Picture books are often part of children's socialisation processes, contributing to the children forming images of the world, including ideas about (categories of) people, such as nurses. The study ...aims to explore how nurses/nursing are portrayed in children's picture books in a Swedish context. Through a systematic search, 44 books were included for analysis using thematic analysis and a theoretical lens inspired by Goffman. The results were presented in three themes: ‘The costume characterised and designated nurses’, ‘Nurses and nursing were defined through specific activities and accessories’, and ‘Nurses’ role as caregivers and decency practitioners'. The results showed that nurses were depicted/described in varied contexts, performing their roles mainly front stage in ‘hands‐on work’ in close contact with patients and relatives. Nurses were attributed different accessories and personality characteristics. Nurses/nursing were generally set within a healthcare context, oftentimes within an overarching medical logic. Historical depictions of nurses' uniforms still appeared as a signifier for nurses/nursing. The presentation of nurses/nursing might have potential implications on children's understanding of and for reputations of nurses/nursing in the long term as primary socialisation and related understandings of the (sub)world(s) are deeply rooted in humans.
Picture book reading is essential in the early stages of learning and development. The current study aimed to incorporate picture books to improve first graders' scientific thinking, including ...scientific reasoning and creativity. The study adopted a quasi-experimental research design. There were 24 students in the experimental group and 23 in the control group. The chi-square test was used to analyze the difference between the two groups. The teacher innovatively employed the 5E model strategies to aid students in the experimental group focus on the scientific knowledge and methods proposed in the picture books. The results revealed that students in the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in scientific thinking with small to large effect sizes. Besides, according to students' attitudes and the types of books borrowed, picture book teaching with the 5E model was appropriate for first graders to improve their scientific thinking.
Among my many surprises and joys coming out of the ALA Annual Conference in June was my learning that a previously unpublished picture book by my idol/icon/favorite author Maurice Sendak is ...production stages. Ten Little Rabbits will be released by HarperCollins on February 6, 2024. Rights were acquired from the Maurice Sendak Foundation.
This study of 4- to 6-year-olds had 2 aims: first, to determine how lower level comprehension skills (receptive vocabulary and grammar) and verbal memory support early higher level comprehension ...skills (inference and literal story comprehension), and second, to establish the predictive power of these skills on subsequent reading comprehension. Eighty-two children completed assessments of nonverbal ability, receptive vocabulary and grammar, verbal short-term memory, and inferential and literal comprehension of a picture book narrative. Vocabulary was a unique predictor of concurrent narrative comprehension. Longitudinally, inference skills, literal comprehension, and grammar made independent contributions to reading comprehension 1 year later. The influence of vocabulary on reading comprehension was mediated through both inference and literal comprehension. The results show that inference skills are critical to the construction of text representations in the earliest stages of reading comprehension development.
Toddlers learn more about the world from picture books with photographs instead of drawings, but commercial books often have tactile features such as flaps that may counterintuitively hinder ...learning. This study tested how lift-the-flap features in a commercial picture book of first words affected 2-year-olds' (N = 32) learning of a new word for an unfamiliar food. Sixteen children saw the original lift-the-flap book, which depicted photos, and 16 saw the same book except that it was modified to have no flaps. The researcher went through the book with the child, labeling each fruit and vegetable six times. All children were unfamiliar with starfruit and were taught that it was called "carambola." After they saw the book, children's learning was tested by asking them to choose the target (i.e., "Show me carambola") from an array of 3 photos and then from an array of 3 fake food objects. Children who saw the lift-the-flap book chose the carambola target significantly less often than those who saw the modified no-flap book, and only those who saw the no-flap book performed above chance. However, the 2 groups did not differ in recognizing six higher frequency food words that were also presented in the book. Thus, 2-year-olds' word learning was hindered when taught using a book with tactile features versus one without. This finding supports dual representation accounts arguing that a symbol's concreteness interferes with representation of its abstract referent, and cognitive load accounts suggesting that tactile features distract attention from the book's content.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
This study showed that 2-year-olds were less likely to learn a new word from a "first words" picture book that had flaps to lift than from the same book when it was modified to have no flaps. These findings are important because they confirm that it is not easy for children this young to attach words to objects they have seen only in books, and that adding manipulative features to picture books makes this task harder, not easier. These findings are also important because they help clarify which picture-book features promote early learning, with implications for those who design educational picture books for very young children (e.g., publishers), and those who choose them (e.g., parents, practitioners, librarians).
Introduction We present a 14-year-old girl (A) with Trisomy 21 who was referred for set up of NIV due to severe obstructive sleep apnoea (AHI 13.4/hour) and disturbed sleep. She habitually wandered ...into her parent’s bedroom, where she would then spend the night. This sleep habit had a negative impact on A and the whole household. A consequently struggled with daytime tiredness and would regularly fall asleep during the afternoon at school. Method We reviewed A’s sleep habits and planned a graded application of NIV. Firstly, promoting a consistent bedtime routine alongside using an age-appropriate picture book (figure 1) about NIV, then introducing the NIV mask, and finally the ventilator. The Long-Term Ventilation team at Alder Hey have developed a bedtime story book to promote good sleep hygiene and bedtime without screens, highlighting the process and advantages of wearing ventilation in a child friendly way. This was utilised in A’s case to improve her understanding and create excitement around using NIV. A was immediately successful in establishing on ventilation using this approach. Parents were then keen to promote independent sleeping, so we utilised a social story including her favourite characters to encourage this. This was also successful, and A is now sleeping consistently in her own room and is compliant with her NIV. ‘The story is a big success. She really loves it. Thank you so much. We have had good success with sleeping alone’ - MumAbstract P29 Figure 1 Conclusion A is less tired in the daytime and the whole family are benefitting from better sleep. Utilising age-appropriate story books about NIV and social stories to encourage a consistent bedtime approach can aid NIV set up and help improve habitual sleep behaviours in children.
Comprehension of texts and understanding of questions is a cornerstone of successful human communication. Whilst reading comprehension has been thoroughly investigated in the last decade, there is ...surprisingly little research on children's comprehension of picture stories, particularly for bilinguals. This can be partially explained by the lack of cross-culturally robust, cross-linguistic instruments targeting early narration. This book presents an inference-based model of narrative comprehension and a tool that grew out of a large-scale European project on multilingualism. Covering a range of language settings, the book uses the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives to answer the question which narrative comprehension skills (bilingual) children can be expected to master at a certain age, and explores how such comprehension is affected (or not affected) by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Linking theory to method, the book will appeal to researchers in linguistics and psychology and graduate students interested in narrative, multilingualism, and language acquisition.
The aim of this study is to determine preschool children's attitudes towards augmented reality picture books (ARPB), their story comprehension performance (SCP) and the relationships between these ...variables. The sample consisted of 92 five‐ and six‐year‐olds (49 boys, 43 girls). An attitude form, story comprehension test and interview form were used as data collection tools. Most of the children reported feeling “very happy” with the activity and enjoyed using the ARPB, which they found interesting and fun. The children also delivered strong story SCP. Their happiness was found to affect their SCP, while their enjoyment did not. ARPB are attractive and evocative for children, who perceive them as magic and more enjoyable than conventional books. This study demonstrates how they can be used as effective educational tools to improve preschool children's cognition and listening skills.
Librarians love stories, and libraries are among the few forums that can offer exposure to collections of stories in various formats as well as encourage independent exploration and group discussion. ...Librarians read, encourage talking, writing about, and searching for stories, but this is text-based. What of the students new to the English language, so text and language are inaccessible to them? In fact, the library experience for an English Language Learner (ELL) can be different from their classroom experience if school librarians can reduce the pressure to perform. This article discusses how wordless picture books can be an opportunity to encourage students new to the English language to approach books and to experiment with English.
This study explores the emergence of triadic interactions through the example of book sharing. As part of a naturalistic study, 10 infants were visited in their homes from 3-12 months. We report that ...(1) book sharing as a form of infant-caregiver-object interaction occurred from as early as 3 months. Using qualitative video analysis at a micro-level adapting methodologies from conversation and interaction analysis, we demonstrate that caregivers and infants practiced book sharing in a highly co-ordinated way, with caregivers carving out interaction units and shaping actions into action arcs and infants actively participating and co-ordinating their attention between mother and object from the beginning. We also (2) sketch a developmental trajectory of book sharing over the first year and show that the quality and dynamics of book sharing interactions underwent considerable change as the ecological situation was transformed in parallel with the infants' development of attention and motor skills. Social book sharing interactions reached an early peak at 6 months with the infants becoming more active in the coordination of attention between caregiver and book. From 7 to 9 months, the infants shifted their interest largely to solitary object exploration, in parallel with newly emerging postural and object manipulation skills, disrupting the social coordination and the cultural frame of book sharing. In the period from 9 to 12 months, social book interactions resurfaced, as infants began to effectively integrate manual object actions within the socially shared activity. In conclusion, to fully understand the development and qualities of triadic cultural activities such as book sharing, we need to look especially at the hitherto overlooked early period from 4 to 6 months, and investigate how shared spaces of meaning and action are structured together in and through interaction, creating the substrate for continuing cooperation and cultural learning.
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