When children are asked questions that invite them to react and respond thoughtfully to what they have read, teachers can gain a great deal of insight into the thinking habits of their students. Discussions of ideas offer teachers valuable opportunities to observe their students' thinking habits and skills, the breadth and precision of their…

A decade ago, S. Aglioti, J. F. X. DeSouza, and M. A. Goodale (1995) published an experiment that has had a big influence on the way that visual information is thought to control human behavior. Their findings have often been simplified as suggesting that action is immune to perceptual illusions. The current authors critically analyze the 4 steps…

This paper sets out Peter Winch's central ideas about the nature of the social sciences, and reappraises their potential for educational research. It is argued that the dichotomy between "reasons" and "causes" has done much harm, and that the important matter of understanding "what is real for us" has recently been neglected. Winch's philosophy…

In this article, the author revisits a case study presented in "Arts Education Policy Review" 105(1) in September/October 2003. The author discusses Arts Collaborator's Incorporated's (ACI) efforts to educate the community about art and about arts opportunities in River City. Themes visited in the discussion are community development through the…

Although reading and writing exist only in relation to each other, writing plays little or no role in the usual instructional approaches to reading. Mostly, reading is taught as a sequence of discrete skills, which is ineffective since it accommodates the analytic reading style to the exclusion of global, kinesthetic, and auditory styles. Reading…

The summary information in this report provides teachers, school administrators, students, and the general public in Alberta, Canada with an overview of results from the January 1997 administration of the English 30 Diploma Examination. The information in the report is most helpful when used in conjunction with the detailed school and jurisdiction…

Thomas Hardy has received great acclaim as a poet and novelist, but his short stories have remained largely ignored with regard to the usual short story "canon." Early reviews of Hardy's stories were mixed, but after his death the tide of critical opinion tended to turn against Hardy's stories. A significant historical factor was the…

A study explored the developing literacy response of adolescents through writing by investigating three characteristics: patterns, individual variations, and the effects of genre on response. Subjects, 7 grade nine students from a small private secondary school on the west coast of Canada, were selected for their wide reading experiences. Subjects…

Literature can bring meaning to student research. When students read they develop connections to characters. They care; they empathize; they recognize the issues that face characters' lives, and they develop beliefs about those issues. Students' new feelings and beliefs motivate them to conduct research related to those issues and sustain them…

Athol Fugard's "Master Harold...and the boys" and Toni Morrison's "Bluest Eye" underscore the necessity of encouraging and providing opportunities for African American students to explore their own constructions of self. In the former work, "It's not fair, is it Hally?" becomes a universal human refrain at the same…

The study reported in this paper argues for a process model of postsecondary instruction where reader-response literary theory in general, and L. Rosenblatt's transactional theory specifically, provides a theoretical framework for strategies which use computers to teach postsecondary English. The paper begins with an examination of the historical…

Offering a poetics for myth in 20th century fiction, this book argues that the nature of myth is to inspire interpretation, that every myth carries with it an intertextual body of theories regarding its meaning and yet remains capable of evoking new meaning. The book further argues that myth, when used in fiction, functions like a language, with…

Reading response groups are an outgrowth of theories which suggest that: (1) meaning derived from text is highly individualized and personal, and (2) reader understanding is deepened through interactions among peers. A study examined the non-participation in one reading response group composed of four high-achieving adult readers who were…

A sophomore-level course surveying world literature through the seventeenth century emphasizes the theme of heroes and heroic codes using western classics and the "Tale of Genji," a fictional account of an idealized Japanese courtier and gentleman written in the tenth century AD by the court lady Murasaki Shikubu, and often considered to…

Black feminist novelists continue to take issue with males who try to theorize about their artistic creations. Male attitudes toward black women's novels have been characterized as either apathetic, chauvinistic, or paternalistic. Black feminist writers should heed the call for collective racial progress and collective theoretical progress. The…