This article explores the potential for engaging 7 and 8-year-old school pupils in performative literature interpretation through process drama. Inspired by new materialism and affect theory, we focus on how literature interpretations come into being in dramatic fiction, and on how these becoming interpretations merge with the classroom. The study…

This article explores the relationship between low- and high-level aspects of reading by studying the interplay between word processing, as measured with eye tracking, and narrative absorption and liking, as measured with questionnaires. Specifically, we focused on how individual differences in sensitivity to lexical word characteristics--measured…

When analyzing student reflection assignments from a mandatory research methods course, the authors were struck by the tension between students' own approaches to learning and the challenges, uncertainties, and frustrations accompanying their efforts. Students' ideas about what constitutes learning, how learning is to be done, and how they…

People read for many different reasons. These goals affect the cognitive processes and strategies they use during reading. Understanding "how" reading goals exert their effects requires investigation of whether and how they affect specific component processes, such as validation. We investigated the effects of reading goal on text-based…

Two studies investigated the effects of errors in German business letters written by Dutch students. Gaining insight into these effects is important since Germany and the Netherlands are one of the largest economically interdependent partnerships. One hundred and fifty-six German professionals rated letters with errors and letters without errors…

This study investigated whether presenting a picture before reading can encourage situation-model construction. We compared two conditions (n = 30) which differed in whether a picture of the initial situation described in a narrative text was presented before reading (i.e. pictorial-support condition) or not (i.e. no-picture condition).…

This article discusses the teachers' role in self-directed learning (SDL) -- a central concept in adult education. We explore the use of Socratic questioning to develop critical thinking, which is the outcome of SDL in problem-based learning (PBL). In particular, we analyse 11 adult learners' reflective journals in relation to a Socratic seminar.…