This study describes the thinking strategies and epistemological stances of two Bible experts, who applied a literary and historical interpretive approach, respectively. A thinking-aloud protocols methodology was used as the two scholars read the same biblical story and verbalized their thoughts. The findings reveal intricate relationships between…

This article explores how literary study engages readers' moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of…

It has been more than 50 years since Clay (1966) first introduced the concepts about print (CAP). Emergent readers, aged 4-5, must acquire an understanding of basic and hierarchical concepts of letters, words, and sentences; they must also learn basic knowledge about texts and books; they must develop an awareness of book orientation,…

Educators responsible for creating an introduction to religions course often struggle to design a syllabus that does not reinforce a world religions paradigm (WRP). This article offers an inquiry-driven course model for teaching about religion that guides students through a process for reading, contextualizing, and critiquing WRP-based information…

In this article, Anders Öhman discusses Gert J. J. Biesta's concept of the risk of education and what it could mean for the study of literature in the classroom. The article's point of departure is Bakhtin's theory of the utterance. The utterance, for Bakhtin, has to be embodied, that is, it has to be governed by a purpose: it must be uttered by…

This essay proposes a series of "threshold concepts" for literary studies: "text", "meaning", "context", "form", and "reading". Each term carries both commonsense understandings and disciplinary understandings, which differ from each other drastically. The disciplinary understandings…

Teaching and reading literature are commonly viewed as contributing to the cultivation of empathy. This article presents critical and pedagogical approaches to test this view and suggests a distinction between low-level, simple empathy inspired by the reading and teaching of "The Tortilla Curtain" and a more complex, self-critical…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of…

This article is meant as a useful classroom methodology by which teachers of literature may give their students a coherent rubric for understanding literary meaning and exegesis which can incorporate most literary theories while addressing the basic-to-advanced concepts required of literary students. Also, it will provide a working methodology for…

Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Nathan Hale's graphic novel set "Rapunzel's Revenge" (2008) and "Calamity Jack" (2010) features fractured fairy tales that take up the issue of 'the damsel in distress,' questioning and complicating traditional gender roles in fairy tales. Throughout both graphic novels Rapunzel's character…

This article seeks to clarify the purpose of high-stakes exam and its relationship with teaching and learning by elucidating the educational thought of the eminent neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi. The paper contends that Zhu Xi views standardised testing as an essential means to evaluate the learning outcomes, honour exemplary scholars and select…

Purpose: This study aims to explore and provide empirical evidence for ways that teachers can simultaneously support students' literary reading and analytic writing through dialogic assessment, an approach to conferencing with writers that foregrounds process and integrates assessment and instruction. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses…

Moving beyond purposes for reading as fixed outcomes, this dissertation project explores the possibilities of affect theory for decentering or weakening those purposes so they might be seen as one element among many interacting in the classroom space. Because these purposes become the expected outcomes of reading with youth in secondary English…

This essay introduces Walter Benjamin's historical materialism to illuminate how history teachers may invoke a critique of the past and present through democratizing the production of knowledge in the classroom. Historical materialism gives students access to the means of knowledge production and entrusts them with the task of generating a…

How to read the Confucian Classics today? Scholars with philosophical training usually emphasize that the philosophical approach, in comparison with the classicist and historical ones, is the best way to read the Confucian Classics, for it can dig out as much intellectual resources as possible from the classical texts in order to show their modern…