Describes two activities (the use of a newspaper and consultation with a dictionary) that English-as-a-second language (ESL) college students can use to independently learn new vocabulary. Finds that dictionary work was laborious but necessary, and that ESL students need to be taught prudent use of the dictionary. (SR)

Describes and discusses "The Fifth Dimension," a distributed literacy consortium of after-school enrichment programs that involve cooperation between local community organizations affiliated with colleges and universities, in which children engage in activities using a variety of multimedia equipment and software. Notes the program is a useful…

Describes using the book "The Professor and the Madman" (which tells the story of how the "Oxford English Dictionary" came into being) in a college or developmental reading class. Notes it motivates students to take greater interest in language and work on expanding their vocabularies, thus promoting vocabulary development and close attention to…

Finds that a participatory literacy learning circle employing process-based writing activities significantly improved both writing skills and self esteem of a group of women at a residential treatment center who had received court sentences for drug sales or alcohol abuse. (SR)

Discusses what the term "High-Stakes Testing" means; concerns about high-stakes testing; whether testing is an important part of good educational design; why using tests for high-stakes decisions causes problems; whether test scores improve when high-stakes assessment is mandated; and ways to help states monitor student success in the curriculum.…

Argues that metaphor, as it thrives in fiction and poetry, is relevant and even essential, to adult-literacy theory and practice. Argues that the concrete poetic images, metaphors, and stories literacy educators learn from students should help shape their theoretical discussions of adult literacy; and likewise, once learned, these should be the…

Considers the meaning of professionalization for adult-literacy education. Surveys a group of practitioners, concluding that a credential could enhance the quality of adult-literacy instruction but that providing credentials is inextricably bound up with the issue of funding. Describes initiatives underway in four states, providing examples of how…

Discusses media literacy in Australia, where it is an integral component of school literacies from K-12. Discusses the teaching of analytic skills to develop strategies for thinking about the meanings media transmit and the meanings viewers construct for themselves. Describes classroom activities involving the studies of texts, audiences, media…

Describes a seven-week critical-inquiry unit in a writing course for college sophomores that studies the 1953 Rosenberg trial. Uses this unit to illustrate the importance of dissonance in learning development, and how rhetorical inquiry in Kenneth Burke's concept of "perspective by incongruity" leads to critical inquiry and deeper understandings…

Discusses Kenneth Burke's notion of "symbolic action" as applied to texts and how it mediates perceptions. Discusses some ways to teach students to get outside their own perspectives and notice what they are overlooking (thus teaching Burke's "perspective by incongruity"). (SR)

Addresses the precise planning needed to use graphic organizers in the classroom by offering four instructional suggestions for their use: be authentically prepared; promote interaction among students; use graphic organizers with discrimination; and expand use of graphic organizers. Offers teachers an opportunity to use a graphic organizer…

Discusses the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s: the context of the time, its educational programs, instruction, teachers, and how it handled the problem of illiteracy. Examines whether this kind of program would work in the 1990s, concluding that many of the programs components would transfer well to the present. (SR)

Looks at the frames (of time, space, roles, and knowledge) that define learning, and examines how such frames would be radically altered by online learning. Discusses students, teachers, schooling as an institution, commercialization, and curriculum. Concludes that the new frame may deliver much, and may also exclude much. Includes listings of Web…

Describes how the author used class letter writing to fulfill both academic functions and affective functions. Discusses the remarkably different results produced using two different methods (a class newsletter and an electronic forum), noting that circumstances of the class and the purpose of the instructor help determine which method is more…

Discusses the discrepancy between traditional history learning and thinking like a historian. Describes two studies in which high school history students read multiple texts on a given historical event. Argues that students need to be taught to evaluate messages and to think critically, and that using multiple texts to teach students to think like…