Children's Narratives Research Articles

Exploring the correlation between translation methods and quality in Mandarin-Indonesian: A case study

This study examines how approaches affect the quality of translating the Mandarin children's narrative "对小虎的称赞" into Indonesian. This study examines how approaches affect translation quality. This study investigates how approaches affect Mandarin-to-Indonesian children's story translation quality, unlike earlier studies. This study uses qualitative research. This study found that the most common method of translating source data into the target language was literal translation. 87.70% of the data underwent literal translation, exhibiting average readability, accuracy, and acceptability. The average readability, correctness, and acceptability of semantic translation, 3.45% of total data, was good. Free translation comprised 49 cases (5.63% of total data) with worse readability, accuracy, and acceptability. We applied communicative translation to 0.92% of the data, which was readable, accurate, and acceptable. Faithful translation had 13 occurrences (1.49% of total data) of illegible, inaccurate, and poor translation. We adapted 0.57% of the data with legible, accurate, and acceptable translations. According to these data, translation method choice strongly impacts translation quality.

The story so far: scoping review of narratives in deaf children.

Narrative language samples can be used to measure language development in children, but research on narrative development in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children is scarce, limiting knowledge of developmental stages and best practices for collection and analysis. This scoping review included 39 articles that explored recent methodologies and achievements in oral or signed narratives of DHH children, including comparisons with hearing peers and within-group analyses of early auditory experience, device use, and other measures. Articles featured DHH participants aged < 4 to 18years, varying in device use, communication modalities, and educational settings. Most studies utilized story generation tasks with early elementary-aged children and analyzed either microstructure or macrostructure. Mixed results in comparisons with hearing children emphasized the need to consider individual differences (e.g., speech perception and age of spoken language access) in DHH narrative assessments. Findings also suggest that comparability across studies would be improved by more consistent terminology and procedures in narrative collection/analysis.

Flying to conquer. The aeronautical pedagogy in narratives for children in Italy (1911–1945)

This paper analyses the representation of flight in children's narratives in Italy from the Libyan war to the end of the Second World War. For this period, it is possible to see an escalation in the centrality of the theme of flight, functional to the construction of the myth of the aviator which reaches its peak during fascism. The regime used the subject of flight extensively for propaganda purposes and to further consolidate those that were the fascist values: strength, the mastery and the conquest of the earth and the sky, and the supremacy of Italian spirit through technological and engineering advancement. The construction of the myth of the aviator made use of a variety of tools aimed at children, through the definition of an “aeronautical pedagogy”. Such construction aimed to stress the Italian superiority against the Arab and African inferiority. The theme of flight sanctioned and reaffirmed this hierarchy.

Exploring the connections: Elementary teachers’ narratives of Mexican deaf children’s play behaviours, social interactions, and communication development

ABSTRACT This study explores the experiences and perspectives of eight elementary teachers regarding the play behaviours of deaf children in their classrooms in Mexico City. Through a narrative inquiry design, this research comprehensively explains teachers’ insights and observations on social interactions and communication development among deaf children. The findings indicate patterns in social interactions related to play behaviours, language development through imitation, and communication variations contingent on proficiency in Lengua de Señas Mexicana (LSM). The study emphasises the necessity of creating inclusive educational environments and providing appropriate support for the communication development of deaf children. Employing a qualitative research approach, this study involves in-depth interviews with Deaf elementary school teachers with experience working with deaf children. This study aims to elucidate teachers’ perceptions and interpretations of language acquisition and play behaviours concerning social interactions and communication development by analysing their narratives. Three key dimensions emerged from the narratives: linguistic proficiency, play behaviours, and social engagement, which intersect and influence each other. The findings hold significant implications for educators, policymakers, and parents, offering valuable insights that can inform the development of more effective instructional strategies and support systems tailored to the unique needs of deaf children in educational settings.

Radical Issues in Children's Narratives on Eliyas Explains What’s Going On in Palestine

The discourses about childhood and its entanglement with commonly discussed literature significantly impact children’s literature. This is reflected by writers’ drive to raise issues that do not always revolve around normative issues in their works. Lately, critical issues prominent in children’s literature include radical political unrest and social injustice, as exemplified in Zanib Mian’s illustrative book Eliyas Explains What’s Going On in Palestine. Zanib Mian’s work was the focused material object of the research. The research employed a qualitative approach, explicitly utilizing document analysis as the primary method. This study utilized Gerard Genette’s Narratology and Kimberley Reynolds’ theory of Radical Children’s Literature to examine how narrators convey these problematic issues to children’s readers. The analysis revealed that the narrator in “Eliyas” employed an autodiegetic perspective to foster understanding, effectively engaging children by sharing personal experiences and emotions. Furthermore, the radical issue of the Palestinian conflict, which was presented sensitively, profoundly impacted the children’s characters within the story and, by extension, the children’s readers engaging with the story. The novelty of this research lies in discussing radical issues without leaving the narrative dimension in literary works using narratological theory and the notion of radical children’s literature, especially in Zanib Mian’s latest work, which deals with politics and war in Palestine.

Beyond Monolingual Norms: Analyzing the Complexity of Greek-Turkish Bilingual Children’s Written Narratives

This research explores the written narratives of Greek-Turkish bilingual and Greek monolingual children, focusing on their retelling abilities. We analyze both the macrostructure and microstructure of their narratives, utilizing the story-grammar model for the macrostructure analysis and examining lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, spelling accuracy, connectives, and word stressing for the microstructure assessment. We also examine correlations with contextual factors, including home and schooling input. Thirty-six children, comprising an equal number of bilinguals and monolinguals, participate in a picture narrative task (retelling mode). Our findings indicate that while bilingual children exhibit proficiency in constructing the story-grammar comparable to their monolingual counterparts, notable differences emerge in the microstructure of their narratives. Specifically, bilingual children produce shorter narratives. They also demonstrate lower lexical and noun diversity, syntactic complexity, and spelling accuracy (in inflectional suffixes) compared to monolingual children. These observed differences in the microstructure imply a potential trade-off between establishing the core story schema and elaborating on narrative details in bilingual narratives. Additionally, our study identifies early literacy practices (i.e., print exposure in preschool years) and current literacy practices (literacy habits outside the school setting) as predicting differently aspects of the microstructure in each group, further enhancing our understanding of how bilingualism influences narrative development. This underscores the importance of examining both the macrostructure, microstructure, and contextual factors for a comprehensive understanding of narrative development in bilingual and monolingual children.

Medicalisation, development and adult power: Exploring the contributions of the medical system to child disenfranchisement in theory and society

AbstractThe marginalisation of children globally is frequently justified by appeal to medical, developmental science. While childhood has increasingly become recognised as a social construct, this research has focused largely on education and legal structures, leaving this medicalisation unexamined. This essay closes that gap by examining the medicalisation of childhood and the contribution of the medical system to adult power. These are approached in separate sections. The first portion of this essay addresses the theoretical and rhetorical manner in which children are medicalised, using Piaget's theories as examples of a trend to over‐state the universality of childhood deficiencies and assume adult competences. Latour's work on the scientific black‐box is combined with Halliday's assessment of scientific language to examine how these theories are transformed from specific psychological findings, into assumed objective truths, carrying disenfranchising assumptions about children into public discourse. The essay's second part examines the practical role of the medical system in mobilising adultist discourses and disempowering children, through the operation of scientific management. This is built up from discussions of childbirth and adolescence to wider issues of medical power as it permeates educational, legislative and media spaces through Samuel's concept of biocertification. Finally, these two parts meet in highlighting the role of medicalisation in maintaining the hegemony of adult power through its veil of objectivity and expansive reach. I contend anthropological works referenced throughout the essay show that medicalised narratives of childhood are insufficient but culturally contingent and thus open to revision.

Narrative Accounts of Youth and Their Mothers With Chronic Headache: Application of a Socio-narratology Framework to Pain Narratives.

This study was the first to apply a socio-narratology framework to the narratives about child pain as told by youth with chronic pain and their parents, all of whom experience chronic headaches. Storytelling is a powerful social transaction that occurs within systems (eg, families, clinical encounters) and is both shaped by, and can shape, the pain experience. Narrative can be harnessed as a clinical tool to aid in the ability to listen, understand, and improve clinical encounters. Twenty-six youth (aged 11 to 18y) and their mothers, both with chronic headaches, recruited from a tertiary level pediatric pain clinic separately completed in-depth interviews about children's pain journey narratives. Data were analyzed using narrative analysis, which incorporated elements of socio-narratology to compare similarities and differences between and within dyads' narratives. Five narrative types were generated: (1) The trauma origin story-parents, but not youth, positing traumatic events as the causal link to children's pain; (2) mistreated by the medical system-neglect, harm, and broken promises resulting in learned hopelessness or relying on the family system; (3) the invalidated-invalidation of pain permeated youth's lives, with mothers as empathic buffers; (4) washed away by the pain-challenges perceived as insurmountable and letting the pain take over; and (5) taking power back from pain-youth's ability to live life and accomplish goals despite the pain. Findings support the clinical utility of narrative in pediatric pain, including both parents' and youths' narrative accounts to improve clinical encounters and cocreate more youth-centred, empowering narratives.

"I remember most of my family seeing it": The presence of others during child physical abuse, as conveyed in forensic interviews with Israeli children.

Child physical abuse is often perceived as a crime perpetrated within the family and out of sight. However, recent studies have indicated the presence of others during incidents of physical abuse. The current study was designed to examine the experiences and perceptions of children who were physically abused in their families concerning the presence of others, as conveyed during their forensic interviews. A thematic analysis of 26 forensic interviews was conducted with Israeli children aged 5-13. Three main themes were identified: (1) Patterns, roles, and coping mechanisms: The multifaceted spectrum of familial abuse; (2) The echoes of family reactions: Shaping children's abuse experiences; and (3) Navigating the storm together: Sibling bonds amidst familial abuse. The children's narratives highlighted their distress and pointed to the abusive and chaotic daily routine in which they lived. In spotlighting their encounters with physical abuse, the children focused on their need to be seen and gain certainty in their daily routines. The discussion highlights the unique and elusive dynamics of families in which child physical abuse occurs and challenges the social perception that physical abuse occurs secretly. The characteristics of such abuse highlight the urgent need for policymakers and professionals to treat the phenomenon of physical abuse within the family as a visible phenomenon.

The House Narrative in Palestinian children's literature

The House Narrative in Palestinian children's literature

Disfluencies as a window to macrostructure performance in the narrative of bilingual children

Disfluencies mirror processes of speech production and when examined in both languages of bilingual children, can provide valuable information regarding their linguistic skills. The aim of this study is to characterize the rates and the types of disfluencies across episodes of a narrative as well as across different story grammar (SG) elements in participants’ home language (Russian) and societal language (Hebrew) as a reflection of narrative macrostructure skills. Twenty bilingual Russian-Hebrew children aged 60–78 months produced narratives in Russian and Hebrew using the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Narratives were transcribed, divided into five episodes, and coded for main SG elements (Character + Setting, Initiating event, Internal response, Plan, Attempt and Consequence). Four types of disfluencies (silent pauses, filled pauses, repetitions, and self-corrections) were analyzed in relation to each SG element per episode in both languages. Overall children produced more SG elements in Russian with a finer analysis showing that Initiating Event, Character and Setting differed across languages while Attempt, Plan and Internal response were similar. Disfluencies significantly impacted macrostructure differently across languages such that in Russian, a high percentage of disfluencies was associated with higher production of Character + Setting and Plan, whereas in Hebrew it was associated with lower production of Attempt and Consequence. The present research suggests that disfluency has impact on macrostructure, and consequently on overall narrative quality differently across the languages. The theoretical contribution may shed light on the understanding of planning and formulation processes among bilingual children. The application of the results may relate to these processes impacting diagnosis and/or intervention protocols in bilingual children.

Exploring moral gaze: Children gazing at suffering in dark tourism

Dark tourism experiences are often imbued with moral matters. This study adopts the participant-generated photo-elicitation method to explore the tourist gaze at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Thematic analysis of children's photographic narratives reveals that they gaze upon the suffering of others. When interpreting these experiences of suffering, children form moral judgments about what and who caused the suffering. The findings reveal four distinct types of moral gaze: historical moral gaze, interpretive moral gaze, empathic moral gaze, and judgmental moral gaze. The use of participant-generated photo-elicitation method enables children to produce, select, and interpret their own photographs, thereby giving voice to their experiences. This method offers a more nuanced understanding of the children's moral gaze, which has important theoretical and methodological implications for conceptualisation of tourist gaze in dark tourism.

Prosody in narratives: An exploratory study with children with sex chromosomes trisomies

Although language delays are common in children with sex chromosome trisomies [SCT], no studies have analysed their prosodic abilities. Considering the importance of prosody in communication, this exploratory study aims to analyse the prosodic features of the narratives of 4-year-old children with SCT.Participants included 22 children with SCT and 22 typically developing [TD] children. The Narrative Competence Task was administered to elicit the child's narrative. Each utterance was prosodically analysed considering pitch and timing variables.Considering pitch, the only difference was the number of movements since the utterances of children with SCT were characterised by a lower speech modulation. However, considering the timing variables, children with SCT produced a faster speech rate and a shorter final syllable duration than TD children.Since both speech modulation and duration measures have important syntactic and pragmatic functions, further investigations should deeply analyse the prosodic skills of children with SCT in interaction with syntax and pragmatics.

The Comparative Productivity of the Birthday Narrative in 6- to 11-year-Old Maltreated Children.

We asked 111 6- to 11-year-old maltreated children to tell "everything that happened" on their last birthday, the last time they did something they liked to do outside, and yesterday. All children produced details in response to the like to do and yesterday narratives, compared to 98% of children in response to the birthday narrative. Questions about yesterday were more likely to elicit productive responses (93%) than questions about the child's birthday (90%) or things they liked to do (88%). Older children produced the most details in response to questions about yesterday, and older children's birthday narratives were more productive than those about favorite activities. Narratives about children's birthday and yesterday produced comparable percentages of negative details (15%), whereas 32% of children mentioned something negative when discussing a favorite activity. The results suggest that although children find yesterday easier to recall than their last birthday, the birthday narrative is a productive tool for encouraging children to practice recalling more remote events, preparing them for abuse disclosures.

Causal Relations and Cohesive Strategies in the Narratives of Heritage Speakers of Russian in Their Two Languages

Causal relations allow a very detailed insight into the narrative skills of children from various backgrounds; however, their contribution has not been sufficiently studied in bilingual populations. The present study examines the expression of causal relations and the linguistic forms used to encode them in narratives of bilingual children speaking Russian as the Heritage Language (HL) and Hebrew as the Societal Language (SL). Narratives were collected from 21 typically developing Russian–Hebrew bilingual children using the Frog story picture book and were coded for frequency and type of episodic components, and for causal relations focusing on enabling and motivational relations. Results showed that the number of episodic components was higher in Hebrew than in Russian. An in-depth analysis showed that more components were mentioned in the first five episodes, particularly at the onset of the story. Causal relations were similar in both languages but were differently distributed across the languages—more enabling relations in Russian stories and more motivational relations in Hebrew stories. Production of episodic components and causal relations was affected by language proficiency but not by age of onset of bilingualism (AoB). In terms of language forms, lexical chains (e.g., search~find) were the most frequent means for inferring relations. Syntactic and referential cohesion were used in dedicated episodes to convey relations in both languages. Finally, a higher number of significant correlations between narrative productivity measures, episodic components, and causal relations were found in SL/Hebrew than in HL/Russian. The study results underscore the need to understand how language-specific abilities interact with knowledge of narrative discourse construction.

Unspoken: Experimental Life Writing and Child Narration

ABSTRACT Children are, more or less, voiceless—historically, within society, and even throughout literature. Particularly in the realms of life writing, children’s voicelessness is no more on display (or rather, a lack of display). We’ve yet to allow them their voice divorced from the ‘safer’ confines of fiction. Why? Utilising my doctoral research at the University of Nottingham, where I explore this strange phenomenon via creative experimentation of my debut memoir alongside critical exploration of life writing’s ‘limits’, my essay highlights said voicelessness of child narrators within life writing, questioning this seemingly exclusive reign of the traditional adult narrator. Applying a semi-autoethnographic exploration of my earliest life writings, I aim to expose this gap in both learning and creativity, championing the inherent enlightenment child narration begets, and suggesting an untapped resource at play. Truth is not gate-kept to the mouths of adults; and in advocating for experimental life writing, we must ask ourselves how narratorial freedoms have (or have not), and should be, considered when it comes to stories inherited from truth.

Living in the Nexus of Disability and Caregiving: An African American Parental Caregiver's Critical Observations as a Folklorist

Abstract In this essay, I advance and elaborate upon three points and their relevance to folklore studies based on my experiences and fieldwork as a parent of a child with disabilities. First, I note the absence of narratives of many families of children with disabilities and foreground a concept of possible shared identity and embodied communication between parents and non- or partially verbal children. Second, I highlight autoethnographic and ethnographic stories that are created at the nexus of disability and caregiving that offer insight into narratives of caregivers of children with disabilities. Caregivers’ stories are mostly missing in folklore studies. These narratives can stand by themselves or be intertwined with the narratives of the children whom caregivers care for. Finally, I suggest ways that a theoretical frame of intersectionality can illuminate and provide nuance for better understanding the systemic complexities of the narratives of children's and their caregivers’ experiences of disability.

The Child Protagonist: Children’s Agency in International Children’s Rights Law and in Four Francophone African Novels

In this article, I explore how the contested notion of children’s agency is represented in international children’s rights law and in four novels by francophone African authors. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child establish children as rights holding subjects within a framework of adult care, while the fictional texts position children as protagonists, deprived of adult protection amid conflict and social upheaval. In both, children are understood as acting and acted upon, forming and formed by their environment. Through the utopian vision of children’s rights law and the damaged child narratives of the fictional texts, children’s agency can be read as a critique of adult society. At the same time, children are recognized as active participants in history, their choices and actions, however determined, shaping their own future selves and society.

Implementation of Learn to Play Therapy for Children in Special Schools.

Play is the primary occupation in childhood and fundamental to occupational therapy practice. To evaluate a play intervention in special school settings. Pre- and postinvolvement of a 7-mo play program. Four special schools in Victoria, Australia, for children with IQs < 70. Thirty-eight children with diagnoses including intellectual disability, autism, and global developmental delay, 7 teachers, 2 speech pathologists, and 2 occupational therapists. Learn to Play Therapy for 1 hr per week over a 7-mo period. Pre-post outcome measures included children's pretend play skills, language, social skills, emotional regulation, and academic competence. Mean age of 38 children (15 girls and 23 boys) at baseline was 5 yr 7 mo (SD = 0.46 yr). Results showed significant changes in children's pretend play (p = .03), ability to recall sentences (p = .02), social skills (p = .022), and academic competence (p = .012). Learn to Play had a large effect on children's narrative skills (d = 2.72). At follow-up, object substitution at baseline influenced expressive language (p < .001), narrative mean language utterance (MLU; p = .015), social skills (p < .001), and academic competence (p < .001); elaborate play at baseline plus time influenced social skills (p < .001); and elaborate play at baseline influenced narrative MLU (p =. 016), sentence recall (p = .009), and academic competence (p = .001). Embedding pretend play within practice positively influenced children's language, narrative, social, and academic skills. Plain-Language Summary: This study adds to the limited research on play-based therapy programs in special school settings for children with an IQ of less than 70. Children participated in Learn to Play Therapy, during which an occupational therapist, who has observed and assessed the child's play and understands the child's play abilities, played beside the child. Learn to Play Therapy is a child-centered therapy that is used to increase a child's ability to self-initiate and enjoy pretend play. The positive impacts of supporting the children's pretend play ability were highlighted by increases in their pretend play, language, social skills, academic competence, and narrative language after participating in Learn to Play Therapy in their special schools.

Internal State Terms in the Narratives of Bilingual Children With Developmental Language Disorder: The Role of Microstructure and Macrostructure.

We examined the role of narrative microstructure (production of words and sentences) and narrative macrostructure (organization of events) in the use of internal state terms (ISTs) in narratives of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in their school language (SL). Fifty-eight Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschool children aged 55-78 months divided into two groups participated: 16 bilingual children diagnosed with bilingual DLD and 42 with typical language development (TLD). Narratives were elicited in SL/Hebrew using the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? Narratives were transcribed and coded for frequency of ISTs and classified as perceptual, linguistic, motivational, linguistic, emotional, or physical. ISTs were also examined in terms of their role in microstructure (tokens and types) and macrostructure (Character, Setting, Initiating Event, Internal Response, Plan, Attempt, and Consequence) categories. In terms of microstructure, bilingual children with DLD produced fewer word types and tokens in general and fewer perceptual ISTs than bilingual TLD peers. In terms of macrostructure, children with DLD used six out of the seven story grammar elements in their narratives less than bilinguals with TLD. For ISTs and macrostructure, bilinguals with DLD produced fewer linguistic ISTs in Attempts than their peers with TLD. Bilingual children with DLD have difficulties in producing ISTs, and this difficulty is shown to be related to both microstructure and macrostructure abilities. Suggestions for clinical intervention are offered to assist children with DLD in producing narratives that involve mental state language related to characters' feelings, intentions, and goals.