Purpose: This study aims to explore the authentic questioning practices of English Language Arts teachers. Although language arts (LA) education emphasizes the value of authentic questions in discussions about literature, teachers still tend to ask known-answer questions that guide students toward one literary interpretation. However, outside…

In this article, the author discusses how teachers can develop empathy in students through reading and writing about literature, which contributes to their development as citizens in a global community. By choosing texts that trigger empathic reactions, English teachers can help students better understand others' experiences with oppression and…

Although the aims of literary study have often been spelled out in ethical terms, scholars have tended to discuss the how of literary interpretation in more ethically neutral terms. Reading pedagogical enactments of two predominant theories of literary interpretation--New Criticism and reader response--through the lens of Rancièrean ethics, I…

In the conceptual triumvirate of "language," "literacy" and "literature" that have been central to thinking about English curriculum--indeed, are the overarching organisers for the "Australian Curriculum: English"--that which received possibly the least attention from Garth Boomer was literature. This paper…

The merits of decentralized small groups has been questioned in literature and by practicing teachers; thus this study shows the academic and identity work children do as they attempt to make meaning in these spaces. This study explores the affordances and drawbacks of decentralized small group discussion contexts in a multiage (3rd/4th) grade…

"Not reading," even for many good students, has become a mode of operation with respect to book-length texts assigned in school. Many students enter secondary and postsecondary literature classes "intending" to "not read" the books teachers assign. More students than teachers want to admit do not complete assigned reading, choosing instead to…

This study examines the racial discourses of six and seven year old Puerto Rican children participating in small group literature circles over one academic year. The main research question is "How do Puerto Rican young children in a multiage classroom construct race through dialogue within the figured worlds of literature circles?" This study…

In response to increased violence, bullying, and anti-social behavior among young people in our schools and on our streets (Akiba, M., LeTendre, G., Baker, D., & Goesling, B., 2002; Leming, 1996; Males, 2001; Pellegrini & Bartini, 2000; Smagorinsky, 2002; Tendero, 2000), advocates of character education have proposed and instituted a…

In the last ten years, colleges of education have pledged written support to addressing issues of diversity. Mission statements and revised syllabi have been common elements in this movement for inclusiveness, and teacher candidates in English language arts are part of the transformation. Literature often has been considered a quick and easy way…

This paper reconsiders the nature of literature as a school subject. Musing on three anomalies that occur when language arts teachers consider their professions about school literature and what occurs in literature classrooms: (1) the anomaly of the text and the textbook; (2) the anomaly of the idolatry of naive readers whose heads have been…

This ERIC/RCS Special Collection contains seven ERIC Digests (brief syntheses of the research on a specific topic in contemporary education) and eight FAST Bibs (Focused Access to Selected Topics--annotated bibliographies with selected entries from the ERIC database), providing up-to-date information in an accessible format. The collection focuses…

A survey of professional publications concerned with curriculum and instruction in the learning and teaching of literature at the elementary and secondary levels, this annotated bibliography derives principally from the ERIC database. The 207-item bibliography includes titles dating from 1980 through 1988. The selections are divided into sections…

No matter what pains translators take to produce a target-language text "identical" to the source-language text, criticism and/or translation of an original literary work cannot be the same in different language communities. That translation may change potentialities in the textual experience is particularly obvious in literature with a…