Presenting findings from a wide-ranging study, this book considers the present state of literature teaching in American middle and secondary schools. Probing both context and the instructional approaches, the book shows a discipline staffed by teachers better educated than their predecessors but carrying heavy class loads and isolated from current…

In 1977, to determine current conditions in the teaching of English, a questionnaire was distributed from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) headquarters to a selected sample of secondary schools. Four populations were chosen for study: schools that had participated in a 1968 study, schools that had consistently produced winners in…