Although most of the writing in high school English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms is about literature and although there have been incessant calls for changing the practices of teaching and learning literature, only meager amounts of research have been conducted in these interrelated domains of the field. Accordingly, this dissertation seeks to…

As young people today are flooded with information from a multitude of sources, they must be prepared to perceive the potentially oppressive and nefarious nature of many texts. Critical literacy is a theory and strategy that allows young people, along with people of all ages, to achieve just this; however, teachers often experience difficulties…

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) concluded that "literature reading is fading as a meaningful activity, especially among younger people." How can educators continue to teach students about the power of literary response when the priority is for them to achieve proficiency on standardized tests, whose scores can only be narrowly…

Assuming that readers' emotional responses can enhance readers' metacognitive experiences and inform literary analysis, this study of 11th-grade poetry readers features instruction that models both cognitive and affective reading processes. The author: (1) Presents a case for more explicit attention to emotion in language arts classrooms; (2)…

Students engaged in literary response on weblogs they wrote and maintained for an 11th-grade English class. Three focal students, all members of a "regular" American Literature class in a school that is highly invested in The College Board's Advanced Placement program, forge hybrid social languages from the discourse of formal literary analysis…

This book is an introduction to the literature and art of American writer N. Scott Momaday, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and member of the Kiowa American Indian Tribe. The book describes the impact of Momaday's family, Kiowa heritage, Pueblo cultural experiences, and academic preparation on his worldview, poetry, novels, essays, children's…

Assuming readers' emotional responses can inform literary analysis, this study of poetry readers featured an instructional intervention that involved modeling both cognitive and affective reading processes through a think-and-feel-aloud pedagogy. Eleventh-grade students in 2 conditions participated in a 4-week unit on reading poetry. Control group…