This study investigates the interpretive approaches of three English teachers working in different grade levels with the same poem, Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." The researcher sought to learn what the teachers identified as most valuable about studying poetry in school, what interpretive approaches they employed…

Despite ongoing and prolific critical scholarship arguing for the widening of the secondary language arts curriculum, many practicing teachers are required or encouraged to teach a curriculum dominated by canonical texts. This is often the case at schools with highly diverse students whose varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds have…

This article examines the relationship between the discipline of 'English Literature' and the contemporary multilingual classroom. It argues that, although our field has often been cast as a kind of corrective to the 'problem' of language diversity by helping to teach language norms, literature can -- and should -- be made a preeminent space for…

In usual understandings of learning, youths' development in classrooms is portrayed as a move from being a novice to an expert. However, findings of the present anthropologically framed study support us to argue that learning, rather, can be characterized as youths' simultaneous occupation of novice and expert roles. We refer to this simultaneous…

Drawing on observational evidence of two classes working on "Romeo and Juliet," one in England and the other in Palestine, this essay explores the nature of knowledge in relation to English as a school subject. It asserts the importance of paying attention to the resources that students, situated in culture and history, bring with them…

This unit for 10th grade students on "Macbeth" is intended for college bound students. It was developed as a part of a series by the Public Education Religion Studies Center at Wright State University. In the seven-week unit, students examine the Elizabethan cultural background of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," including the political, social and…

A CONTINUATION OF "TEACHING LITERATURE IN GRADES 7 THROUGH 9" (SEE ED 013 804.), THIS BOOK OFFERS A TEACHING APPROACH WHICH EMPHASIZES THE CLOSE READING OF LITERARY WORKS IN A SEQUENTIAL ORDER OF INCREASING COMPLEXITY. EACH OF THE FIRST THREE SECTIONS ("POETRY,""SHORT STORY," AND "DRAMA", PRESENTS A PROGRAM…