This study draws on a research project where a model of fiction-based ethics education was developed and put into practice during a school year in five classes in compulsory school, two in grade 5 and three in grade 8. A test was constructed with the purpose of evaluating a multi-dimensional ethical competence. The test was given at the beginning…

Background: The affordances of technology, such as e-books, offer the opportunity to increase engagement and provide personalised feedback to promote students' learning outcomes. E-books that encourage the use of comprehension monitoring strategies in real time may support stronger outcomes. Objectives: The purpose of this feasibility study was to…

Even though the importance of extensive reading practice is well documented, as are students' changing leisure-time reading habits, knowledge of how much students read at school is still limited. Therefore, this study investigates how many pages of continuous text, nonfiction as well as fiction, students in middle (Grades 4-6) and lower secondary…

Racism impacts various facets of the lives of people of color (POC) in the United States, spanning across historical and contemporary contexts. Chinese Americans, as an ethnic group historically excluded from entering the United States and denied naturalized citizenship, have endured distinctive and enduring forms of racism that are…

The purpose of this feasibility study was to examine the potential impact of reading digital interactive e-books, Word Knowledge e-books (WKe-Books), on essential skills that support reading comprehension with third-fifth grade students. Students (N= 425) read two WKe-Books, that taught word learning and comprehension monitoring strategies in the…

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention using indirect intergroup contact for improving intergroup attitudes in schools, in particular anti-Roma prejudice. Vicarious contact--a form of indirect intergroup contact--can be experienced through fictional book characters, who can serve as positive role models in terms of…

This article reports on a study in which, for five weeks, the English lessons of two classes of 11--12 year olds in Sweden were based on Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr Fox." To promote the learners' engagement with the text, support understanding, and facilitate incidental vocabulary acquisition, a range of language-focused tasks were…

"Metalepsis" is a narrative structural device that increases the complexity of narrative representations by breaching conventional "relationships and hierarchies between characters, texts, authors, illustrators and readers" (McCallum, 2008, p. 181). The focus of this article is how types of metalepsis contribute to the…

The overarching aim is to explore what teachers perceive as the opportunities provided by using literature in ethics education in compulsory school. When being interviewed, in what ways do the teachers express views on the potential of fiction to encourage students to accept certain human conditions as imaginable, or to create motivation for…

Reading is a complex task that requires cognitive and emotional engagement. The integrated instruction approach, incorporating strategy instruction and literature circles, was developed to improve Chinese students' reading comprehension, reading motivation, and strategy use in reading fiction books. The current study adopted a quasi-experimental…

Framed by decolonial theory, this paper explores how language and literacy ideologies, including Anglonormativity, or the expectation that children should be proficient in a standardised version of English and are deficient if not, shape language and literacy practices in South African classrooms. While not legitimised, the use of fluid language…

This study examined multiple measures of written expression as predictors of narrative writing performance for 362 students in grades 4 through 6. Each student wrote a fictional narrative in response to a title prompt that was evaluated using a levels of language framework targeting productivity, accuracy, and complexity at the word, sentence, and…

The author presents findings from a yearlong study of the ways an inclusive fourth-grade teacher and her students talked about reading outside of formal reading lessons. Findings indicated that across the school day, especially during informal moments, students narrated connections and disconnections between their experiences and realistic fiction…

As the ongoing national indicator of what American students know and can do, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through "The Nation's Report Card," the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students…

Immersion in fiction narratives like Alan Gratz's (2017) "Refugee" can help students recognize and acknowledge our common humanity when discussed in a dialogic classroom using a critical literacy pedagogy. Following the literature on using novel discussions to help students understand pressing societal issues (e.g., Boas, 2012; Hsieh,…