This article has been about reconsidering how writing center directors train tutors to read and respond to texts. The subject here has been new media texts. The author has asked directors to reconsider how they tutor and how they talk to students about their writing. The impetus for these evolved practices is the arrival of increasing numbers of…

This study attempts to reliably measure literature reading and creative writing ability, and subsequently to determine whether a relationship exists between the two abilities. Participants were 19 eleventh-grade students: 11 were known to be good readers of literature, whereas 8 were known to be poor readers of literature. Each participant read 4…

This paper begins with the assumption that the interpretive practices people acquire in social worlds often transfer to their stances toward and interpretations of worlds encountered in literature (Beach, Thein, & Parks, 2007). The goal of this paper is to identify the history and logic behind one student's negative, ambivalent, and positive…

When response activities and comprehension strategies are combined, classroom instruction can enhance student engagement and understanding of a text, enrich student response, and improve students' awareness of their own strategic reading. This article presents some activities, adapted from the new IRA book "Children's Literature in the Reading…

I suggest that, in universities, we often use the word "understanding" when we mean "overstanding". This is connected to relying on limited approaches to reading, ones that are forgetful of religious ways of reading. I offer a critical retrieval of religious ways of reading, practised in the past, and suggest how they might be included in the…

Less than a decade ago, Howe et al. (1998) attempted to demonstrate the lack of scientific support for the concept of innate talent (IT). Most ([approximately equal to] 75%) of the 30 commentators to that target article clearly disagreed with their core position. In spite of Ericsson's current efforts to counter or circumvent the major objections…

This article presents the authors' response to Pignotti and Mercer's "Holding Therapy and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Are Not Supported and Acceptable Social Work Interventions." Pignotti and Mercer offer a very detailed, informative, scholarly, and eloquently expressed concern about the merit of holding therapies and the danger of offering…

From his review of research on consultation, Zins (1995) concluded (a) that a paradigm shift to a more prevention-oriented approach was necessary; (b) that systems-level consultation held significant potential; and (c) that systems-level consultation had the most data to support its use in preventive efforts. This commentary reviews promising…

Oivind Varkoy challenges music educators who start their educational work from well-defined learning outcomes and who then test and assess whether students have achieved these predefined ends. He argues that "ends-means-thinking," "assessment-thinking," and "some sort of market-philosophy" all relate to "instrumentalism" in which learners are…

When one reads and greatly enjoys a book, he or she would naturally want to repeat the experience. Readers seeking to do so can perhaps find what they are looking for in fan fiction if aspiring fan fiction writers are capable of supplying answers to questions left by the original author in a manner that does justice to that author's style or…

An astonishing tract has been published that involves a plan for the modification of the growth of children with severe developmental disabilities by administering hormonal treatments designed to arrest growth at an early age (Gunther & Diekema, 2006). The schema put forth is based upon the concern of the authors for the burdensome effect families…

This paper reconsiders the relationships between feminist perspectives and the figurational/process-sociological perspective of Norbert Elias for understanding gender, sport and sport-related activities. The main aim of the article is to respond to Colwell's claim that there are differences between feminist and figurational approaches to…

Questioning the dichotomy of right and wrong, Virginia R. Monseau explores the tensions that arise from choices teachers make when trying to "do the right thing." From warning teachers about difficult students to presenting sensitive materials that challenge student belief systems, Monseau advises educators to pay close attention,…

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) "hegemonic masculinity" is an expression of working class counter-school culture; (2) some teachers are "cultural accomplices" in constructing "hegemonic masculinities" of anti-school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these "cultural…

In April 2007, more than 50 practitioners, advocates, funders, and evaluators met for 2 days in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to discuss the issues that arise in evaluating systems change or systems-building initiatives and to suggest approaches to resolving those issues. The symposium was designed to be as realistic and practical as possible by…