This study explored whether different types of instructional visuals--knowledge maps and pictorial illustrations--encourage students to focus on specific types of conceptual relationships during learning. Undergraduates (n = 134) studied a text lesson on the human nervous system accompanied by maps (text-with-maps group), illustrations…

Recent scholarship in multiliteracies-oriented pedagogies has advocated for greater attention to fostering 'textual thinking', understood as forms of literacy that consider the complexities of semiotic choices made by authors, and their underlying meanings, rhetorical purposes, and cultural contexts. This kind of engagement with texts calls upon…

This paper concerns the pedagogical work affect does in an Australian Year 11 literature classroom. Thinking with Ahmed's framing of affect from the viewpoint of cultural politics, I consider how affect aligns some bodies within particular social groups and situates some outside. Three key moments of affective charge are drawn from observations:…

Overall, the author wanted to teach using culturally responsive approaches. The ELA teacher can fuel social justice teaching. In this article, the author discusses how their personal biases affected their classroom instruction and how they shifted their educational philosophy to consider the needs and interests of their students. In US education,…

This study employed case study methodology and design research to examine what aesthetic transactions (readers' thoughts, feelings, associations, etc. that arise during a text encounter) students constructed in response to texts in a Gothic studies reading unit created by the author. The study was conducted in a seventh-grade reading classroom.…

This article brings recent debates in literary studies regarding the practice of close reading into conversation with Derek Attridge's idea of "readerly hospitality" (2004) to diagnose the problem of students in undergraduate literary studies programme not completing set reading. We argue that the method of close reading depends on…

For the promotion and optimization of teaching foreign languages, new methods and strategies are always considered that include literary texts. The aim of the present paper is to provide arguments for the use of literature in the classroom. Learning target areas and selection criteria for the use of literary texts in the classroom are presented. A…

This article discusses the teachers' role in self-directed learning (SDL) -- a central concept in adult education. We explore the use of Socratic questioning to develop critical thinking, which is the outcome of SDL in problem-based learning (PBL). In particular, we analyse 11 adult learners' reflective journals in relation to a Socratic seminar.…

This study examines the potential of translation activities as a means for introducing a discourse approach to teaching culture in the beginner-level language classroom. For this purpose, a translation session was implemented to a group of beginner-level learners of Japanese at a UK university. Analysis of classroom interaction and students'…

The Bechdel test, the author's student Marley explained, is named for the US graphic novelist and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. To pass the test, a work of fiction must contain at least one scene in which two or more women (preferably named characters) discuss something other than a male. Students who read from the canon of works regularly encounter…

Across one school year, in which I coached a fourth-grade teacher, she and I took an inquiry stance investigating how we could come to understand the reading identities kids held relative to Stephens' (2013) list of characteristics of effective and efficient readers. We also sought to understand how we could help kids develop, sustain, or extend…

The proliferation of new forms of media has given way to a multitude of new text structures, particularly texts designed to alter the receiver's perspectives. Yet, little is known about the ways in which these novel text structures alter the characteristics of the receiver including one's knowledge and beliefs. As such, the purpose of this…

Rachel Foster reports here on research that she conducted into how students engage with academic texts. Unhappy with the usual range of texts that students encounter, often truncated and "simplified" in the name of accessibility, she designed a scheme of work which sought to find out how her students responded to academic texts, and how these…

Close reading is an instructional practice that has gained attention of late. It involves reading a complex text, annotation, and repeatedly reading to answer text-dependent questions. Although there are a number of recommendations for the use of close reading, there has not been a systematic analysis of student or teacher perceptions of this…

This paper reports on two projects which investigated graded readers (GRs) as meaningful input for learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). Project One examined the intentions of six writers of Japanese GRs. A focus group interview demonstrated that the writers had a genuine communicative intent in the writing process. Project Two…