This article describes high school students' responses to events in the novel, "The Things They Carried," leading to their collaborative rewriting to create their own narrative versions of these events. It draws on "enactivist" theory of languaging, an approach to language that focuses on its use as social actions to enact and…

Discusses three pedagogical frameworks in which students have used hypermedia authoring tools to generate a practice of critical literacy, including critical inquiry into social worlds, critical response to literature, and knowledge construction in the classroom through hypermedia. Discusses how, in hypermedia authoring for critical literacy,…

Reviews the evolution of relevant research in both response to literature and in the enactment of response-based practices in classrooms. Examines research on text, readers, and contexts. Examines research exploring how readers construct texts as cultural worlds, construct identities through participation in worlds, and share responses through…

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…

This book offers teachers a convenient means of broadening their understanding of reader response theory and criticism and applying this theory to the teaching of literature in high school and college classrooms. The book is designed to arouse individual teachers' interest in reader response theory and encourage them to apply it to their teaching.…

Including only selections that have employed some systematic analysis of readers' responses to literary texts, this annotated bibliography lists 203 research studies. The selections date from 1970 through 1988. The bibliography is divided into sections on the following topics: (1) reader variables (subdivided into orientation, development, and…

Compares inferences about story characters' behavior, perceptions, and goals made by eighth graders, eleventh graders, college freshmen, and college seniors. Concludes that from early adolescence to young adulthood, readers shift from conceptions of characters in terms of immediate surface feelings and behaviors to conceptions in terms of…