Responds to an article in the same issue of this journal about educational criticism as a form of qualitative inquiry. Asks whether such criticism should count as research if it is not accompanied by a full demonstration of its consensual validation, structural corroboration, and by exploration of reasons why the critic gives a particular…

Responds to an article in the same issue of this journal about educational criticism as a form of qualitative inquiry. Argues that research and criticism should be viewed as different forms of inquiry leading to different kinds of understanding. Suggests adding another item, "validation of learning," to the list of criteria for…

Responds to points raised in five articles which responded to an article by these authors (Flinders and Eisner) in the same issue of this journal about educational criticism as a form of qualitative inquiry. (SR)

Examines English teaching practices in American rural schools from 1900-40, emphasizing schools in Iowa. Discusses the Country Life Movement, which proposed significant reforms for rural education and rural living. Surveys English teaching practices undertaken in its spirit. Concludes with an assessment of the movement and a discussion of its…

Finds that students perceived several areas of improvement associated with writing-intensive classes: writing skills, knowledge acquisition, and problem-solving abilities. Finds that students also reported they had become better writers through interaction with their professors during the writing process and wanted to better understand the…

Reports on a year-long study of how children's literacy practices enhanced their understanding of themselves and their social worlds. Finds that children's reading and writing benefited them personally and socially, enabling them to understand a complex urban landscape, to explore new social identities, and to wrestle with social problems and ways…

Investigates the ability of children at two grades and reading ability levels to write functionally appropriate expository texts. Finds that (1) virtually all the children understand the function and audience for exposition; and (2) reading level is significantly more related than grade level to sophisticated use of cohesion, organization, and a…

Examines the predictive relations among dimensions of symbolic play (object and ideational transformations), linguistic verbs, and measures of early literacy. Indicates that use of linguistic verbs predicts Concepts of Print scores and that symbolic play and linguistic verbs predict emergent writing and reading, respectively. (SR)

Annotates 146 conference papers, journal articles, and doctoral dissertations from 1989 and 1990 dealing with research in the teaching of English. Includes sections on writing, language, literature, and teacher education. (SR)

Investigates the relationships between five junior high school teachers' personal approaches to literature and their teaching of literature. Suggests that pedagogically useful knowledge exists in these five teachers' personal approaches to literature but that institutional constraints and the teachers' lack of a theoretical framework for literary…

Explores audience awareness of writing instructors as they compose for incoming freshmen and for a faculty committee. Finds that writers analyze the faculty audience less frequently than the freshmen audience, but they evaluate their text and writing goals more frequently when addressing the faculty. (MG)

Investigates the impact of task definition on students' revising strategies. Finds that texts written by students who receive instruction on global revision are judged both to be of significantly better quality and include significantly more global revisions than students who were simply asked to make the text better. (MG)

Reviews recent complex and somewhat confusing evidence on writing-to-learn. Draws on the field of cognitive psychology to offer a way to reconceptualize how researchers might approach the study of the impact of writing on learning. Considers five methods for assessing structural changes in knowledge due to writing. (MG)

Suggests five principles that characterize written language development: the establishment of equivalences; exploration and orchestration of the system; reliance on shifting relationships of form and function; differentiation and integration of symbolic functions; and participation in social dialogue. Discusses implications of this viewpoint for…

Argues that, although Matthew Arnold was instrumental in launching English literature in Britain as a proper school subject, he purposively limited the extent of literature's educational value. (MG)