My argument is that a literary education should build on a primary level of responsivity towards literature, involving empathy and immersion in the world of the text. To engage with literary works from the past involves a play between familiarity and strangeness, and this play should be located as part of a reader's response to texts, rather than…

Background: The gender gap in reading literacy is repeatedly found in large-scale assessments. This study compared girls' and boys' text responses in a reading test applying natural language processing. For this, a theoretical framework was compiled that allows mapping of response features to the preceding cognitive components such as micro- and…

This article offers a German response to John Hull's recent article on "religious education in Germany and England" (in "BJRE", volume 27, issue 1). The author claims that recent developments have brought religious education in both countries much closer together than in the past and that the differences between the respective…

Explores how child readers in Australia and Germany responded to Randolph Stow's "Midnite." Reports on responses from taped interviews conducted in each country, examining both child and adult responses to the ironic humor of the work. (MG)

Religious education in England and Germany is similar in many respects and different in others. In both countries the subject must embrace religious plurality, and in both there are questions about the role of the religious communities in their relation to religious education. In recent his book, "Religious Education in a Plural, Western…

Close to 1,100 people attended the 55th Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, Florida from November 30-December 3, 2005. A record number of proposals were submitted this year (548), with 392 papers, symposia, and round tables accepted. This year's conference theme was inclusiveness and synthesis…