Spanish Publishing Research Articles

Theoretical-methodological approaches and textbook design: analysis of arithmetic word problems in Spanish textbooks

Primary school textbooks can enhance the acquisition of arithmetic word problem solving skills by offering diverse problems based on their semantic-mathematical structure with targeted reasoning aids, including schematics highlighting their mathematical structure. While certain countries, such as the USA and Singapore, have made progress in improving the problems and aids found in their textbooks through the use of specific theoretical-methodological approaches, textbooks from other countries, such as Spain, have included a very limited variety of problems, with hardly any aids to reasoning. Recently, however, two of the most widely used Spanish publishers have released textbooks that adhere to these theoretical-methodological approaches. To assess whether these textbooks progressed past their predecessors in relevant aspects related to the resolution of arithmetic word problems, we conducted an analysis of the quantity of problems and their variety in terms of semantic-mathematical structure and level of difficulty, as well as the inclusion of schematic representations of their mathematical structure. The study demonstrated improvements among textbooks when publishers adopted a theoretical framework, suggesting that a reference framework could enhance textbook design. This is particularly relevant in countries such as Spain, where there are no applicable standards or official curricula for designing textbooks related to solving arithmetic word problems.

Il perturbante come strategia sovversiva: realismo magico ed elementi fantastici nei Racconti sardi di Grazia Deledda

This paper discusses the absence of Grazia Deledda both in Spanish university curricula and on the Spanish publishing market, an oblivion shared by other female authors of her time. This exclusion has a dual cause: the writers’ gender and the literary genre they cultivated. In this study, I offer a new reading of Deledda’s Racconti sardi (1894) through a critical analysis of its architectural elements, resonating with magic realism and the fantastic genre. These elements fit within the aesthetics of the liminal (Tomassini, 1992), which seeks to reinterpret the history of otherness as opposed to normative and legitimised histories. While magic realism proposes a world tailored to the experience of the other, which belies the official truth, the fantastic highlights the flaws of the uniform conception of reality. Such narratives may convey a subversive, albeit often overlooked, message as the mechanisms of the genres of the non-real promote readers’ estrangement, a revision of the contract of fiction and, therefore, multiple levels of reading. These accomplishments make Deledda a classic author whose narrative production, which starts from the local to become universal, is worth continual re-reading.

Do Japão a Portugal, por via de Espanha? Os Primeiros Romances Japoneses no Mercado Português

ABSTRACT The first Portuguese translations of Japanese novels date from 1906 and 1909, respectively: Nami-ko (Hototogisu) by Tokutomi Kenjirō (1868–1927) and Os 47 Capitães (Iroha Bunko) by Tamenaga Shunsui (1790–1843). These novels, which mark modern Portugal–Japan literary relations, were published without any identification of their source language. Both translations appeared, however, one year after their Spanish counterparts, which in turn are based on English direct translations from Japanese (Nami-ko, 1904; The Loyal Ronins, 1880). The proximity of publication dates of the Portuguese and Spanish translations, the working languages of the Portuguese translators, and the juxtaposition of peritextual elements between the Portuguese and Spanish translations suggest that the latter may have served as the basis for importing Japanese novels into Portuguese. Framed within the external history of translation and based on a paratextual approach, this case study interrogates the pattern of double indirectness underlying the introduction of the Japanese novel in Portugal. By questioning to what extent neighbouring Spain, as a mediation system, helped shape the openness of the Portuguese literary system to Japanese literature, it will clarify the early twentieth-century relations between the Portuguese and Spanish publishing markets in terms of the influence of the latter on the former.

The Politics of Literary Prestige: Prizes and Spanish American Literature by Sarah E. L. Bowskill

Reviewed by: The Politics of Literary Prestige: Prizes and Spanish American Literature by Sarah E. L. Bowskill Will H. Corral SARAH E. L. BOWSKILL The Politics of Literary Prestige: Prizes and Spanish American Literature New York. Bloomsbury Academic. 2022. 215 pages. SARAH E. L. BOWSKILL'S succinct study deals properly with the "never-ending network" discussed in her eighth and last chapter, which is ultimately the ample partisan positioning that is the subtext of the Spanish-language literary prizes she analyzes. In a 1981 press release on the misfortune of being a young writer, Gabriel García Márquez, no stranger to prizes and aware that they reveal who readers perceive as your peers, regrets young writers' "almost childish enthusiasm" [End Page 94] for national awards and fashionable fame. For him, with those prizes the publisher "not only mugs the novice writer, but the publisher uses [him] to become richer with little effort." Bowskill examines the politics behind such machinations, and her fine introduction encapsulates her methodology and goals. Her first chapter evaluates the relation among literary prizes, controversy, and the state in Spanish America; the second, how Spanish publishers intensified their cultural and economic influence during the Franco years with awards to Spanish American authors. In a strict chronology of those developments, the first chapter should follow the second, followed by the fifth (on Spain's Biblioteca Breve prize and "the forgotten women of the Boom," rightly rescuing "Ana Mairena" and Nivaria Tejera), even though the sixth chapter, "Women Winning Prizes: A No-Win Situation?" dovetails smoothly from the previous one, asserting that prizes are no country for younger women. This redistribution is as academic as The Politics of Literary Prestige but reinforces Bowskill's optimistic view of the relatively unknown writers she marshals in the seventh chapter, "Prizes for Literatures in Indigenous Languages." Evidently a sociological study (Pierre Bourdieu is ever-present) conceptually framed by James English's The Economy of Prestige, Bowskill has a fine eye for detail and information that may seem "gossipy." Her attention and dependence on digital resources, charts, and archives is impressive, leading her to conclude that "As the prize network colonizes more and more positions in the literary and political fields, there remain few options for authors wishing to remain beyond the network," although she avers that "caution must also be exercised when proclaiming the freedoms of publishing online as this space is increasingly colonized by corporations using our data for profit." Her ideological stance is well considered when ChatGPT could write books, or this review, and the humanities are losing prestige. At this state of the art, likening literary and political fields, or emphasizing "colonization," is better served by questioning the dependence on those terms, for concrete and ideological reasons. If Spanish America has not yet produced a Sherman Alexie, who writes in English, what network would judge literature in what Indigenous languages? Would such a web replicate the wheeling and dealing of mainstream prizes based on "a discourse of globalization rooted in Europe," in which exoticism and condescending attitudes still prevail? What to do with scandal-ridden prizes like the Planeta, or that since 1969 only six women have won the Anagrama prize, facts absent in Bowskill's analysis? She is right that women-only prizes or "the transcultural, transnational pan-Hispanic identity created and envisaged by the Premio Alfaguara" are not the solution as a counterdiscourse to anglophone acculturation. For the Colombian Héctor Abad Faciolince, who has lost prizes for over forty years, the statistics for gender equity, "official literatures," and conspiracy theories prove the senselessness of affirmative-action solutions for Spanish America. For the fourth chapter—which seeks common ground among Roberto Bolaño, Carmen Boullosa, and Fernando Iwasaki, writers with vastly different talents, as the reception of the latter two shows—putting in perspective other writers could have benefitted from Discípulos y maestros 2.0: Novela hispanoamericana hoy, much of which deals with emerging novelists' ethics vis-à-vis contests; and an earlier compilation, The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel: After Bolaño, which contextualizes almost all the recent novelists Bowskill discusses. If she proposes the notion of "network" to understand how prizes shape a wider literary...

Las competencias en salud ambiental en los libros de texto

A reflection on the concept of environmental health is presented in this reserch. Together with this, contents on this subject appearing in Natural Sciences textbooks of Primary and Secondary Education are summarized. The analysis was implemented with 36 textbooks of three important Spanish publishers. Usefulness and limitations os carrying out it are discussed. Results show the interest of publishers to include Environmental Health contens. However, examples on quertain topics are more common than others. Those contents of lower complexity level appear more than the most complex ones. Human health is not considered as much as food, physical exercise and personal higiene.

Manuel Fernández de Castro y Suero (1825-1895), director of the Commission for the Geological Map of Spain

An updated biography of the mining engineer Manuel Fernández de Castro y Suero (1825-1895), who was the head of the Commission for the Geological Map of Spain between 1873 and 1895, is presented. Through different documentary we have approached to both his family ancestry in the Greater Antilles, and the three stages of his professional career. The first one, between the completion of engineering studies in 1845 and his departure to Cuba in 1859; the second, as head of the Cuban Bureau of Mines; and the third stage, and not less important, as director of the Commission and as senator for Cuba. Fernández de Castro became interested in the applications of electricity, patenting in 1853 a system of electrical signals for railway safety, and later formulating an “electro-telluric” theory for the formation of mineral deposits. He was the author of the first geological map of Cuba and that of an important part of the Dominican Republic. He founded, in 1873 and 1874, respectively, the first Spanish publishing series on geology: Memorias andBoletín de la Comisión del Mapa Geológico de España. His work at the head of the Commission was decisive for the institutionalization of the construction of the national geological map, as well as to ensure the administrative continuity of the organization, the current Geological and Mining Institute of Spain.

Los tiempos del pasado en la clase de ELE: Tres manuales bajo la lupa

Past tenses present an objective difficulty in the learning process for most students of Spanish as a foreign language. This paper provides a comparative analysis of three Spanish methods: Nuevo Español en marcha, Embarque ELE and Nuevo Sueña, at levels A1-A2. The textbooks belong to three prestigious and internationally established Spanish publishers. The analysis focuses on the presentation of three verb tenses (pretérito perfecto simple, pretérito perfecto compuesto and pretérito imperfecto), the similarities and differences that the textbooks share in their exposition and the successes and errors perceivable in them. The main objective is to make a constructive proposal to improve the teaching of these verb tenses in SFL classes

Analysis of digital textbooks

ABSTRACT This study describes the current status of digital textbooks (DTBs) for Primary Education in Spain. Thirty digital teaching materials were analyzed. The method applied was content analysis. An analysis guide aimed at unraveling the technological, pedagogical and functional characteristics of this type of materials was designed, validated and applied. We found simple digitization of printed textbooks enriched with some multimedia resources perpetuating the deficiencies of these resources. The DTBs currently present in the Spanish publishing market are a response of this sector to the existing demand due to the evolution of the digital educational market. The novelty of this study lies in providing the first guide that analyzes these materials considering all their defining characteristics.

The Events of N.O. Lossky's "History of Russian Philosophy" and the Debate Around it in the 1950s

The article presents the main stages of the N.O. Lossky's work on the book "History of Russian Philosophy", starting with the emergence of his interest in the works of Russian philosophers when writing an article for the journal "The Slavonic Review" about Vladimir Solovyov and his followers; preparing lecture courses on Russian philosophy for reading at foreign universities (including lectures on Slavic philosophy delivered at Stanford University in 1933) and ending with the publication of the book in the USA, England and France and his work on the future Russian edition. Particular attention is paid to the debate that arose after the publication of the book in America (1951) in the 50s and unfolds on the pages of American journals. The main claims of American critics (Sidney Hook, John Somerville, George L. Kline, etc.) to the content of the book are the uneven presentation of Russian philosophers teachings, the sketchiness and the absence of representatives of some schools of thought. N.O. Lossky's book also became the subject of discussion in the publications of the Russian migr about Lossky's author's vision statement of the development of Russian philosophy and its specifics. As it follows from the correspondence of N.O. Lossky with D.I. Chizhevsky and with publisher A.S. Kagan, it was also planned to publish the book with additions in Spanish and German publishing houses. Up to and including 1956, N.O. Lossky continued to work on the Russian-language "History of Russian Philosophy", which was given to Russia for publication by his son Boris Nikolaevich Lossky only in the early 90s (it was published in 1994). New materials found in the Paris archive of N.O. Lossky (Lossky's text "Philosophy in Pre-Revolutionary Russia", S. Hook's review "They Looked to the West") complement the debate both about N.O. Lossky's "History of Russian Philosophy", and about the nature of Russian philosophy.

A dynamic long-term approach to internationalization: Spanish publishing firms’ expansion and emigrants in Mexico (1939–1977)

A dynamic long-term approach to internationalization: Spanish publishing firms’ expansion and emigrants in Mexico (1939–1977)

What are the Driving Forces Behind Spanish Publishers?

This research intends to perform a situation analysis of the Spanish publishing sector to see to what extent private publishing companies adequately interpret market signals and adapt to them. The study raises several questions for the Spanish publishing market: first, how is the price elasticity of the sale of copies?; second, what impact does the greater or lesser number of private publishers have on the sale of copies?; third, how does the sale of copies condition the evolution of the average print run?; and fourth, what impact does reading habit have on issue sales? The analysis carried out concludes: firstly, that the sale of copies is a price-elastic function to the price of books; second, that the greater the number of publishing agents, the higher the level of book sales; thirdly, those publishing companies adapt the average print runs per title in a period based on the copies sold on the market in the previous period and, finally, fourthly, the existence of a positive and direct relationship between the copy sales and the number of regular readers. Spanish publishers face digital transformation -and changes in their respective business models-, without losing sight of the variables studied that act as driving forces for their behavior and design their strategy in the market.

An Overview of the Audiobook Marketplace in Spain

The general objective of this research is to analyze, through a descriptive methodology, the impact that audiobooks have on internal processes in the value chain of Spanish publishers. To this are added two more specific objectives related to answer the following questions: (a) how to include the agents of the audiobook in the publishing circuit?, and (b) is this new business model consolidated within the Spanish publishing sector? Through the analysis of the publishing circuit and the production flow chart, it is possible to observe not only the impact of the audiobook on the entire operational process of a publisher but the new actors in the publishing business scene. Based on the existing data on the audiobook business in Spain, the study concludes that today, the Spanish publishing sector has recently begun to perceive the economic potential of this sound format. The confinement by COVID-19 has led to a collateral effect on the production, marketing, and consumption of audiobooks, driven by the two large publishing groups that dominate the book market in Spain.

Environmental Sustainability and Business Models in the Spanish Publishing Industry

Environmental Sustainability and Business Models in the Spanish Publishing Industry

Cambio climático y sostenibilidad en la Educación Primaria. Problemática y soluciones que proponen los manuales escolares de Ciencias Sociales

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar las propuestas y actividades relacionadas con la solución a los efectos del cambio climático y la sostenibilidad que se insertan en los actuales libros de texto de Ciencias Sociales españoles (Educación Primaria). A partir de la consulta de las principales editoriales que se usan en España (Anaya, Bromera, Santillana, SM y Vicens Vives), se han analizado los manuales correspondientes al 3er ciclo (5º y 6º). Tras la revisión de estos recursos se han categorizado 3 tipos de soluciones: 1) propuestas sobre recomendaciones a seguir, tanto colectivas como individuales; 2) actividades en las que el alumnado debe proponer soluciones; y 3) información sobre diferentes cumbres internacionales en las que se recogen las principales medidas para resolver el cambio climático. La mayoría de propuestas tienen que ver con las primeras y la alusión a cumbres internacionales. Como conclusión, cabe destacar una ausencia casi total de propuestas que hagan pensar críticamente al alumnado sobre este fenómeno, tanto de las posibles causas como de las medidas de adaptación, especialmente, en la escala local y/o regional.

Assessment Tests in the Mathematics Teaching Guides in Spain. Analysis of the Content Blocks and the Treatment of Arithmetic Word Problems

The teaching guides that complement textbooks have key importance in the assessment of competence in problem solving, because these materials contain the assessment tools that teachers frequently use to quantify the achievements of their students. In this paper, we set two aims: to analyze which curriculum contents are given priority in the assessment tests of the teaching guides; and to check to what extent these tests assess the steps of the mathematical problem solving process. For this, an analysis of the initial and final assessment tests of six Spanish publishers was conducted. The results show that the distribution of mathematical tasks by type of content does not fully conform to the theoretical framework proposed by TIMSS. In addition, only one of the six publishers considered the problem-solving process as evaluable.

The role of KIBS on digital transformation and technological changes in the Spanish publishing industry

The present study analyzes, by means of the online survey method, the role of KIBS in the processes of digital transformation and technological change of Spanish publishing companies. The general goal of this research is to explore the effects produced over Spanish publishing companies in interacting with KIBS as facilitators, bearers and generators of innovation. Some other more specific objectives linked to this general goal are the following ones: a) to determine the role of transaction costs as drivers of the outsourcing of knowledge management systems through KIBS; and b) to understand to what extent the interaction of publishers with KIBS promotes in those the introduction of new business models. Through the survey conducted among 310 Spanish publishers, it is concluded that: i) the extension of the relationship between publishers and KIBS moves from the production subsystem to the distribution one; ii) the link between their respective value chains is perceived as profound enough to turn KIBS into facilitators, bearers and generators of the innovation required by the Spanish publishing companies; and iii) KIBS are the fundamental axis for the adoption of new business models.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. La resistencia del deseo by Francisco Ramírez Santa Cruz

Reviewed by: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. La resistencia del deseo by Francisco Ramírez Santa Cruz Stephanie Kirk Francisco Ramírez Santa Cruz. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. La resistencia del deseo. CÁTEDRA, 2019. 317 PP. IN THE WORDS of the contemporary Mexican poet Luis Felipe Fabre, “Todos los sorjuanistas discrepan en algo. Discrepan / entre ellos. Discrepan / en algo que suele ser casi todo” (“Sor Juana y otros monstruos,” Poemas de terror y de misterio, Almadía, 2013). These disagreements began during Sor Juana’s day as her many defenders took on her equally numerous critics. More recently, the polemic intensified after the 1982 publication of Octavio Paz’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y las trampas de la fe and has continued unabated since then. The most contentious issues are less concerned with interpreting her works and more with understanding key moments in her life. Given the paucity of biographical documents relevant to Sor Juana’s life, scholars pore over her writings in search of clues. (Additional information has been unearthed in recent years, although some of it seems to inspire more questions than answers.) While many mysteries enshroud Sor Juana’s life, three main questions remain unsolved: Why did she take the habit? What was the nature of her relationship with María Luisa, vicereine of New Spain? And why did she seemingly renounce her literary and intellectual pursuits and embrace an ascetic life? Into these murky waters valiantly wades the Mexican literary scholar Francisco Ramírez Santa Cruz with a highly readable and fastidiously documented new biography of the nun poet, part of a series of biographies of famous writers from the Hispanic and wider Western world recently launched by the Spanish publisher Cátedra. Ramírez de Santa Cruz carefully explains his approach to the book in his introductory note. He divides previous biographies on Sor Juana into two general groups, “por un lado, aquel que hace una lectura de su vida desde el liberalismo laico y, por el otro, aquel que defiende a ultranza una interpretación hipercatólica de sus motivaciones y obras literarias” (12). The only two previous biographies he references in his introduction are the first, written by a Spanish Jesuit, Diego Calleja (1638–1725), with whom Sor Juana exchanged letters but never met. Calleja’s Vida is a short, hagiographic text replete with fascinating anecdotes upon which critics relied for centuries. The other is Octavio Paz’s monumental and spellbinding intellectual biography of the nun. While he was critiqued for his collapsing [End Page 131] of the viceroyalty’s treatment of intellectuals with the persecution of similar figures by more contemporary regimes, the poetic undercurrents with which Paz inflects New Spanish society and the way he unravels the intellectual strands upon which she drew render it nonetheless the most compelling of books, its tricks and snares notwithstanding. Ramírez de Santa Cruz situates his text at a remove from both books, claiming that his biography “propone una exégesis lo más objetiva posible de todos los datos que se conocen de sor Juana hasta el día de hoy” (12). It is a wise ambition and one in which he succeeds. Like Paz, Ramírez Santa Cruz writes eloquently and reads Sor Juana’s work skillfully, but he is a more levelheaded and straightforward biographer than Paz, avoiding the extravagant speculations that the Nobel laureate permitted himself. The reader, for example, might want to contrast the circumspect manner with which Ramírez Santa Cruz tackles the issue of Sor Juana’s absent father with Paz’s riotous psychoanalytical reading to understand the difference in methodology between these two biographers. At the same time, La resistencia del deseo is no dull read, and the author powerfully conjures the era and its culture for the reader. Of note in this regard is his portrayal in chapter 1 of Sor Juana’s early years and his riveting description of what life on a rural hacienda might have looked like for a young criolla. According to the author, in the Hacienda Panoaya in Amecameca Sor Juana first became acquainted with Nahuatl speaking communities and with the...

Censoring poetics through translation: the filtered reception of Sylvia Plath in Franco’s Spain

Inthis article I analyze Sylvia Plath’s reception in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship. Considering the feminist features that the author and her oeuvrepresent, I examine the conclusions drawn by the Censorship Board when the Spanish publishing houses requested to issue Plath’s works in translation. The censorship and import files stored at the General Archive of the Administrationin Madrid confirm thatseveral publishers repeatedly applied for permission to translate her only novel, The Bell Jar, into Spanish and Catalan from 1967 to 1982; a Spanish compilation of her poems in 1974; and to import her famous poetry collection, Ariel,in 1968. Nevertheless, the censors’ notes and verdicts reveal that her literary depth was neither admired nor understood by the ones who authorized, censored, or rejected the different editions of her work.

El libro de no ficción para prelectores. Análisis de las claves de construcción del discurso

En el panorama editorial español actual, el libro de no ficción constituye uno de los sectores de mayor vitalidad. En el marco de estudios como los de María Bonnafé (2008) y Graciela Montes (2017) y con el fin de identificar algunas claves de construcción del discurso, este artículo propone el análisis de una selección de libros para prelectores que vinculan arte, conocimiento y juego. Así, elementos como la fisicidad, la interactividad lúdica y la elipsis vinculada al paso de página se definen como rasgos característicos de las obras elegidas. Esta investigación forma parte del Proyecto I+D+i Formar lectores en la sociedad digital desde el libro de no ficción (RTI2018-093825-B-I00).

El origen del hombre

A la hora de realizar un acercamiento al origen del hombre, generalmente suele presentarse una confrontación entre la explicación bíblica y la teoría de la evolución de Darwin. Sin embargo, esta percepción es falsa.
 El presente estudio analiza los libros de texto de clase de Religión católica de tres editoriales españolas de Educación Primaria para ver cómo es abordado este tema, hallar los puntos de encuentro entre ambas explicaciones, poner de manifiesto las deficiencias e indicar posibles mejoras didácticas.