This article presents pedagogical reflections on the experience of teaching fiction about the partition of India with Pakistan and Bangladesh and its long-lasting effects on local communities, especially along the borders. It shows how the long drawn out political movement for identity and territory, including the violence and social divisions it…

We introduce RESOLV, a theoretical model to account for readers' construction and management of goals during text comprehension and use. RESOLV focuses on readers' experience of their physical, social, and communicative context prior to actually engaging with texts. RESOLV assumes that readers construct two types of mental models prior to reading:…

The Common Core State Standards represent the first standards document to address whether students are able to read progressively more complex texts as they progress across the grades. This article gives an overview of the three components of the model of text complexity that were identified in Appendix A of the Standards and also were the basis…

This article presents a pedagogical framework for interpreting and discussing texts with others, ""havruta" inspired pedagogy." The framework is comprised of three overlapping domains: structures, stance and practices. We illustrate each domain through teachers' words and classroom practices, depicting how teachers in one context work within these…

In 2006, a secondary English and feminist studies teacher created a course and designed a study around a reading exchange for eighth-grade girls from two vastly different communities. Girls from a school in a northeastern state read young adult novels and wrote about their reading and related topics with girls from Washington, DC on a wikispace…

Dutro discusses an analysis of the disconnect between the material realities of the lives of a group of third-grade children living in poverty and the middle-class assumptions of a district-mandated unit within a literacy curriculum. The analysis arose in the context of an ethnographic study of identity and classroom literacy practices; it was…

In this article, three educators share case studies describing racial biases and segregationist practices in early schooling. The authors draw upon critical race theory as a lens and employ critical discourse analysis to uncover classed and raced biases within and across three early childhood contexts. While the cases are situated in specific…

The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of adolescent use of instant messaging. Grounded in the New Literacy Studies stance that literacy is a social practice embedded in local contexts and informed by global ideologies (Street, 1995), I argue that participation in digital literacies such as instant messaging has implications for…

Focuses on two primary meanings of the term interaction in the second-language (L2) context: face-to-face interaction in which two or more people create meaning, and the creative interaction between the reader and the text. Argues that many claims related to the value of L2 spoken interaction can apply equally well to L2 reading. (94 references)…

Describes a reader response heuristic which approaches expository texts on a feeling and experiential level. Focuses on the work of one student writer to show how the student's interpretations of a text on Arab-Israeli relations was mediated by the student's feelings and experiences. (MM)

Stories are seductive, persuasive, permeable. They pull one toward them and they may even take over. From the tapes and transcripts of interviews, from the pages of journals and student writing, certain stories called out to this author and his colleagues. The narratives they include in their work are not innocently or objectively chosen stories;…

By having students use their knowledge of real-world cultural contexts to construct text-world contexts, teachers help them understand how cultural forces within those contexts shape characters' actions. This paper describes the process of linking real- and text-world contexts, offering examples from one college class. Implications for helping…

Many adults search for spiritual guidance and direction and persist in seeking answers to life in today's fast-paced world. With burgeoning economic challenges, political corruption, war in Iraq, poverty, health care concerns, environmental concerns, rising fuel costs, violence, racism, and oppression, many adults seek solace and greater…

An important research paradigm applied to the study of adolescent resistance to reading--listening to student voice--has yielded rich information regarding adolescent literacy practices, adolescent agency, and adolescent identity as components of resistance to reading. Instructional perspectives of teachers and researchers also serve to shed light…

Discusses the complexities of teaching and learning multiple literacies at the middle and high school levels, examining the roles of and interactions between learners, texts, and contexts. The paper presents data from three case studies of secondary and adolescent learners' literacies in and out of school and in a variety of content areas. (SM)