From a very young age, children actively strive to make sense of their world through constant questioning. The ability to ask questions comes naturally for young children, but such natural inclination does not continue because it teachers who ask most of the questions. Sheena Hervey suggests that teaching students how to pose questions is a…

The teachers are urged by Beech and Thelin to help students expose ideology in their texts and the texts of others. The idea of teaching critical practice is highlighted by Harris who thinks that one can learn to expose ideology by reading cultural texts closely and critically.

Science fiction deserves a greater respect, serious and critical reading and a better place in high school literature classes. Some of the science fiction books by Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury and Octavia L. Butler and various activities for incorporating science fiction into the English language arts instruction classroom are…

This article describes a general instructional strategy designed to help students in the learning process from textbooks and to furnish opportunities for practice in critical reading. Students participate in cooperative learning by breaking the class up into small groups--the Study Teams--and providing them with worksheets and reading organizers,…

This paper explores the effects of poststructuralism on the work of two English teachers and writers of classroom texts. It traces aspects of their theoretical and practical engagement with poststructuralism from an initial acceptance of what appeared to promise the possibility of a truly critical practice through ideology critique to a stance…

Asserts that Martin Amis' contemporary novel, Night Train, is a remarkably effective tool for introducing postmodernist notions in general literature classrooms. Presents a definition for postmodernism and brings the reader through a detailed analysis of the language and structure of the novel. Concludes with students' reaction to the analytical…

Suggests that class discussions of George Eliot's Middlemarch should focus on students' responses to the social, moral, and psychological problems presented in the novel. Asserts that the novel teaches students important lessons about the limitations of human nature and the impact of internal and external constraints on ideals. (Contains 14…

The commercially successful movie Mr Holland's Opus tells the story of a high school music teacher throughout his thirty year career. It offers the general public a picture of what it is to be a music educator. This article outlines a critical reading of the film from the perspective of a practising high school music teacher. Three broad themes…

The tendency to cast mothers in a negative light has featured in much of the literature researching child sexual abuse. More recently however, this trend has become increasingly evident in any number of empirical discussions focusing on mothers who themselves have a history of child sexual abuse. This article presents a detailed thematic analysis…

In the author's experience, a significant source of reading difficulty for many beginning and struggling readers are misconceptions about print concepts so basic teachers assume their students are aware of them. Many children fail to grasp implicit principles of print such as the following: the reader cannot make up the words, the order of letters…

Anne Burke and Shelley Stagg Peterson argue that "picture books offer a medium for teaching visual and critical literacy across the curriculum." To support this idea, they describe a multidisciplinary unit on World War II that pushes high school students to utilize visual and print literacies to analyze, comprehend, and relate to public events and…

The current study used three data sources to estimate time requirements for different item types on the now current SAT Reasoning Test™. First, we estimated times from a computer-adaptive version of the SAT® (SAT CAT) that automatically recorded item times. Second, we observed students as they answered SAT questions under strict time limits and…

This paper discusses a teaching experience developed in the context of Brazilian higher education, which had as its central goal developing critical social awareness through digital literacy teaching. The discussion begins with an explanation of a Neo-Gramscian approach to critical literacy education, contextualising this perspective within…

Children's cultural worlds provide them with many different sources of information about gender and work. Early school reader illustrations, for example, are a cultural resource that produces particular meanings about gender, however children may also draw on understandings from other contexts to make their own sense of these representations. The…

This study examined the influence of critical reading orientation on use of external strategies such as note-taking and underlining while reading an expository text. In two experiments, undergraduate students were asked either to review an article on a linguistic policy (critical reading) or to summarise it (less-critical reading). Experiment 1…