Teachers appear as characters in a wide range of literary writing. To date, few scholars have systematically studied the teachers who appear in works of literature. Much of the existing work has focused on relatively small numbers of teachers and has been presented in the form of brief essays rather than formal research (e.g., Booth, 2006; Crume,…

In the wake of the crisis of representation, the qualitative approaches have gained momentum within the social sciences. This crisis has lead to a widespread awareness about the need to incorporate the subject's understanding in the research design. Yet, the validity of qualitative accounts is still regarded as a function of its representative…

The late-Victorian era provided aficionados of detective fiction with an abundance of short stories belonging to this literary genre. Many of these works contained some aspect of chemistry, either in the execution of a crime or in the identification of the perpetrator. In the example discussed in this article, the gas-phase reaction of hydrogen…

This paper will explore the recent trend in the popularising of history and its impact on teaching and learning. There has been a steady increase in the amount of fiction, films, television shows, documentaries and children's programs situated in or concerned with historical events, eras or historical figures. The evident popularity among the…

Contemporary American education initiatives mandate half of all English language arts content is non-fiction. History topics, therefore, will increase within all elementary and English language arts middle level classrooms. The education initiatives have rigorous expectations for students' close readings of, and written argumentation about,…

The context of this study is a voluntary modification in teaching focus by four eighth-grade teachers who shifted their instructional focus toward student engagement. They abandoned assigned readings in favor of student-selected, self-paced reading within a collection of high interest materials--primarily young adult fiction that students found…

The need for cognitive closure has been found to be associated with a variety of suboptimal information processing strategies, leading to decreased creativity and rationality. This experiment tested the hypothesis that exposure to fictional short stories, as compared with exposure to nonfictional essays, will reduce need for cognitive closure. One…

It was early March 2008, and the author was only a few months from finishing her third year as an elementary school librarian. During the morning recess the school library was humming with the sounds of students. Suddenly, three students rushed in asking the author to help them find a silent-reading book for class. Looking at the clock and seeing…

Traditionally, school librarians have had two main strategies for impacting the literacy development of students in their schools. One way is through reading promotion efforts: book talks, book displays, or online book trailers, and literacy events such as book fairs, contests, and reading incentive programs. The other way has been through…

In this column, the author reviews books and other resources that address issues related to teaching tolerance for those of other religions, races, gender orientations, and cultures. It reviews titles related to Jewish oppression, including Doreen Rappaport's (2012) "Beyond Courage, the Untold Story of Jewish Resistance during the…

Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer an interpretive space where readers are positioned to construct meanings in transaction with the written language, visual images, and design elements created by authors, illustrators and publishers (Serafini & Ladd, 2008; Sipe, 1999). This study was…

This article presents a list of ALSC's notable children's books for younger readers, middle readers and older readers. It also presents a list of YALSA 2011 best fiction for young adults. Great graphic novels for Teens are included.

This essay examines restorative justice scripting in "Voices", the second volume of Ursula K. Le Guin's "Annals of the Western Shore." Narrated by a rape-child, "Voices" is the story of an occupied city-state and of how the conquered and the conquerors negotiate a formula for peaceful coexistence. They are able to do…

Douglas Coupland, a prolific author/artist/lecturer and now prognosticator, is in the forefront of the arts movement in both Canada and the US. His works, starting with his breakout novel "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture," have consistently worked as a bellwether of current perspectives and values, both noting our cultural…

In this article the author looks at a particular episode of the television show, Breaking Bad, as a means to explore the pedagogical implications of the Kristevan notion of abjection, and its relation to the emotions of love and hate, and the emergence of teacher narcissism as an inevitable offshoot of the antagonisms in learning. This particular…