Teachers are busy. And sometimes that results in putting off valuable professional development. But the face of professional development is changing, as are our need for it and our options for getting it. Shanklin makes a case for PD starting early in any teaching career and suggests several outlets for ongoing, in-depth PD that can make a strong…

Van Horn deems three "recognitions" as essential to truly internalizing professional development: what and how we learn; the importance of individuals, contexts, and community in learning; and the ongoing nature of learning. Here, she provides an overview and examples of ideas about professional development and how we might develop ourselves as…

In this essay, the author explains not only how she came to write her classic text "Literature as Exploration," but she also describes the path of her own professional journey. A conviction about the difference between "literary" and other reading led to her writing "Literature as Exploration" in the first place. In this book, she argued that…

This article contains excerpts from the author's two seminal texts: "Literature as Exploration (New York: MLA, 1938) and "The Reader, the Text, the Poem" (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978). In "Literature as Exploration," the author first presented her transactional theory of reading as she explored the personal, social,…

In this article, the authors discuss how Louise Rosenblatt's work influenced many teachers' teaching and learning practices. Rosenblatt was known for helping readers find their rightful place in the act of reading. Louise argued in the 1930s (and steadfastly maintained until her recent death) that the act of reading was a dynamic transaction…