We gratefully acknowledge the time and effort of the following colleagues in reviewing manuscripts considered for Research in the Teaching of English.

A year-long, 2-level case study was conducted to examine both the complex writing performances of three students in a 2nd-3rd grade class and the instructional strategies of their teacher, focusing on the interplay between the children’s strategy use and the teacher’s instruction.

This article examines the notion of caring in the teaching of English. Although Nel Noddings’s work has paved the way for more caring approaches to teaching, aspects of her formulation must be reconsidered in order to ensure caring instruction for the most powerless and most needy students.

Fecho’s talk at the 2002 NCTE Conference upon receiving the Alan C. Purves Award involved the considerations faced by practitioner researchers as they write for publication, particularly as they encounter the template of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Deborah Brown, Catherine Beavis, Judith Kalman, Gert Rijlaarsdam, Anne D’Antonio Stinson, Melissa E. Whiting Twice a year, in the May and November issues, RTE publishes a selected bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English. The listing is selective; we make no attempt to include all research and research-related articles that appeared in the period under review.

The paper focuses on intertextual conflicts during teacher-class interactions where teachers are reading and modeling texts as well as guiding children to read and talk about text content, purposes, genres, and structures. These conflicts are identified and examined within a conceptual framework that accounts for intertextuality in terms of written texts, lived experiences, lessons, and processes in individuals.

Presents annotations of 37 selected recent research in the teaching of English and related fields. Addresses bilingual/foreign language education, discourse processes, literacy, professional development, reading, teaching and learning of literature, teaching and learning of writing, and technology and literacy. Notes that most of the studies appeared during the six-month period from July through December 2001.

Examines the discourse in an English as a second or other language (ESoL) classroom in a best-case scenario that contrasted dramatically with more typical school settings. Samples student critical turns (SCTs) across a six-week literature-rich science unit. Shows that the teacher played a crucial role in extended dialogue among students.

Investigates the possible link between a classroom teacher’s implementation of alternative literacy assessment and her classroom instruction. Illuminates the role that alternative literacy assessments can play in the classroom in terms of reflecting literacy task performance, presenting information on students’ strengths and weaknesses, and improving the quality of instruction provided to all students.

Addresses issues of English language anxiety in two settings: English as a second language and mainstream classrooms. Reveals that interaction with Chicano students raised anxiety levels and that such strategies as avoidance were used to reduce anxiety. Concludes with recommendations for teaching and research that recognize the complexity of anxiety for English language learners.

Examines the collaborative discourse practices of the Red River Writing Project Teacher Research Group (RRWPTRG) as well as the processes by which this diverse group of classroom teachers developed into a discourse community of teacher researchers.

Twice a year RTE publishes a selected bibliography of recent research in literacy education. Most of the studies appeared during the six-month period preceding the compilation of the bibliography (January through June, 2001 for the present bibliography), but studies that appeared earlier are occasionally included.

This study investigated a low-achieving class that featured regular discussions to gain insight into how dialogically organized instruction emerged within the context of a traditional recitation instructional setting, further complicated by settings of poverty and linguistic diversity. Dialogic discourse can happen when teachers are adept at linking and at enabling links between academic objectives and student concerns.

This teacher research study explores a range of ways that threat can exist and be transcended in a critical inquiry classroom by examining vignettes taken from one intensive inquiry project conducted in an urban English classroom situated in a small learning community (SLC) that was part of a large comprehensive high school.

The purpose of this research was to examine both what it means to teach writing and what it means to write in a first-year university course in the history of science. More specifically, I investigated what students learned about writing when the focus was mainly on subject matter and only secondarily on writing and rhetoric. A number of converging methods of research were used to address this issue: audiotaping classroom discourse and taking field notes, interviewing students and collecting retrospective protocols about their responses to a writing assignment, and analyzing students’ texts. The analyses indicated that classroom discourse focused primarily on framing concepts that brought into focus different and conflicting conceptions of the scientific method and the ways authorship in history is colored by writers’ subjectivity and perspective taking. Although students’ interpretations of the writing assignment were not very detailed, the texts they wrote revealed some understanding of how to use comparisons as a tool for analysis in writing history, the importance of attending to context in examining a given historical phenomenon, and the extent to which writing history is both interpretive and rhetorical. Yet neither the focal students nor the other students participating in this study responded uniformly to the assignment. The data raise the question of whether disciplinary courses in writing provide an authentic alternative to the space general writing skills courses currently occupy, particularly if such classes exist as sites where students are introduced to critical thinking and argumentative writing in college.

Twice a year, in the May and November issues, RTE publishes a selected bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English. Most of the studies appeared during the six-month period preceding the compilation of the bibliography (June through December, 2000, for the present bibliography), but some studies that appeared earlier are occasionally included. The listing is selective; we make no attempt to include all research and research-related articles that appeared in the period under review. Comments on the bibliography and suggestions about items for inclusion may be directed to the bibliography editors. We encourage you to send your suggestions to djbrown@ucok.edu, kalman@data.net.mx, stinsona@uwwvax.uww.edu, or melissa.whiting@usm.edu. You may also submit comments or recommend publications through the Annotated Bibliography page of RTE’s World Wide Web site at http://www.ncte.org/rte/.

In this paper I examine the role of imagination in literacy learning using data collected over a 5-year period in my primary classrooms. My conception of imagination as a missing component in literacy instruction was raised by a child’s question about the importance of the read-aloud experience as a daily literacy practice. That question, and my failure to answer it effectively for my student, prompted me to undertake a close study of imagination and its role in discourse acquisition. The study progressed from a general look at how imagination makes itself visible in the work of children to a conceptual structure that proposes an inside-out theory of literacy learning. This structure presents identity, discourse appropriation, and what I am calling the authoring process as essential elements that are unified through the imaginative actions of students as they come into contact with the texts, tools, and props of each discipline. I argue that to be successful and meaningful to all, literacy teaching must begin and end with a focus on imagination.

This study describes some of the tensions and challenges that 9 student teachers faced as they attempted to apply theoretical tools or principles for teaching middle and secondary school English to the realities of practice. Several contexts or activity settings both shaped and complicated the appropriation process, including undergraduate experiences with and prior beliefs about English as a school subject, the preservice methods courses, field work prior to student teaching, and the classroom context for student teaching. To describe the socialization the student teachers experienced that mediated their appropriation of the principles of instructional scaffolding, we identified three modes of participation in teaching middle and secondary school English. For some, teaching included both the learning of classroom routines as well as reflective practice, that is, a theory-based consideration of instructional decisions; for some, teaching was a process of procedural display in that they were absorbed primarily in enacting lessons that worked for themselves and for their students, making it difficult for them to consider the principles underlying their instructional decisions; and for some, learning to teach was a matter of mastering routines, that is, adopting, without adaptation, curricular and instructional practices without concern for students’ understandings or for instructional principles espoused by the teacher education program. The data suggest that the alignment of various activity settings supported the appropriation of teaching tools and a reflective stance toward teaching and learning. On the other hand, when activity settings worked at cross-purposes with one another, they created obstacles for the appropriation of theoretical and practical tools emphasized at the university. This study suggests the importance of understanding the kinds of relationships that student teachers develop within each setting and how social settings get negotiated and identities get constructed as a result of personal history.

This semester-long qualitative study explores the effects of a high-stakes, direct writing test on 3 teachers and their students in 1 rural Maryland high school. Out of the 23 students in both classes, 14 students had been identified for special education services for physical or learning problems; all had either failed the test once or had not yet taken it. The researchers conducted interviews with teachers and students, observed their classrooms, and collected samples of student writing and other artifacts to address 3 questions: (a) How did the test influence teacher beliefs about writing instruction? (b) How did these teachers adapt their instruction to respond to the demands of the test? (c) How did students who had not passed the test respond to their writing instruction and how did preparation for the test affect their attitudes/beliefs about writing? Our findings suggest that an emphasis on test preparation diminished the likelihood of the teachers’ engaging in reflective practice that is sensitive to the needs of individual students, that the high-stakes assessment process discounted the validity of locally developed standards for assessing writing, and that the criteria for passing the test failed to take into consideration the rich variety of American culture and the complexity of literacy learning.

Presents a semi-annual annotated selected bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English. Offers 45 annotated bibliographies addressing: bilingual/foreign language/second language education; classroom discourse; curriculum; exceptional learners; literacy; professional development; reading; and writing. Notes most entries were published between January and June 2000.

The editors discuss the concept voice and its implied author as it is defined in both Romantic and cultural perspectives. Differences in conceptions of teaching reading follow from these two traditions. According to he Romantic tradition, the reader should have a personal response to text, free from culture or any outside influence. By the cultural perspective, readers interpret texts through frameworks that are developed through engagement in cultural practice.

Examines four first-graders’ messages to family members in their “family message journals,” as students were learning to “do science.” Finds that they consistently composed texts in which they appropriated the linguistic conventions of science and that they seemed able to use these conventions flexibly, recontextualizing the genres to fit the task of a written dialogue with their families.

Investigates cross-cultural tensions in Western writing pedagogy as reflected in Turkish teachers’ oppositional and accommodative attitudes and how those attitudes played out in classroom interactions. Discusses teachers’ perceptions concerning the effects of Western rhetorical styles on Turkish students’ thinking and identity, assumptions regarding philosophical and instructional objectives of Western approaches, and their views on what counts as good writing.

The editors expound on the term telos, the concept of an optimal developmental outcome that provides the motive for the ways in which people are socialized within a culture. The notion of a telos for schooling is important because it provides the ideal toward which all are expected to gravitate. Conceptions of how students should develop suggest ways of being a teacher and paths for improving practice, which in turn suggest ways of being a teacher educator.

Presents a school-year-long case study of a fourth-grade boy with a history of language difficulties. Describes development of a set of curriculum-centered, classroom-based strategies for language and literacy support. Focuses on changes in the student's language constructions and communicative competence, in the form of the teacher's supportive strategies, and in the speech/language pathologist's role in the classroom.

Shows how one first-grade teacher explicitly modeled her own authorship processes and how students took up those processes in their own writing. Analyzes classroom discourse to illustrate how the teacher and students shifted roles in the participation framework of writing activity among teacher, author, co-author, and overhearer to facilitate the co-construction of written texts.

Researchers have begun to focus on the role of culture in teaching and learning, drawing on other disciplines to reconsider literacy activities as socially purposeful and culturally grounded. The interest raises two questions: what aspects of culture are more important than others? And what impact does the researcher’s perspective on culture have on the focus and contact of the study? The articles in this issue suggest a range of answers that scholars or offering to these questions.

Describes a teacher-research study using interpretive methods to address the question how learning about language connects secondary students to their world. Profiles three student inquirers, finding the students deepened their awareness of the role language plays in their lives.

Presents a selected, annotated bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English, with most studies appearing in the period between January and June, 1999. Includes sections on assessment; family and workplace literacy; literature; media, society, and literacy; moral education; professional development; reading; research methodology; technology and literacy; and writing.

Argues that the marginality of English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) expatriate teachers exemplifies the postmodern condition affecting society at the end of the millennium. Uses the image of the paladin and its juxtaposition with the conceptual framework of postmodernity to generate new ways of thinking about issues in ESL/EFL teaching.

Investigates how a secondary-school teacher uses her “turning-point literacy experience” as a narrative template to guide changes in her teaching of literature. Scaffolds students’ narrative modes of thinking in two contrasting classroom contexts: a twelfth-grade class for “at-risk” students and an eleventh-grade class for college-bound students. Provides narrative strategies at points of need.

Describes the role of class discussion and a teacher’s particular discourse moves in the development of an inclusive learning culture in a high school English literature course with a rigorous academic curriculum. Focuses on how the teacher transformed previously tracked gifted and talented and general students’ understandings of what counted as being a reader while negotiating collaboration.

Offers a 30-year retrospective on the evolution of a researcher and of the field of English teaching. Discusses the tradition of scholarship that seeks to ground its approaches to teaching and learning in the best of their understandings of language use and language learning, drawing broadly on rhetoric, linguistics, sociology, literary criticism, cognitive science, and anthropology.

Presents a 43-item selected annotated bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English published, generally, between July through December, 1998. Divides entries into sections on assessment; bilingual/foreign-language education; media, society, and literacy; reading; research methodology; teaching and learning of literature; technology and literacy; and writing.

Examines, using grounded theory methods, an interactive, televised writing course taught via Teletechnet, a distance-education program at Old Dominion University. Shows how technology affects a writing classroom and influences the construction of students as writers. Suggests that institutional contexts are reconfigured in televised instruction as virtual and material spaces that allow interesting tensions to emerge.

Investigates how students and professor negotiated different ideas about teaching and reading in a preservice course on teaching secondary school literature. Finds that students’ acceptance or rejection of unfamiliar ideas was closely tied to three major factors: prior experiences with literature, ideas about culturally sanctioned conceptions of the teacher’s role; and the stance and approaches of the professor.

Studies different methods of teaching argumentation to middle school students. Concludes that explicit instruction in argumentative form and argument structure sharpens students’ judgment regarding the content and organization needed to generate logically connected arguments and improves students’ writing of arguments. Finds that such an approach is particularly important for minority students.

Studies the moral dimension of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching to adults. Analyzes examples of classroom interaction to reveal the moral substrate of the teacher’s words and actions. Finds that various features of classroom routines and impromptu exchanges have profound moral significance. Suggests that the moral meanings present in classroom discourse cannot be reduced to simple judgments of right versus wrong.

Presents a 48-item selected annotated bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English (most published in scholarly journals between July and December, 1997). Organizes the annotations into sections on assessment; bilingual education and foreign language education; discourse processes; family/workplace literacy; professional development; reading; research methodology; teaching and learning of literature; technology and literacy; and writing.

Presents a functional grammatical analysis of the writing that 128 seventh- and eighth-grade students produced in response to their science teacher’s directive to describe a picture. Identifies the register elements of the task and the grammatical difficulties it posed for students. Shows that teachers can help students use grammatical resources to expand and develop their writing skills.

Addresses problems and possibilities in development of practitioner research stemming from a semester-long master’s level research course. Presents course context; outlines the four classroom studies that examined journal writing; explores commonalities among studies; shares conversations among researchers on issues of systematic inquiry, ownership, collaboration, and professional sharing of the research; and problematizes inquiry research as part of coursework.

Examines influences of text language and structure and text-picture relationships on 33 preschoolers’ emergent readings of three picture books and teacher-led shared readings that preceded them. Indicates findings on emergent readings support a transactional model of emergent reading and highlight the importance of considering the influence of textual features on early reading behaviors and knowledge.

Presents a selected bibliography of recent research in the teaching of English. Subdivides the 51 items into sections on assessment, bilingual and foreign language education, discourse processes, family/workplace literacy, professional development, reading, research methodology, teaching and learning of literature, technology and literacy, and writing.

Explores possible benefits of placing considerations of genre as more central to dialogs and debates about language arts education. Aims for a theoretical framework emphasizing the responsive and agentive engagement of students working through disciplinary literacies. Considers ways in which one first-grade teacher helped a non-middle-class learner to engage more deeply with science discourse genres.

Available in print version only.

Investigates how teaching and the teacher’s role in elementary and secondary school writing classes have been conceptualized by leading workshop advocates. Uses M. Bakhtin’s writing on F. Dostoevsky to develop a metaphor of the writing teacher as novelist. Argues that workshop visions of teaching and the teacher’s role mystify meaning-making and ignore the workings of power.

Presents a selective list of recent research studies in the teaching of English. States that most appeared during the six-month period preceding the compilation of the bibliography (July through December 1996). Contains 57 items divided into sections on bilingual education, cultural studies, literacy studies, literature, professional development, research methodology, and writing.

Historically, the Bible has occupied a prominent—though sometimes disruptive—position in American education. The 1963 Bible study benchmark case, Abington v. Schempp (1963), ruled that the Bible is worthy of study, and that such study is constitutional. Both religious and educational organizations support a literary study of the Bible in public schools because it is great literature and because it is foundational for understanding Western culture. The purpose of this study was to determine the current, actual place of Bible literature in high school English classes and the reasons that affect its place. The study used quantitative and qualitative methods: survey, interviews, and observations. It included observations of three models of teaching Biblical literature: a) a full-year elective course, b) a required grade unit, and c) a Bible unit in a humanities course. The study found that Bible literature seems to play an extremely small role in high school literature programs. While 81% of high school English teachers reported it was important to teach some Bible literature, only 10% taught a Bible unit or course. High school textbooks average one fourth of one percent (.260%) from the Bible. Though 55% of college English instructors personally recommended that secondary English majors take a Biblical literature course, only 38% had done so. The wide gap between recommended study and actual study of the Bible is filled with misinformation, contradictory attitudes, and confusion. Two problems of teaching Bible literature are: dealing with religious beliefs and non-beliefs of teachers, parents, and students; and overcoming ignorance. Some college professors, administrators, English department chairs, and librarians did not know what Bible literature was taught in their schools or that teaching Bible literature was legal.

In a benchmark meta-analysis of experimental research findings from 1962 to 1982, Hillocks (1986) reported the varying effects of general modes of instruction and specific instructional activities (foci) on the quality of student writing. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the relative effectiveness of those modes and foci using a non-experimental methodology and a new group of 16 teachers and 275 students in grades 1, 3–6, and 8. Teachers who had attended a summer writing institute reported on 17 different instructional variables that were primarily derived from the meta-analysis during each week of a ten-week treatment period that occurred at the beginning of the next school year. A pre- and post- treatment large-scale writing assessment was used with a prompt that allowed latitude in student choice of topic and extra time for prewriting and/or revision. Large gains in quality and quantity were found in the lower grades (1, 3, and 4) and smaller gains were found in the middle grades (5, 6, and 8). The demographic variables of SES, primary language, residence, and gender were found to have small and/or insignificant relationships to gains. Teacher-determined combinations of instructional variables and their relationship to gains in quality were investigated through factor analysis while controlling for pretreatment individual differences. Only one combination of activities was associated with large gains, and it was interpretable as the environmental mode of instruction. This combination included inquiry, prewriting, writing about literature, and the use of evaluative scales.

The inquiry posed two basic research questions: a) Could changes in student writing be tied to conferencing, and b) Could the status of the student (weaker or stronger student, native or non-native speaker) or the type of writing course (general freshman composition or specialized genre-specific course) be tied to any systematic differences in the conferencing process or its outcome? This study tracked the discourses generated by 4 teachers around a set of their teacher-student writing conferences. They collected copies of first drafts, tapes of their conferences, and copies of subsequent drafts from one stronger and one weaker student, for a total of 8 students and 32 texts. All students revised their papers in ways indicating that the conference had had an effect on their revision process. The findings indicate that what is ostensibly the “same” treatment does not generate the same response from all students. They also indicate that the divergent backgrounds students bring to instructional events have a structuring effect that cannot be dismissed solely as teacher bias and self-fulfilling prophecy