In this small essay, I will reflect on Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth's arguments on the decline of educational professionalism in the United States. The purpose is to consider this loss of professionalism, and I will consider it in light of the arts and humanities in the Danish educational debate. Two reflections are presented: first, the…

This response to Perna et al. provides an alternate approach to research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We argue that a student-centered, theory-driven conceptualization and methodological approaches allow us to move beyond descriptive statistics and into a deeper understanding of MOOC learners. Examples using a teacher development MOOC…

In this rejoinder, Gareth Owen thanks both Dr. Kamp-Roelands and Dr. Correa Ruiz for their views and for putting forward many interesting and thought-provoking arguments concerning his paper (Owen, 2013). It is noted that both commentators broadly welcome the aims of this paper. They express approval of its review of the development of integrated…

An article this author wrote about avatar harassment and assault in Second Life (SL) inspired a considerable response after it was published. Perhaps the most notable reply was from Linden Lab, the company that created the virtual-reality world. In his initial essay ("The Chronicle of Higher Education," September 14, 2007; "The Education Digest,"…

Describes a textbook approach to teaching literature that deemphasizes recitation and emphasizes transactions between readers and texts, involving readers' personal knowledge, emotion, and experience. Sets up a reading plan including prereading, postreading, personal response, and shared response. (TB)

Offers a Pyrrhonist reading of "Hamlet." Describes an experiment in teaching that attempts to reconstruct for literature students the prudential-ethical context of human rhetoric, placing "prudentia," or practical wisdom, at the center of their own imaginative involvement. (PRA)

Increasingly, autistic students are attending college, posing new challenges to writing instructors. In particular, such students may have trouble imagining readers' responses to their texts. Developing an appropriate pedagogy for these students may involve revisiting composition studies' tradition of cognitive research, while not abandoning more…

Discusses a pedagogical approach promoting collaboration as an integral part of teaching/learning writing. Discusses attaining student autonomy through discourse and using group histories to promote student autonomy over individual goals. Discusses student autonomy in directing reader response, student autonomy in responding to group suggestions,…

Using a canonical literary text to elucidate a noncanonical one--and vice versa--is an effective means of teaching multicultural literature. For instance, John Keats'"Ode to Melancholy" and many of his other poems comment on Murasaki Shikibu's 10th-century Japanese novel "The Tale of Genji." Helping college students to…

Explains that as young readers respond to narrative texts in a variety of media, they repeatedly step in and out of the fictional universe of their different stories. Outlines contemporary texts that foster various forms of such border crossing, in and out of diegesis, the framework of events as narrated in the text. Explores how an awareness of…

Shares the work of one college freshman class whose journal entries demonstrate how reader response can be a powerful metacognitive tool. (RS)

Presents the text of an account of the author's research. Notes that the text's four layers (scientific report, reflective analysis, personal history, and deliberative appeal) are each indispensable yet individually inadequate to the task. Considers the tensions among possible accounts of the research and what these tensions say about the reading…

Discusses 10 works of children's literature that inspired powerful responses and conversations among students in children's literature classes. Notes a myriad of responses (not only as to content but to levels of meaning as well) among the students. (RS)

Describes a teacher's unsuccessful attempt to introduce the poetry of Tu Fu, a wayward bureaucrat of the T'ang dynasty, to a class of part-time students. Uses his students' resistance to this poetry as an occasion to discuss the importance of personal responses to poetry, as opposed to "correct" academic responses. (TB)

Asserts that students should be encouraged to be risk takers and derive their own meaning from expository text. Discusses the impact of several reading strategies on the reading attitudes and classroom performance of college-level developmental readers. (PRA)