Anežka Kuzmičová (FSV UK): "Nonfiction Reading as Experience: Insights from Children"

10.10.2024

15:00, Zasedací místnost Centra medievistických studií, FLÚ AV ČR, Jilská 1, Praha

Most of the text we encounter in everyday life is nonfiction rather than fiction. Yet the discourse on nonfiction is predominantly a deficit discourse, focusing on what nonfiction lacks relative to fiction. In the realm of education, this is mirrored in negative views of children’s nonfiction reading and its underlying motivations. As a result, children who prefer nonfiction are known to avoid sharing their reading materials and experiences due to a perceived lack of social acceptance, thus missing opportunities to develop their learning. This further impedes the development of positive, non-deficit-based discourse on the experiences afforded by nonfiction. Together with my research team, I have conducted a holistic interview study exploring the possibilities of reflecting on such experiences. We invited children (N = 20, age 9–11) to reflect on their real-world interests overall, on the various activities through which they nurture them, and on the role of reading among these activities. Upon analysing the qualitative data, my collaborator Markéta Supa and I have now identified two groups of constraints to children’s reflection on their nonfiction reading experience: (a) conceptual constraints, i.e., communicative biases around reading due to socially acquired understandings of the term, and (b) phenomenal constraints, i.e., nonfiction reading characteristics that may indeed make nonfiction reading inherently less amenable to reflection than fiction reading. My talk will provide an overview of these different constraints and conclude with suggestions for their mitigation in developing a more balanced discourse on nonfiction for every budding reader’s benefit.