Responds to the common assumption among English teachers that prior knowledge of a subject enhances students' ability to comprehend materials that they read. Presents evidence from the think-aloud protocols of undergraduate students to argue that having prior experience of the subjects treated in texts does not ensure that students will make…

Considers encounters with imaginative literature as a way of suggesting alternative modes of orienting readers in a literally unrepresentable, perhaps unreadable outside world. Argues that the study of stories does not depend upon representation but upon creation, invention, and conversation. (SR)

Presents a conversation between two professors about insights they have gained from reading imaginative literature and from the uses they make of imaginative literature in their teacher preparation courses. (SR)

Describes how two teachers have translated scholarship in the fields of ritual and performance studies into classroom practices (for the college literature course) that engage students in ritual enactment of imaginative literature and in communal making of meaning. (SR)

Describes the work of the Clothesline Project, which both commemorates and bears witness to victims and survivors of violence against women. Explores the social implications of the notion that curriculum must enable students in schools to explore the themes and most difficult problems of their lives. (SR)

Reports on discussions by East San Francisco Bay veteran primary school teachers who shared their experiences of teaching in economically strapped, racially mixed, bilingual, urban school systems. Offers observations, audiotaped records, and transcripts made in these teachers' schools by graduate students, teachers, and professors associated with…

Applauds the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) for maintaining its high principles in its attempt to develop national standards in English for the federal government. Suggests that NCTE acted wisely when it refused to be enticed by lucrative government contracts to bend its pedagogical principles. (TB)

Describes and explores a collaborative classroom research project between a secondary English teacher and a university education faculty member. Examines shifting power relations in the classroom, competing agendas, constraints imposed by the study's design, and differences in interpretation. (SR)

Examines ethical problems that face teachers in the selection of literature and the experiences students have with it. Discusses ironic texts about social issues, didactic texts written from a particular cultural perspective, and "representative" texts intended to depict the experiences of a particular group of people. (SR)

Explores the dilemma of how a writing program administrator can educate part-time faculty, who have little practical and theoretical experience, to teach in a program dissonant with her own theoretical position, while remaining true to her ideological commitments and maintaining sound relations with her full-time colleagues. (SR)

Examines the role of research in the English education profession. Surveys people named promising researchers between 1970 and 1989 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Finds that a considerable number of awardees are highly visible members of the NCTE community, although in many cases not primarily as researchers. (SR)

Describes and illustrates a six-stage process which consultant readers to academic journals can reliably use to reject papers submitted for publication. (SR)

Outlines principles that provide focus and challenge for those involved in English teacher education. Considers the essences of teaching that all teacher education programs should include. Presents the inquiry in the form of a dialogue. (HB)

Considers the responses from participants of the 1990 Conference on English Education colloquium on "Democracy and Literacy Education." Presents various responses, some extensively, and then offers a personal "reading" of the colloquium. (HB)

Describes the format and processes of the 1992 Conference on English Education Washington, DC. Focuses on the changes in the conference structure which resulted from long deliberations and planning. Evaluates the successes and failures of the objectives and results of the conference. (HB)