In this article, I use the metaphor that readers journey to narrative worlds to review research that has spanned my career. In the first section, I consider the processes that enable readers to undertake these journeys as well as the processes that allow them to participate in the narrative worlds once they have arrived. In the second section, I…

Finds that first graders who received direct instruction in awareness of four pragmatic language functions (heuristic, imaginative, regulatory, and personal) evidenced greater recognition and awareness of these functions in narrative than did uninstructed children. Implies that it is useful to cultivate such pragmatic awareness to promote…

Discusses children's pictures termed "visual manifold narratives" (picture books that develop more than one narrative line by including two or more sets of separate pictures on the page). Discusses some uses of the manifold narrative, the reader's role in constructing meaning, subversion of the linear narrative, the metafictionality of manifold…

Experienced teachers enrolled in two graduate reading classes examined seven informal reading inventories (IRIs)--three at the elementary level and four at the secondary level--to (1) discover what text types (narrative or expository) they used at each level to measure student comprehension skills and determine instructional levels and (2)…

This volume is a longitudinal study that explores the responses of two experienced high school English teachers to curriculum changes and examines how a teacher's past attitudes and experiences influence current practice. There are six chapters. The first is a discussion of narrative inquiry as a research method. The next two chapters are…