Presents speculations on broadening the concept of literacy and using pictures to teach. Discusses the importance and value of training students to "read" a painting and, by extension, a visual image and how this fits into promoting a culture of literacy. Considers the application of reader-response theory to pictures as text. (SG)

Shares how a 12-week course for second-semester seniors called "Cultures in Conflict: Post-Colonial Literature from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific" offers students on a Navajo reservation important insights into how other peoples have dealt with racial misunderstandings, inequities of power, and shifts in traditional values and…

Reviews recent articles focusing on the controversy surrounding the appropriateness of readability formulas for technical writing. Suggests that further research should be conducted to study empirically how readability as a concept might be used to aid the technical writer since readability formulas are shaping computerized editing programs. (KEH)

Asks why students read essays as if their meanings are simple, univocal, and transparent. Suggests that students grow up practicing "essayist literacy," a view of the text as a self-sufficient communication vehicle. Argues that a rhetoric of deproduction conceals the social process of writing behind the apparent artlessness of the plain…

Responds to "new scholarship on women" perspective presented in previous article by Greiner, considering perspective particularly salient for student affairs educators who are responsible for conveying to future student affairs practitioners concepts associated with the new scholarship on women. Examines implications of each of six tenets of…

Responds to view expressed by Wittmer in previous article concerning doctoral programs in counselor education seeking accreditation review by Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs rather than by the American Psychological Association. Asserts no single response to affiliation-accreditation issue will suit all…

Suggests an approach to literature (derived from post-structuralism and deconstructionism) which goes beyond the concept of "teacher as authority," without totally abandoning form or structure. Demonstrates this approach in a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and Philip Larkin's poem "High…

Explains how to develop the independent use of literature response journals with remedial readers. (MM)

Presents feedback from 14 teenagers in response to the Young Adult Library Services's 1995 Best Books for Young Adults list. Offers recommendations for librarians who create book lists: respect teens and their books; beware the influence of reviews and an author's momentum; make two lists; use real criteria for selection; and listen to them. (JMV)

Describes an informal study of literature response journals in a graduate language arts methods course. Details advantages of response journals, procedures for use, and graduate students' reactions to journals as indicated on a questionnaire. Provides samples of students' aesthetic responses to literature. (RS)

Describes an educator's attempt to raise multicultural issues in the classroom through a course centered on Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Are Watching God." Maintains that educators have a responsibility to raise issues of cultural diversity in learning communities that provide ways for student to engage in thinking that expands their…

Examines the responses of second-grade students asked to listen to pseudonarration for information or to listen to the text as a story. Finds that, regardless of purpose given, the students focused on the story idea units more than the informational idea units. Discusses implications of these findings for research and practice. (RS)

Suggests that, despite the expanding variety of the university population, despite diversity and challenges to the literary canon, writing assignments continue to be uninspired and outdated. Describes an "Alternative Responses to Literature" course whose aim was to open up the communal readings, the forms of response to them, and the…

Compared the responses of four Pacific-islander readers and four non-Pacific-islander readers of Alan Duff's 1990 novel "Once Were Warriors," about the lives of indigenous Maori people in New Zealand. Non-Pacific-islanders saw parallels in the novel between the Maori and other downtrodden peoples, such as South African blacks, while…

Examines the nature of personal, idiosyncratic interpretations and responses to reading assignments. Suggests how teachers can help students understand the differences between their interpretations and the authors' intended messages. Provides three strategies--anticipation guides, mapping, and role playing--to help students synthesize their…