Because we live in an increasingly globalized world, teachers are tasked with cultivating social and cultural competencies in their students to prepare them to act as responsible global citizens. This article explores how including diverse global literary narratives in the English language arts (ELA) classroom is an important step toward preparing…

Discusses the conflict over deconstruction, explaining its usefulness in reading, writing, and responding to poetry. After defining deconstruction, presents five approaches to deconstructive reading (self-referentiality, reading from different positions, binary oppositions, figurative/literal language, and intertextuality) and concludes that…

Explores reading as discursive practice, assuming that all readings are produced by particular groups to represent their specific interests. Constructs a reading of English education over the past century, focusing on a humanist conception of individualism promoted through personal growth pedagogy, and on the shift toward a poststructuralist view…

When reading educators encounter a student's interpretation of a text that is different than that which an author may have intended, they have to determine if such an interpretation is valid according to their criteria for students. Much of this rests with educators' conceptions of the reading process and the role of the reader in the…

This paper examines the work of Russian literary critic M. M. Bakhtin as a theory of reading. Focusing on two critical essays, "Discourse in the Novel" and "The Problem of Speech Genres," the paper demonstrates how Bakhtin addresses the three elements of a reading theory--language, representation, and interpretation. Next, the…