Teacher educators have recently devoted much attention to fostering reflection in teacher preparation programs. A teacher is most likely to reflect when he or she is faced with a conflict or tension. A post-baccalaureate English education program at the University of Minnesota employs a number of different activities to encourage its preservice…

Many students view writing as limited to utilitarian ends: writing to please a teacher or to pass a composition course. They often perceive little inherent value in their writing. However, experience teaching high school and college students reveals that many students recognize some inherent value in writing when it is used as a means of…

Reports the results of a study illustrating the differences between how early adolescents, late adolescents, and adults approach the writing of autobiographical narratives. Discusses developmental differences in self concept and differences in knowledge of literary conventions. Provides sample autobiographical essays and discusses implications for…

Discusses three pedagogical frameworks in which students have used hypermedia authoring tools to generate a practice of critical literacy, including critical inquiry into social worlds, critical response to literature, and knowledge construction in the classroom through hypermedia. Discusses how, in hypermedia authoring for critical literacy,…

Reviews the evolution of relevant research in both response to literature and in the enactment of response-based practices in classrooms. Examines research on text, readers, and contexts. Examines research exploring how readers construct texts as cultural worlds, construct identities through participation in worlds, and share responses through…

This book offers teachers a convenient means of broadening their understanding of reader response theory and criticism and applying this theory to the teaching of literature in high school and college classrooms. The book is designed to arouse individual teachers' interest in reader response theory and encourage them to apply it to their teaching.…

"Research in the Teaching of English" (RTE) is the flagship research journal of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in the United States. It is a broad-based, multidisciplinary journal composed of original research articles and short scholarly essays on a wide range of topics significant to those concerned with the…

Compares inferences about story characters' behavior, perceptions, and goals made by eighth graders, eleventh graders, college freshmen, and college seniors. Concludes that from early adolescence to young adulthood, readers shift from conceptions of characters in terms of immediate surface feelings and behaviors to conceptions in terms of…