Research has demonstrated that readers track the objective status of characters' goals (i.e., whether the goals have been completed). We suggest that readers also use characters' subjective representations--characters' mental states with respect to goals--to comprehend actions. We explored circumstances in which local information about characters'…

In 2006, a secondary English and feminist studies teacher created a course and designed a study around a reading exchange for eighth-grade girls from two vastly different communities. Girls from a school in a northeastern state read young adult novels and wrote about their reading and related topics with girls from Washington, DC on a wikispace…

The discourse on multicultural literature has focused on providing children of color opportunities to "see themselves" in the texts they read. Since the 1920s, advocates like W.E.B. DuBois have stressed that "visibility" in literature fosters positive psychological development among underrepresented groups of children, in…

We thank Debra J. Ackerman, Peggy L. Apple, W. Steven Barnett, and Stacie G. Goffin for their thoughtful commentaries on our article "Implementing New York's Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program: An Exploratory Study of Systemic Impacts" (this issue). Our response focuses on two main themes that emerged from the commentaries: (a) the…

The purpose of the study was to examine how reader response journals followed by classroom discussion ("Reader Response Plus") contributed to students' reading comprehension and to their attitudes toward reading. The study was conducted in a rural school in upstate New York. The twelfth grade class that participated in the study…

Developing students' ability to use multicultural perspectives and knowledge to think about literature, history, and society is emerging as an important part of a pluralistic approach to education. In New York State, an ethnographic study was conducted over 2 school years by a pair of English and social studies teachers with pluralistic goals for…

Part of a larger ethnographic study, this investigation focused on the literacy development of a college student as he participated in the virtual culture of a computer-networked writing classroom where all instruction and communication occurred through the computer. The student was a member of one of two classes of adult students, ranging in age…