To promote independent reading in middle school, teachers must understand why adolescents choose to read or not read a specific book. Yet, there is limited research on the factors that students consider when evaluating books that teachers have introduced them to in class. This study aimed to describe factors that 43 Grade 7 and 8 students noted as…

As university teachers of literature, we tend to accept the rhetoric that students lack the capacity to interpret texts meaningfully, without questioning our own biases about the kinds of meaning we expect them to elicit from texts. Often, these are meanings that have little relevance to students' own social or professional lives. In this article,…

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…

Practical Implications: Detailing the steps of a reading response unit designed to prepare students for literary analysis based on their own ideas can provide insights to current writing teachers and teacher educators regarding ways in which they can design/modify their assignments to be more purposeful and therefore more engaging for those they…

In this essay, authors Todd Reynolds, Leslie S. Rush, Jodi P. Lampi, and Jodi Patrick Holschuh provide a disciplinary heuristic that bridges literary and literacy theories. The secondary English language arts (ELA) classroom is situated at the intersection between literary theory and literacy theory, where too often literary theory does not…

This essay uses the metaphor of "savvy travelling" to discuss the limitations and problems associated with three current "best practice" approaches to the reading of literature in upper grade levels, particularly in the United States: close reading, response-based reading, and disciplinary literacy. A "savvy" approach…

This paper is a re-examination of Louise Rosenblatt's seminal work of reader-response theory, The Reader, The Text, The Poem. I argue that poems are essentially social in nature and that they open up a space in which conversation and interpretation can take place. With Rosenblatt I argue that until a reader engages with a poem, bringing to it a…

LGBTQ+ identities complicate the ways in which #OwnVoices can be deployed in literary analysis and author studies. Recognizing LGBTQ+ identities in literature is about more than just the text; it is about the visibility and success of LGBTQ+ authors as well. Through a discussion of reader response theory and politics of recognition, the author…

Since the late 20th century, scholars have called for a need to broaden the aims of teaching English Literature away from its Eurocentric focus. Much effort has also been invested in making the subject more relevant through diversifying the texts studied and connecting texts to current social and global issues. It is pertinent now to ask what the…

Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reader response has been widely accepted as a means of resisting the hegemony of New Criticism. This article argues that Rosenblatt and the New Critics were pioneers of parallel, rather than opposing, pedagogical traditions, shaped by the shared influence of I. A. Richards and John Dewey. The article…

A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

The paper presents findings from a reader response study conducted in February 2013 with 150 children aged 7-11 in which they discussed extracts and clips from Roald Dahl's "Matilda" (1988) and its cinematic adaptation (1996). Dahl and "Matilda" were chosen because they provoke emphatic responses from adults, often commenting…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the responses and perceptions of Israeli Arab teachers toward multicultural and educational issues concerning Jewish-Arab relations. Design/methodology/approach: This study is a qualitative research. The study included 44 novice Arab teachers, who teach Hebrew in the Arab sector and are currently studying toward…

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…

Online booksellers have done a terrific job of developing ways to let customers share their opinions about books with the goal of getting a person to buy more books. They have also made effective use of the bottom line, which is what a customer spends those hard-earned dollars on, to further entice people to add one more item to their cart. In…