As a teacher with more than 30 years experience at the middle school, secondary, and college level, primarily in English studies, Patterson (the first author) decided a few years ago to reexamine his practices and instructional methods. He wondered what would be the effects on him and his students when he would begin to utilize ideas emanating…

This article explores how reading strategy instruction that targets children's literature can unwittingly interfere with the development of a reading life. It compares the use of story-based children's literature for reading strategy instruction with the "untaught" story. It asks: What, if any, role does a read aloud that is unfettered by formal…

The study examined the efficacy of an intensive form of professional development (PD) for building the knowledge of first-grade teachers in the areas of phonological awareness and phonics. The PD featured frequent in-class support from highly knowledgeable mentors for one school year, in addition to an introductory two-day summer institute and…

In this brief response, Carla Payne comments on Karen Hornsby's "Developing and Assessing Undergraduate Students' Moral Reasoning Skills" (EJ1137006). Payne agrees with Hornsby's statement that the development of "moral reasoning skills" is a very desirable outcome for an ethics course, yet takes issue with Hornsby not sticking…

This study assessed the utility of document prevalence and familiarity as predictors of adult document literacy performance. Three indexes--quantifying document prevalence, document familiarity, and the frequency of document use--were constructed using survey responses from an adult community sample and documents collected from government agencies…

This paper makes the case for preparing school leaders for social justice and a new social order. In Kenya, little has been done and documented about school leadership programs for social justice. Scholars have generally appreciated leadership preparation for social justice in terms of professional discourses especially as initiated from the…

"Kairaranga" operates as a partnership between the Ministry of Education, Special Education, Resource Teachers: Learning and Behavior (RTLB) and the tertiary sector. The journal was published by and for RTLB from 2000 to 2003, but the partnership model has been in operation since Volume 5, Issue 2, 2004. After three years of…

This article provides a review of research on African American children's literature by synthesizing the growing body of textual and reader response research conducted across the past several decades. The literature presented in this article cuts across the disciplines of education as well as English and library science. Using the selective…

In this review essay, Jeanne Connell examines the influence of pragmatic philosophy on the scholarly works of twentieth-century literary theorist and English educator Louise Rosenblatt through the lens of a recent collection of her essays originally published between 1936 and 1999. Rosenblatt grounded her transactional theory of literature in…

This article presents the authors' response to Harman and Sanderson (2008) who address the important question of how person-centred active support is. The authors' intention is not to disagree with Harman and Sanderson's general point that combining active support (AS) with person-centred planning (PCP) is better than either approach being…

I suggest that, in universities, we often use the word "understanding" when we mean "overstanding". This is connected to relying on limited approaches to reading, ones that are forgetful of religious ways of reading. I offer a critical retrieval of religious ways of reading, practised in the past, and suggest how they might be included in the…

This paper reconsiders the relationships between feminist perspectives and the figurational/process-sociological perspective of Norbert Elias for understanding gender, sport and sport-related activities. The main aim of the article is to respond to Colwell's claim that there are differences between feminist and figurational approaches to…

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) "hegemonic masculinity" is an expression of working class counter-school culture; (2) some teachers are "cultural accomplices" in constructing "hegemonic masculinities" of anti-school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these "cultural…

Fifth-grade inner city boys engaged in reader response via e-mail with preservice teacher education candidates. Books and laptops were provided via funding from a federal grant. At the semester break, the boys were assigned new partners with which to correspond regarding their reading. All e-mails were filtered through the classroom teachers and…

Novice researchers are expected to participate through writing in the particular discourse community in which their research is located, yet if they come from other languages and other academic cultures and traditions than those of the education provider, they may experience the process of writing as the process of silencing their voices. Many…