Increasing numbers of researchers in the field of higher education research are searching for meaning rather than metrics: something in their data that call to them and that make their hearts soar. This paper leans into post-qualitative approaches and attempts to resist methodological arrest, drawing on the disciplinary language of literary…

A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

An important purpose of reading literature is to move beyond the literal text to construct an interpretation of what the text conveys about the human condition and nature of the world. In two experiments, college students with no prior training in literary analysis read a short story and responded to one of four task instructions (plot, ambiguous,…

Traditionally, we English faculty have warned our students against simply identifying with a literary work's characters. For us, such attachments constitute "reading badly." But we engage in identifications, too, including ones with the work's author. A consideration of critical responses to "Benito Cereno" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" enables us to…

Clarifies the "efferent" and "aesthetic" stance on Louise Rosenblatt's theoretical continuum by relating her model to the plot, characters, and scenes in Lois Lowry's "The Giver." Shows that Rosenblatt's view applies to the ways readers read texts and to the way characters in the texts read their text-worlds. Presents…

Reading is an act of identity making. Because readers must complete the act of meaning making, the context and conditions of reading alter the shape of the storytelling event and the trajectory of meaning. This paper explains reading identity and pedagogy, providing techniques one professor used when teaching two novels (marking, tracing,…

Decontextualization, referring to the abstraction of a written text from all of its contexts, is a flawed concept. Rather than viewing writing as an isolated abstraction, a text's involvement with the human world should be acknowledged. Two major questions arise when dealing with the concept of decontextualization: (1) Can written discourse be…

Response-based approaches to teaching and learning literature provide alternatives to objectifying literature. Where traditional approaches champion close readings of texts and "correct" interpretations, response-based theorists regard readers as active meaning-makers whose personal experiences affect their interpretations of literary…

Presents results of a study of how readers fill in information "gaps" in a text to make meaning, using adolescents' response to a story by Brecht. Concludes that such gaps bore children uninterested in making meaning, and that those who make meaning from a mechanical stance may be limited in their comprehension unless deeper ways of…

Focusing on reader response in the classroom, the works collected in this book represent the results of a five-week summer institute in which 25 middle school, high school, and college teachers studied the principles and applications of literature instruction. The following essays are included: an introduction by G. Garber; "An Overview of the…

Focusing on the need to offer and encourage the experience of reading literature in elementary schools, the essays in this book (1) explicate the range of theory known as reader-response criticism; (2) argue its distinctive relevance to the needs of young, developing readers; and (3) indicate how classroom practices might be changed to accommodate…

Presents effective methods for the discussion, sharpening, and enrichment of readers' responses. Includes methods to teach students how to choose a good book, an individualized and/or group reading and response program, and journal writing techniques. Provides a bibliography of Canadian children's literature for intermediate grades. (MM)