Examines the interpretive beliefs, processes, and instructional experiences of eight ninth grade students, and the relationships among them that form their critical interpretive stances toward literary works. Reveals that students reason about literary works at an interpretive level, with largely textual inferences focusing on characters and…

Literary "discourse theories," increasingly applied to history and society in recent years, are losing favor among conservative and liberal scholars as focusing too narrowly on the role of language. These poststructuralist theories hold that language and knowledge are slippery, that words and cultural texts rarely mean what they appear…

Analyzes two Yup'ik tales depicting the cyclic relationships between humans and animals and between the living and the dead. Emphasizes the importance in the Yup'ik world view of boundaries and passages. Suggests that human actions, rules, and ceremonies create boundaries or may close or open paths between people, as well as between human/animal…

Critiques the Capacitor-Aided System for Teaching and Learning Electricity (CASTLE) curriculum. Criticism is made of the model's use of a compressible-fluid model to demonstrate charge conduction. An alternative model is proposed. (ZWH)

Defends an earlier argument concerning statistical analysis and its use in influencing educational policy and resource allocation for improving student performance. The original argument states that there is no meaningful relationship between resources and performance: throwing money at schools is not tantamount to improving them. (GLR)

Claims that Adlai Stevenson adapted the tenets of contemporary civic republicanism as a pragmatic to the response to the obstacles that confronted him in his 1952 presidential campaign. Analyzes his campaign rhetoric to reveal the strengths and limitations of republicanism as a political argument. Explores the complex relationship between…

Provides an account of the deep structures of children's literature. Examines theorizing about these texts that deals with earliest affective experiences, including Julia Kristeva and Erik Erikson. Analyzes two texts from these perspectives: "Wind in the Willows" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." (HB)

Develops a metaphor of qualitative research as jazz to illuminate qualities that are embedded in the processes of qualitative inquiry. The jazz metaphor is said to create a pathway for making explicit the tacit understandings that permit qualitative research to flow and to be guided by the new findings and emerging understandings it uncovers. (GLR)

Using composition, reader response, critical, and feminist theories, a teacher demonstrates how adult students respond critically to literary texts and how teachers must critically analyze the texts of their teaching practice. Both students and teachers can use writing to bring their experiences to interpretation. (SK)

Illuminates Kenneth Burke's characteristics of a mystical rhetoric as they issue from "purpose" as a dominant dramatistic element. Offers a case study in mystical rhetoric by identifying the essential qualities of a mystical narrative and demonstrating how these qualities operate in Chiara Lubich's 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech.…

School bashing has been a national pastime for years. Government officials and business leaders demoralize teachers and administrators carrying out improvement efforts by telling them how poorly they are doing. Although many educators truly believe in a national desire to improve education, there is no national will to compensate and empower…

Uses an informal survey to explore students' attitudes toward the study of English and literature. Concludes that an introductory course should keep literature in touch with the history of ideas, allow for the systematic take-up of critical issues and problems, and enable students to relate their reading to particular philosophical, moral, and…

Discusses the rhetorical method of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Argues that it must be extended in some fundamental ways if educators want to apply his model of rhetoric. Suggests that a truly pragmatic rhetoric must bear some similarity to the method of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. (MG)

Explores the tight relationship between reading and writing, and discusses the implications of this central relationship for departments of English. Discusses Friedrich Nietzsche's early writings on rhetoric as challenging Western metaphysical tradition and providing a new model of writing. (HB)

A study measured the effectiveness of a college course that instructed students to critically evaluate therapeutic claims for foods, nutrient supplements, weight reduction products and diets, and alternative health care. Pretests and posttests of experimental and comparison groups found experimental group students had desirable changes in source…