nations First dialogic approach that recognises the intimate entanglements of human and other bodies and matter. This also includes identifying the ubiquity of the white "we", a coercive pronoun that literacy classrooms can challenge.

There is an uncomfortable moment in the podcast, "The Ballad of Billy Balls," that prompted me to think about a podcasting course I teach, and my approach to the emotional aspects of some of my students' own non-fiction stories. This article reflects on the course's first iteration from the perspective of Boler's pedagogies of discomfort and emotion. What became clear is that providing opportunities for students to engage with emotion and discomfort aids the development of their personal growth; yet, my approach to ethics in this course was preventing students from engaging with emotional aspects of their stories. After establishing the value of discomfort and emotion, this article presents teaching activities for the second iteration of the course. These activities are developed from my reflection and, following practitioners of speculative practice, they are designed to encourage students' exploration of emotion and discomfort and my own pedagogical experimentation in the classroom.

Background: Provided that coaches play a key role in shaping the sport experiences of athletes with a disability, they represent an important point of intervention for enhancing the quality of athletes' participation in disability sport. Despite the importance of their role, few evidence-informed learning resources are available to support the development of disability sport coaches. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to produce a novel evidence-informed learning tool for disability sport coaches in entry level and developmental coaching domains. The goal of this tool was to demonstrate and provide information about coach behaviours that facilitate quality experiences for athletes with disabilities. Methodology: The format selected for this tool was a creative nonfiction (i.e. an evidence-informed story). Using the Knowledge to Action Framework as a guide, the tool was developed through a four-stage process: (1) identifying and creating primary sources of knowledge through a literature review and original research; (2) synthesizing primary sources of knowledge to select target behaviours and behavioural determinants; (3) crafting the story to demonstrate and provide information about target behaviours and related outcomes; and (4) obtaining feedback from stakeholders (i.e. disability sport athletes, coaches, and administrators) to tailor the knowledge included in the story to the appropriate context. Findings: In the first stage, 23 studies focused on quality experiences and/or coaches in disability sport were identified through a review of the literature. The findings of these studies were combined with the results of three original studies conducted by the research team. A synthesis of these findings resulted in the selection of two behavioural determinants (confidence and attitudes) and 13 coach behaviours (aligning with transformational leadership theory) for inclusion in the tool (Stage 2). The story that formed the basis for the tool was crafted in Stage 3, which combined the behaviours and behavioural determinants identified in Stage 2 with a plotline, setting, and characters based on the experience of the first author and stakeholder input. The tool was revised several times to incorporate stakeholder feedback in Stage 4. Implications: This paper describes the development of a practical resource for coaches and coach educators in disability sport. As such, we provide a detailed and rigorous procedure for translating evidence into a narrative format with the potential for application in diverse learning contexts. In addition, we reviewed and synthesized evidence that may contribute to enhanced theoretical understandings of coaching effectiveness in disability sport. Taken together, the information presented in this paper offers important theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for researchers, coaches, and coach developers in disability sport.

Teaching and learning are grounded on age-appropriate, credible curricular resources, which can be formal (i.e. textbooks) and informal (i.e. trade-books). As Charles Darwin's ideas galvanized biology and racism, this study examined his historical representation within trade-books (e.g. biography, narrative non-fiction, expository, etc.), textbooks (student editions, teacher editions, etc.), and curricular supplements (teacher-facing assessments and lessons; student-facing tests and tasks) published in United States. Through content analysis, I contrasted historians' understandings of Darwin with history-based trade-books' (n = 111) and biology-oriented texts' (n = 132) depictions of Darwin. Misrepresentations abounded. History-based books concealed Darwin's colonialist past and disregarded--or repeated without qualification and context--the racist ideas within his writing. Biology-based texts largely omitted problematic aspects of Darwin's past. These 20th- and 21st-century history trade-books and science texts mirrored the patterns of 19th-century American social studies textbooks' Lost Cause logic and 20th-century science American textbooks' anti-evolution casuistry. Reviewed texts obscured the racist ideas within Darwin's words, actions, and inactions, through both omission and commission. Concerns are raised about who determines how historical and scientific content are included, detailed, and omitted within curricular resources published in different countries.

Many studies in the literature have addressed reading comprehension, the ultimate goal of the reading process, due to its complex nature. These studies have focused on various areas, such as the nature of reading comprehension, how it occurs, the factors that affect the process of comprehension, reading comprehension impediments, and how to improve reading comprehension. The current study aims at examining the cognitive and motivational factors to explain reading comprehension. In the light of the related literature, the cognitive factors in this study were vocabulary, prior knowledge, and use of reading strategies, while the motivational factors include motivation and self-efficacy. Both informative and narrative texts were used to measure the success in reading comprehension. The participants were composed of 384 students studying in 6th grade (F: 205, M: 179). The study results reveal that cognitive and motivational factors predict reading comprehension at a statistically significant level. The most effective two factors are vocabulary and prior knowledge, both of which are cognitive factors. The order of relative importance of the variables is vocabulary, prior knowledge, motivation, self-efficacy, and reading strategies. There are some suggestions made in the light of the study results for researchers and practitioners.

Many elementary teachers shy away from using expository literature for interactive read-alouds in their classrooms, preferring and privileging narrative texts over this type of nonfiction. This article first shares the complementary benefits of moving beyond fiction and narrative nonfiction in educators' read-aloud practices. Affordances include increased student knowledge and vocabulary, greater understanding of expository text structures and features, and heightened engagement. The article then features lesson plans demonstrating unique ways to use expository books for interactive read-alouds with elementary students. Additionally, readers are provided with high-quality expository texts educators may include in their classrooms.

Text social information includes the cognitive processes and social communication skills that support real or hypothetical human thought or interaction. The current measure of text social information is genre. However, genre is a limited measure because of poor operationalization, limited specificity, and overlap with structural and linguistic differences. The purpose of this study was to develop an automated text analysis approach to measure text social information in children's picture books beyond genre. Studies 1 and 2 found convergent and divergent validity for several measures that captured text social information with these measures being significantly higher in children's fiction compared to nonfiction books and not correlated with other structural and linguistic text measures. Study 3 found two components of text social information, based on a principal component analysis. These two components captured a general socialness factor (i.e., theory of mind, emotions, and social relationships) and pragmatics/conversation. Study 4 provides preliminary evidence for the predictive validity of the text social information measures. Together, this study provides an initial set of continuous measures for measuring text social information that can begin to advance the field in determining how text social information impacts comprehension and social cognition.

Purpose: Using a discourse analytic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine how genre impacts white readers when reading about historic acts of racial violence. Specifically, this study explores one white high school student's stance-taking as she read an informational text and an eyewitness narrative about the Tulsa Race Massacre. Design/methodology/approach: This study used discourse analysis (Gee, 1999) and the think-aloud method (Pressley and Afflerbach, 1996) to explore the white student's interactions with genres of historical texts. The authors coupled iterative coding and memoing with discourse analysis to analyze the stances she adopted while reading. Findings: The findings illustrate that the informational text allowed for a distancing from the racialized violence in the text, whereas the narrative created an opportunity for more connection to those who experienced the violence. Originality/value: While genre and reader response has long been explored in English Education research, little research has examined the impact of genre on reading historical texts. This study demonstrates the influence that genre may have on white readers' emotional responses and stance-taking practices when reading about historic acts of racial violence.

Purpose: Morphological regularities are an important feature of the English writing system, and exposure to written morphology may be key in the development of skilled word recognition. Our aim was to investigate children's experiences of written morphology by analyzing a large-scale corpus of children's reading materials spanning a target age range from 5 to 14 years. Method: Analysis was based on the Oxford Children's Reading Corpus. We examined frequency distributions of derived and compound words by target age and genre, as well as type and token frequencies for individual derivational suffixes. Results: We found that the proportion of morphologically complex words -- and derived words particularly -- increased in line with target age, and that nonfiction contained more complex words than fiction. Frequencies of individual suffixes also varied by target age and genre, with Germanic forms more common in fiction and texts for younger children, and Latinate forms more common in nonfiction and texts for older children. Conclusion: These findings provide a comprehensive picture of how children's experience with written morphology changes over the course of reading development. We discuss these findings in the context of developmental changes in morphological processing, and the benefits and limitations of using large-scale natural language datasets.

Facts about climate change are often ineffective in impacting people's climate change beliefs or environmentally related behaviors. Multiple theories of environmental behavior use norms to foster behavior change. Science fiction writers may also attempt to sway individuals' perceptions of climate change through imaginings of a future affected by climate change. The impact of these fictional narratives on individuals' climate change perceptions and related behaviors has not been widely studied. We examined the impact of (i) personal versus social norms and (ii) fiction versus nonfiction climate change readings on undergraduate students' climate change perceptions and behaviors. On average, students' climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and behavioral intentions increased across all intervention groups. Comparing fiction with nonfiction, personal with social norms, and interaction effects revealed no significant difference between changes in students' behavioral intentions. However, trends in this exploratory research suggest that social norms and fiction writings are worth exploring as particularly effective ways to engage students in climate change discussions. These results reveal the potential for fictional narratives and social norms to encourage impactful discussion around climate change.

Informational text--resources whose purpose is to inform--is essential to daily life and fundamental to literacy. Unfortunately, young children typically have limited exposure to informational text. Two 9-week randomized controlled trials with 263 first-grade children from low-income communities examined whether free educational videos and digital games supported children's ability to use informational text to answer real-world questions. Participants received Internet-enabled tablets and were randomly assigned to condition. Study 1 found significant positive intervention impacts on child outcomes; Study 2 replicated these findings. Combined analyses demonstrated primary impact on children's ability to identify and use structural and graphical features of informational text. Results are discussed in the context of the scalability of educational media to support informational text learning.

Children's nonfiction once had a reputation as a lackluster genre. However, the nonfiction books published today are noteworthy for their appeal and quality. This study's purpose was to examine contemporary teachers' perceptions of recent children's nonfiction. Fourteen elementary teachers shared their opinions of contemporary nonfiction for children in written reflections, which were inductively analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The teachers addressed the following themes in their reflections: (1) presentation of the books, (2) the potential of books to support elementary readers, and (3) ways books could support learning opportunities. The findings indicate these teachers had a positive response to contemporary nonfiction, but they suggest there is still work to be done to ensure elementary students? access to a diverse array of nonfiction books.

The use of authentic materials for language teaching is common. Yet, there is not much information about what type of instructional materials benefits learners. The purpose of the study is to find empirical evidence of whether non-fiction authentic materials are more superior that fiction authentic material. The researchers used an experimental design to answer the research question. The population of the study was all students who took an essay writing course at University PGRI Wiranegara in the academic year 2019-2020. The sample was taken by using a systematic random sampling method which results in two equal numbers of students in two experimental groups. Group A was taught with non-fiction authentic material, while group B was taught with the fiction authentic material. The researchers used ANOVA to analyze the data in SPSS 22. The process of teaching and learning followed the writing as a process approach and was done in a blended-learning setting because of the pandemic of COVID 19. The result shows that there is no significant interaction between content type and proficiency level (F(2,30) = 1.347, p = 0.275). The main effect of content type on writing performance was not significant (F(1,30)=0.001, p 0.973), but the main effect of proficiency level on writing performance is significant such that the students who have a higher level of writing proficiency have better performance than the students who have a lower level of writing proficiency (F (2,30) = 5.653, p 0.008). The researchers conclude that both types of authentic materials are equally effective to improve the students' essay writing performance.

Background/Context: Unconscious racial bias (URB) can be a pernicious form of racism. In light of increased awareness of and research on the subject, URB work has become a key focus of equity work in health care, education, and corporate contexts as part of broader calls for racial justice. In Canada, targeting URB in education has become a policy priority at the national, provincial, and school board levels. The role of individual and organizational URB is now widely recognized in policy as central to equitable outcomes in schooling; however, research is limited on how to engage these forms of racism in educational contexts. Prevailing approaches to URB work in schools often include truncated one-off workshops, which leave unaddressed the connections between the individual racial biases, and the operations of white supremacy and racism at the institutional, systemic, and structural levels. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: While URB is increasingly well-understood by social psychologists, there has been limited engagement from critical scholars working in areas such as critical race theory (CRT), anti-colonialism, and critical whiteness studies--despite the popularity of interrogating URB as an anti-racism strategy in education. CRT in education has laid bare and problematized the central function of schooling in the safeguarding and management of white supremacy. This project emerged from a dual recognition of URB as a productive entry point for racial awareness and anti-racism work, alongside a significant concern about the failure of mainstream URB discourse to address structural racism and white supremacy--masking at times the deeper ways that Euro-colonial racism underpins social relations in contemporary U.S., Canadian, European, and other contexts. This work seeks to address these limitations in the design of the study through deep work with participants. Specifically, the study sought to understand better the impacts of reading critical texts focusing on systemic, structural, and institutional racism on teachers' understandings of their own racial biases, as well as teachers' perspectives on the impacts of reading critical texts in terms of their professional practices. Research Design: This article reports on the findings of a 10-month study with secondary teachers in Toronto, Canada, focusing on critical approaches to racial bias mitigation in education. In addition to asking participants to enact a series of URB mitigation strategies developed in the field of social psychology, this study also required participants to read and reflect on one of the following critical anti-racism nonfiction texts: "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo" (2018); "Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada From Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard" (2017); "Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, edited by Mica Pollock" (2008); "Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada" by Paulette Regan (2014); and "Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects" by Christina Sharpe (2010). The project was designed using multiple data sources from participants, including electronic survey responses, ongoing journaling/reflection, a midpoint check-in questionnaire, and a final interview. These multiple entry points, as well as the duration of the project, aimed to go beyond the taken-for-granted and toward deeper understanding over time. Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings suggest that reading these works impacted teachers' understandings of race and racism in terms of their teaching, as well as in terms of their personal relationships to race and racism, increasing their inclination and ability to address race and anti-racism. This work allowed for critical reflection to seep into the most intimate and invisible moments of operationalized whiteness in the professional and personal spheres of participants. This suggests an important complementarity between teacher intervention practices emerging from social psychology, and the introduction and engagement of critical anti-racist and anti-colonial texts in terms of teachers' work for racial justice.

This study investigates the ways in which first graders utilised a variety of semiotic resources when authoring nonfiction compositions during a nonfiction genre writing unit of study. Grounded in social semiotics and multimodality theories, the study uses a case study approach to explore the text, image and design resources used in students' multimodal compositions as a group followed by an in-depth examination of two students' compositions. The data collection includes student compositions, video of classroom interactions and video recorded student composition/artefact elicitation interviews in which students discussed their composition process, authorial decision making and final composition. A multimodal approach to data analysis examines the semiotic resources used by the children, their meaning potential and purposes for inclusion in their nonfiction compositions. Findings suggest students drew upon a range of modalities, including visual images, graphic design features and movable text, in addition to written language to share their ideas and present their information through multimodal compositions. Implications include a need for curricular and instructional advancements with a greater focus on multimodal composing techniques to create inclusive spaces where students can more fully represent what they want to communicate.

Children's books of Nazi propaganda prove that a society can venerate science to the point of making biology the organizing principle of its educational system yet nevertheless produce children's literature shot through with fabrication and falsehood. Three children's books of Nazi propaganda that are frequently mentioned in accounts of anti-Semitism but seldom analyzed are discussed: Elvira Bauer's "Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid" (1936), Ernst Hiemer's "Der Giftpilz" (1938), and Hiemer's "Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher" (1940) illustrate the ways in which racist science and ideological narrative tautologically reinforce each other in an extreme version of how "narratives play a key role in communicating science" (Pauwels, 2019, p. 434) in children's nonfiction. These texts of lurid racism, all issued by the book publishing arm of Julius Streicher's virulently anti-Semitic newspaper "Der Stürmer," offer a monitory case study of how bad science and toxic narrative can coalesce into a literary poison intended to indoctrinate young readers. This analysis of Nazi nonfiction for children demonstrates how science and story can be exploited to promote a racist agenda.

This article uses a critical discourse analysis approach to observe themes and patterns in eight non-fiction books about Polish patriotism for children. The books are commercially available in mainstream bookshops, and may be used in a range of home or educational settings. In a social and political context where the concept of patriotism has a long history of use by various powerful elites to legitimize their positions and political actions, and where approaches to teaching patriotism in schools have been widely discussed, the article compares themes emerging from the books with patterns in wider social and political discourse, as well as considering what messages and assumptions are revealed in the texts themselves. The analysis finds that, while most of the authors try to associate themselves with a modern and inclusive type of patriotism, they also tend to reproduce certain assumptions that favour exclusionary or hierarchical understandings as to who has the right to be recognized as a member of the national community.

Reading comprehension of informational texts has been largely debated and introduced at all levels of education across western countries. However, it has not received enough attention in developing countries including Vietnam. This paper aims to investigate the procedure of reading and comprehension of informational texts in high schools in Vietnam. The study surveyed 588 teachers and 2744 high school students across all regions of Vietnam. The survey questionnaires asked teachers and students' opinions on the teaching and learning of informational texts. Through statistical analysis with Excel sheets, the results show that the part of informational texts in the curriculum was small when compared with literary texts. This shows that there is very little requirement of teaching and learning informational text in high schools which results in students' limited ability in reading informational text. The findings also suggest that understanding and reading informational texts have been contended as essential to the educational performance of students. The research also revealed that both teachers and students need to be more prepared in the classrooms to teach and learn informational texts. It is recommended that Vietnamese general education curricula should include a greater amount of informational texts in textbooks and instruction on informational texts should be given more attention to improve students' understanding.

This study discusses the role of stylistic analysis in the development of critical language awareness (CLA) which is crucial for assessing ideologies transmitted in discourse. The Critical Stylistic approach is used to compare narrative strategies in fiction and non-fiction: in Ishiguro's novel "The Buried Giant" (2015) and in Wolff's book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" (2018) by using analytical tools such as transitivity, participants, actions and processes, vocabulary, syntax, modality, generics, personal pronouns, speech acts. Considering ambiguous approaches to the issue of truth in mass media when hundreds of fact-checking sites are telling people how to separate 'true meaning' from 'fake meaning', this study argues that the linguistic approach to narratives can foster critical thinking by helping readers understand the interpretative nature of the meaning of the text. In the light of contemporary literary strategies, literature is affirmed as mode of 'truth' in the sense of an increased self-knowledge and insight on the part of the reader who carries out interpretation as opening up to the text in relation to multiple meanings. The stylistic approach towards narrative strategies is pointed out as prevention of prescriptive and dogmatic readings and as encouragement for critical literacy.

Reading rate, usually measured in words per minute, is a common operationalization of reading fluency in second language (L2) research and pedagogy. However, the impact of word length is often not addressed. This paper presents two studies showing how the number of characters in a text influences L2 reading time, independent of word counts, within classroom-based activities for Japanese university English as a Foreign Language students. In Study 1, students (N = 160) read two sets of graded texts manipulated to differ only in the total number of characters. The texts with more characters required significantly more time to read, with a small effect size. In Study 2, the average reading times for students (N = 27) throughout a semester-long timed reading course were strongly associated with text length as measured in characters, controlling for differences in word counts. Together these studies support the inclusion of character-based counting units when measuring L2 reading rate or reading amount.

This research investigates the efficiency of applying creative writing multi-tasks in developing level 4 female English major students' creative writing competence. The study conducted for 12 weeks in 2018-2019 academic year, in Zulfi College of Education, Majmaah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The sample consists of 64 female students divided equally into two groups: experimental and control groups. The experimental group studied an advanced college writing course supported by the creative writing multitasks designed by the researcher. A group of pre- and posttest design was applied in the study. When the pre and posttest's scores of the experimental group were analyzed and compared, it was detected that there was a statistically considerable difference in the pre- and posttest scores, in favor of posttest's score. Also, it shows that there was a significant difference in the mean scores of the experimental and control group posttest's scores, favoring the experimental group posttest's score. These results prove the main research hypothesis: Creative writing multi-tasks have a significant impact on developing the experimental group's creative writing competence, compared to the control group. The findings indicate that using creative writing multitasks has a positive effect on developing the students' creative writing competence in both fiction and nonfiction essays. It is recommended for English language teachers to adopt similar creative writing multitasks when teaching writing skill.

The study was a linguistic examination of the use of lexical cohesive devices in Ngugi Wa Thiong 'O's "Decolonising the Mind"- an autobiography. The study was aimed at revealing how Ngugi - an African L2 writer, deployed lexical cohesive devices to achieve cohesion and coherence and how this has contributed to the meaning of his non-fictional essay. The study was guided by the theoretical framework of Halliday's tripartite metafunctions of language: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual, with closer inclination to the textual metafunction that deals with text creation. Cohesion is understood in this study as a textual strategy deployed in language use to unify sentences into a text (a unified whole), that renders the speech or writing both readable and meaningful. A total of 29 excerpts, selected from relevant sections of the essay were descriptively analysed. Our analysis revealed that Ngugi made effective use of lexical cohesive devices to tie his text together, thereby succeeded in passing his message clearly to his readers. Our findings also showed a preponderant use of reiteration (near synonym) - 13 times, and repetition - 8 times, by the writer, probably to achieve emphasis. Other lexical devices deployed by the writer to achieve various textual and communicative functions include: antonyms 4 times; superordinate/hyponym, 2 times; and complementaries and cohyponym, 1 each, in crafting his essay, in which he tells a real-life story of his people, his culture and his heritage. Ngugi, by his effective use of cohesive devices along paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis, has demonstrated that an African writer can also, through the medium of biographical writing, project, not only his ideology, but also the exultation of his people, his culture and his inheritance by a skillful and near-native use of the English language. The study made a case for a systematic teaching of cohesive devices at all levels of education as that will improve reading and comprehension and the aver all communicative competence of L2 learners of English.

Reading nonfiction texts with understanding is important to school success, yet many students struggle to do so. This randomized controlled trial extends previous research by contrasting an earlier iteration of a comprehension tutoring program (Comp) against a variant with strategies for transferring learning (Comp+Transfer). Participants were 189 fourth and fifth graders with weak reading comprehension. To evaluate their efficacy, we used commercially developed far-transfer measures and experimenter-made near- and mid-transfer measures of reading comprehension. In contrast to controls, students in both programs significantly improved their understanding of near-transfer passages. Additionally, students in Comp+Transfer improved performance on mid-transfer passages. These findings suggest the value of teaching for transfer and the importance of measuring program efficacy with researcher-made tests alongside commercial tests.

Given increased attention toward nonfiction and informational texts due to recent educational reforms in the nation, it is critical to examine how various cultural identities are depicted in nonfiction children's picture books. Focusing on the Orbis Pictus honor and awarded texts (n = 60) from 1990 to 2019, this article reports the findings of a critical multicultural analysis of the depictions of age, sex, socio-economic status, ethnicities, and geographic regions of these awarded texts. Using a secondary analysis of opportunities for agency, we examine how focal subjects (Crisp in Lang Arts 92(4):241-255, 2015) exert their agency in their respective contexts. Our aim in doing so is to problematize the notion of agency in these texts, specifically understanding who exerts agency, how, and for what purposes. Findings suggest that the authors of these awarded texts rely on highlighting White, European males where agency is typically depicted as an act that occurs in adulthood. As a result, discussion focuses on how such texts, although well-meaning, perhaps perpetuate the traditional notion and passivity of young children in relation to their agency and calls to question the lack of multiple perspectives and voices in the awarded texts.

This Critical Comparative Content Analysis employs theories of poststructuralist feminism to examine two versions of a nonfiction fitness text for young adult readers, one written for females and one for males. The analysis reveals the persistent naming of gendered assumptions about the appropriateness of particular sports to particular athletes, purposes of fitness, understandings of the ideal athlete, and emotional capacity of young adult readers. These assumptions result in regular and repeated performances of gender that have the potential to suggest to readers that there are certain expectations around fitness that depend upon whether an athlete is a girl or a boy. Taken together, they reflect a particular positioning of athletes and expectations around performance, suggesting to readers that how bodies are shaped and how bodies perform are normative and distinctly gendered, a finding that holds particular resonance when we consider the authoritative nature of informational texts.

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the reading of a book-length fiction or non-fiction text in one disciplinary literacy (DL) teacher education course. This paper considers how the assignment may help pre- and in-service teachers understand literacy as multifaceted and connected within and beyond their content areas (Moje, 2015). The research explores how reading a book-length text may help support DL, equity-oriented curricula that consider literacy as empowerment and connected to lived and communal experiences (González et al., 2005; Muhammad, 2020). Design/methodology/approach: This work is grounded in a qualitative, humanizing methodology and thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Paris and Winn, 2014). This approach examines student work in one DL course, considering how teachers within and beyond English language arts (ELA) respond to the task of reading a book-length text. Findings: First, the assignment offered space for participants to redefine literacy as empowerment and enjoyment. Second, the assignment helped participants connect literacy within and beyond their content areas and to see literacy as active and interdisciplinary. Third, the assignment includes clear limitations for a DL approach, particularly when participants focus mainly on connections to their content area. This sometimes obfuscated participants' enjoyment of reading. Originality/value: The study offers a new perspective on a task that is often seen as specifically "ELA": reading a book-length text. This project offers space for ELA educators to consider literacy from a DL, equity-oriented framework focused on enjoyment in literature within and beyond ELA classrooms.

Nationally and internationally, we face a crisis of misinformation and disinformation (De Jesus & Hubbard, "Social Studies," 112(3), 136-145, 2021; Lee & Hosam, "Sociological Forum," 35, 996-1008, 2020). Now more than ever, children need to know how authors obtain the information included in nonfiction books. Backmatter simultaneously models informational literacy and engages students more deeply with information, offering them the opportunity to explore further. Through regular explorations of backmatter, students become vicariously immersed in the dynamic processes by which information is created and communicated, normalizing the vetting and utility of information in the public sphere as well as in their own lives. In this article, we offer a brief overview of the evolution of backmatter in nonfiction for young people and propose a typology of backmatter. By highlighting the important, complex roles backmatter serves, we hope to help establish it as an indispensable part of reading a book.

Having grown up Black in America, the author reflects on his limited exposure to African American literature in school as well as his even more limited opportunity to see himself reflected in the mirrors of those texts. The article then extends into a framework for expanding the inclusion of African American texts in educators' classrooms. Approaching the literature from a historical design perspective (concerning the purposes that gave the literature life and direction throughout its existence), the article divides African American literature into two groups -- the texts that centre race and race matter and those that centre lives and lifestyles -- in an effort to challenge educators' understanding of both the literature and the people represented within it. The article acknowledges that, while perhaps different in design, both groups of texts speak to the humanity of African American students as the students exist both within and beyond the context of race.

The book "Superhero Scientists" is a non-fiction text for children to read about people involved in the fascinating world of science. The 21 chapters are full of facts, life stories and scientific discoveries. From astrophysicists to pilots, epidemiologists to vets, marine biologists to scene of crime officers--the book details why they are all superheroes. In this article, the authors present an extract from the book.

A 9th grade Honors English class creates and publishes original poems, art, fiction, and nonfiction products through an activity called "Type Three -- Twenty Time = T4." The instructional method merges elements from Renzulli's Type III process with elements from Brookhouser's 20Time Project-based learning model. Each student researches an interest passion topic and creates a related original product or service for a real audience. Upon reflection on the experience, the author identifies evidence-based practices including compacting ELA course content to create time for the T4 process; enhanced student engagement; active learning versus passive learning; improved writing skills; quality presentation skills; higher level creative and critical thinking; and upgraded 21st Century skills.