To provide a framework for describing how children respond to picture books, first and second grade children were observed over a 10-week period. Variations in the responses of individual students, changes in their reactions over time, and the importance of considering the context of a response are discussed. (PP)

The impact of high school and college students' prior knowledge of literary and social conventions on their attitudes toward fictional characters is examined. Differences were found in attitudes toward the teaching of literature and in evaluations of a fictional teacher's behavior. A model for research in this area is proposed. (PP)

Explores the nature of the picture story book event from a semiotic perspective. Describes a classroom event in which a picture story book was constructed during teacher-student-text interaction in a second grade classroom using involving oral reading and discussion, interpretations of the main character's traits, letters to the author, and…

A study analyzed preservice teachers' responses to contemporary published scholarly articles dealing with various facets of the American political economy in relation to the historical developments in schooling. Subjects, six students in a "Historical Perspectives in Education" course, commented in writing on their weekly reading…

Building on one aspect of a large-scale longitudinal investigation, a study examined first graders' engagement with literature. Subjects, five Euro-American students (two males, three females), were videotaped during two 30-minute storybook reading sessions one week apart. During the reading session, child and adult sat side-by-side in an effort…

A study of two teachers and four secondary level English classes examined how traditional methods of teaching literature were replaced by more interactive and integrated approaches to text, based primarily upon a whole language philosophy. Intervention aspects purposely remained open-ended to accommodate each teacher's understandings and…

Using two original children's books and adaptations of these books created by basal reader publishers, a study investigated (1) whether children prefer original, unadapted stories that may have longer sentences and more vocabulary items than are permitted by readability formulas for their grade level, or the adaptations of those stories, which…

A study examined three different basal reading series (MacMillan, Harcourt-Brace, and Scott Foresman) at four different levels for the types of stories found in the readers, as well as for acts of reading portrayed in the stories. Subjects, 12 second grade students at a New Jersey elementary school, completed a teacher-constructed inventory on the…

A study examined children's comprehension of and preferences for basal reader stories with differing levels of coherence. The subjects were 58 second grade students who each read orally three stories judged to differ substantially on the number of incoherences in the text. Incoherences were defined as confusing referents, unclear relationships…

This preliminary report sets the Folktale project, an interdisciplinary cooperative effort involving literary criticism, linguistics, the craft of translation, psychology, and statistics, in the context of reading and reading research in the modern world, and discusses experimental reader response research in Denmark as well as in other countries.…

This report, the second of seven, part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures, describes the way in which potentially useful texts, i.e. folktales, were selected by team members. The report first…

The purpose of this book is to provide teachers of literature with a sampling of a wide range of theoretical backgrounds and possible pedagogical applications for reading, writing, and interpreting literature in school classrooms, elementary through college. The book contains the following essays listed with their authors: (1) "Henny Penny to…

Discusses pedagogical implications of recent theory and research on response to literature. Contends that now teachers must be aware of readers, the text, and the context in which a text is read and discussed. (MS)

Reports on participant-observation in a third- and fourth-grade classroom in which students learned to read science texts with both "efferent" and "aesthetic" reading processes. (HTH)

Presents a case study of a learning disabilities teacher who struggled with the traditional instructional approaches and who adopted a literature-based, whole language program. Presents the teachers' reflective comments along with references from the literature of whole language researchers and theorists. (RS)