This article explores the dynamic, interactive relationship between texts and their teacher- and student-readers and suggests instructional and educational implications resulting from these interactions. (DF)

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…

The reader's role in constructing stories is explored, and the role of participants in shaping a group text is examined. Parts of discussions by two groups of eighth-graders are reproduced and interpreted. (MT)

Discusses the complex issues related to the canon, reading, culture, and schooling that remain to be explored and debated in the study of children's literature and children's responses to literature. Argues that it may be necessary to reexamine why teachers want or expect children and young adults to read in particular ways, and to what ends. (SM)

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,…

Reading is a strategic activity. Readings are intended to make something happen and keep something else from happening. One professor discusses her struggle to situate her readings of students papers in their projects and questions and respond as a teacher to inaudible student messages. (SM)

Describes a teacher educator's return to high school English teaching, reflecting on her disappointment and dissatisfaction with her teaching of "Macbeth" and examining five uses of theory for better understanding the school, the students, the text, the essays, and the act of reading. The paper highlights the importance of race, social…

Discusses the evaluation of children's literature and children's responses to literature, examining ideas posed by various writers and scholars, offering an example of a critical reading of one text, and noting several themes that are apparent in the text (e.g., gaining access to cultural institutions, refuting stereotypic images, and creating…

Examines how researchers can study children's interaction with literature, discussing various perspectives that can be taken on children's literary responses and suggesting lines of inquiry and concepts that might be useful for the continued examination of children's responses. Focuses on the author, the literary text itself, the reader, and the…

Using a critical model of reader response to literature in diverse urban secondary classrooms is important. The model helps teachers encourage diverse readers to generate their own text so they can engage with text that is more interesting than the traditional canon and become more willing and able to respond. Samples of diverse urban students'…

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…

Shares the responses of seven urban, male, African-American fifth graders to contemporary realistic fiction, discussing how the tying of this literature to the events in the boys' lives had the potential to move them toward social action. The paper examines the following: literature as a catalyst, reader responses to texts, critical literacy, and…

Teachers and students must build semantic connections between words of the text and already familiar ways of speaking, integrating the formal language of the subject into their own ways of speaking. This article demonstrates how classroom dialogue can help make textbook language part of the language of the students. (IAH)

The relationship of syntactic sensitivities to fluency and understanding are usually neglected when discussing reading fluency. The article describes oral reading and interpretation activities in one seventh grade class undertaken to improve comprehension and fluency. It also discusses evaluation methods, such as portfolios and recordings as…