Examines the effect of feedback on helping poor readers improve their comprehension. Compares the effects of instruction about text-based inferencing using explicit, process-explaining feedback to effects of using feedback that did not describe how to draw inferences. Finds that both instructional conditions boosted overall comprehension, but…

An instrumental/technocratic approach to evaluation of social development relies on primarily quantitative methods. An interpretive approach resists claims to legitimacy and authority of "experts" and questions existing interpretations. The latter approach is characterized by cultural relativism and subjectivity. (SK)

Focuses on the depth of learning that happens when classroom teachers employ text sets for thematic teaching. Investigates how beginning a text set with a nonfiction and a fiction pair might offer a strong contrast that invites readers to read critically and consider alternate perspectives on a given subject. (SG)

Presents an edited version of an academic discussion that took place between the authors entirely over e-mail about literacy and masculinities. Agrees that in order to dismantle forms of hegemony in society, citizens (both men and women) need to become critical readers and thinkers. (SG)

Investigates conscious understanding during narrative comprehension as revealed through use of think-aloud methodology. Presents an analytical model of conscious understanding. Identifies three working memory operations in the protocols--operations which are functionally necessary to inferences in the protocols. Discusses data and current models…

Using Barbara Kingsolver's novel "Animal Dreams" and critical readings, the paper explores relationships between community, sense of place, and construction of meanings, noting the importance of autobiography in connecting with community and place in constructing landscapes and personal meaning and advocating for education that does not…

Considers several ways to think about the teacher's role in the teaching of reading. Notes that a curriculum built on critical literacy is one that highlights diversity and difference while calling attention to how people are constructed as literate beings. Argues that students should position themselves as social activists who challenge the…

Shares the author's frustrations and some of the complexities involved with constructing a critical literacy curriculum. Explores what might have happened if she had taken up the issues that mattered in her students' lives as text to form the basis for a critical literacy curriculum. (SC)

Discusses the question of what is critical in critical language awareness by drawing on Hans Georg Gadamer's development of the dialectic of experience, historically effected consciousness, and the dialectic of question and answer. The openness found to characterize these three events initiates the space of distance by which the critical instance…

Addresses a particular paradox isolated by Cathy N. Davidson, that our gift to the world can be a curse to ourselves. Names this "gift" as a critical, intense, trained, sometimes skeptical but always skilled habit of attentive reading. Suggests administrators and professors respond to the "text" of the English profession as a creative work. (SG)

Presents two episodes from the reading experience of children in a Year 3 classroom: (1) a guided reading lesson conducted by the teacher; and (2) a group of reading sessions conducted by the researcher. Suggests that where children are given the power to make meaning for themselves, they are more likely to learn to read critically than those who…

Several years ago, Ruth Vinz, other colleagues at the Teachers College and Greg Hamilton worked together on a book for English teachers "Becoming (Other)wise: Enhancing Critical Reading Perspectives" that challenged some of the more popular and mainstream conceptions of a multicultural literature education. Principles theorized by the team while…

This article presents the theoretical underpinnings of critical literacy and related principles. It also provides ideas for creating environments to promote reading from a critical stance, teaching strategies, sample classroom applications, and annotated lists of theme-related texts. When engaging in critical literacy, readers move beyond…

By demonstrating lexical and grammatical analysis--the rough work that underpins critical discourse analysis--this paper demonstrates the importance of grammatical knowledge for the critical reading of texts. It also provides readers with a grammar rubric for working systematically with the linguistic analysis of texts and argues that Fairclough's…

Freire told his audience at a seminar at the University of Massachusetts, "You need to read knee-deep in texts, for deeper than surface meanings, and you need to know the words to be able to do it" (quoted in Cleary, 2003). In a children's literature class, fifteen teachers and I traveled along a path that moved us toward reading…