This interpretive study proposes a framework with which to explore the ethical significance of classroom-based literacy practices. Overly narrow views of literature as a source of role models or moral precepts take insufficient account of the complexity of text and experience. Through analyses of telling examples from student writing and…

H. Bosch, F. Steinkamp, and E. Boller's (see record 2006-08436-001) meta-analysis, which demonstrated (a) a small but highly significant overall effect, (b) a small-study effect, and (c) extreme heterogeneity, has provoked widely differing responses. After considering D. B. Wilson and W. R. Shadish's (see record 2006-08436-002) and D. Radin, R.…

Many students struggle to analyze literature and fall into writing plot summaries. They fail to engage with the text because analyzing literature is a foreign concept for so many of them. In this article, the author discusses how she came up with a method to help students adapt to college writing and thinking. Building from a technique that…

The authors assert that L. B. Smith and L. Samuelson's (2006; see record EJ750228) most recent critique of A. E. Booth, S. R. Waxman, and Y. T. Huang's (2005; see record EJ684979) work missed its mark, deflecting attention from the important theoretical difference between the two sets of authors' positions and focusing instead on imagined…

Drawing on data associated with an investigation of classroom read alouds and discussions of children's literature, this article conceptualizes the reading aloud and discussions of picturebooks as an "interpretive space" for elementary grade students' exploration of visual images and written text. Analyzing the types of responses…

Recently, transactional reader response theory has been criticized for providing an inadequate theoretical guide for the study of multicultural literature. Some scholars argue that Rosenblatt assumes the reader and her response to literature are ideologically innocent and the continuum of aesthetic and efferent stance does not encompass critical…

The authors are pleased with commentators' willingness to respond to their target article's challenge to identify observable reproducible phenomena that could be widely accepted as strong scientific evidence for innate talent. In this reply, the authors have organized the ideas in the commentaries into three general categories, namely the…

The author has been invited to reply to this response to her article of December 2006 in this journal. This response can only be a summary of some of her findings and a reiteration, in very truncated form, of her arguments. She would refer any interested reader back to her original extended review of the PIRLS project as it was there that she lays…

Increasingly, autistic students are attending college, posing new challenges to writing instructors. In particular, such students may have trouble imagining readers' responses to their texts. Developing an appropriate pedagogy for these students may involve revisiting composition studies' tradition of cognitive research, while not abandoning more…

The reading of science-related, historical nonfiction alone does not necessarily lead students to make personal connections to science or understand science as a human endeavor interdependent with culture, society, and history. Teachers must structure students' reading to ensure that they consider specific aspects of science while reading and…

While there has been a great deal of debate about enlarging the canon, less attention has been paid to how students respond to "new" literary figures such as Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, or to how instructors should incorporate them into an already cramped literature survey course. Instructors must consider some questions that…

Making connections for teachers between Shakespeare and his historical context on the one hand and secondary students on the other, this book presents background information, commentary, resources, and classroom ideas to enliven students' encounters with Shakespeare. The book concentrates on "Romeo and Juliet,""Julius…

Literature students can benefit by reading drama from an actor's perspective, using selected principles taken from Constantin Stanislavski's approach to acting commonly known as "the method." Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles" accommodates itself well to Stanislavski's approach, which is based upon a play's…

Noting that the impressions left by the large, bold type of newspaper headlines have frequently resulted in libel suits, a study explored the individual and interactive roles played by defamatory headlines and news articles in a reader's perception of the contents. Four separate versions of a news article and its headline were prepared by the…