Reading motivation is a fundamental basis for reading behavior and performance. For learners, interest is an exceedingly important component of reading motivation. Prior research has shown that students' text-based interest varies significantly between texts. However, it is still unclear why one text elicits greater interest over another.…

In recent decades, there has been an increase in literacy education research attending to curriculum inclusive of sexual and gender diversity in secondary classrooms. Although valuable, most of this research has focused on the ideational and representational qualities of curriculum and thus has overlooked the significance of composition and genre.…

A persisting gap in the field of disciplinary literacy is lack of conceptual clarity around the term "discipline." In this theoretical article, the author explains some concerns with existing definitional imprecision and argues that genre-oriented activity theory offers a way to reconceptualize the focus of disciplinary literacy,…

The authors conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 400 National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12 from 2010-2017 selected for their instructional usefulness in science classrooms. The authors examined these expert-recommended science trade books to better understand their design and to identify…

Teachers who are knowledgeable about the basic structure of the English language incorporate this knowledge into their instruction. In this study, the authors explored a similar relation between knowledge of print exposure and planning for a grade 5 classroom. The personal reading experience (print exposure) of 106 preservice teachers was measured…

Although teaching argumentative writing in schools is often about teaching argumentative forms, this instructional approach limits students' flexibility and choice as writers, readers, and meaning makers. An alternative method, rooted in tenets of genre theory, offers a different approach. Rather than treating argument as a static form, genre…

Based on the analysis of 620 think-aloud verbal protocols from students in grades 7, 9, and 11, we examined students' conscious engagement in inference generation, paraphrasing, verbatim text repetition, and monitoring while reading narrative or informational texts that were either at or above the students' current reading levels. Students were…

This review analyzes three new texts about the history and meaning of children's literature: Leonard Marcus's "Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature"; Perry Nodelman's "The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature"; and Rudine Sims Bishop's "Free Within Ourselves: The Development…

Language-use strategies are considered potentially effective approaches that learners select to accomplish a second- or foreign-language task. In the past three decades, there has been a proliferation of research concerned with learners' strategy use at different levels of language ability and the influence of L1 learner strategies on L2 language…

Examines the historical, political, and research roots which have shifted reading instruction from being basal dominated to more literature driven. Argues the future of children's literature in reading instruction depends on exploiting the potential of online and electronic texts, fine-tuning genres of literature, and constructing theories of why…

Examines the nature of children's sense of theme in narratives as it develops over three age levels--kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade--and investigates the role of literature in that development. Concludes that thematic identification is an early developmental strategy. (MM)