The canon in the classroom: Students' experiences of texts from other times

This paper examines the debate about the English literature canon in schools. It evaluates the importance of the canon in a 21st-century curriculum and considers its relevance to adolescent readers saturated in early 21st-century culture who have disparate identities and diverse backgrounds. The implications for teaching and learning of the chronological, social, cultural, and linguistic distance between pre-20th-century canonical texts and today's readers are examined in the light of the theoretical perspectives of Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser. These perspectives are applied to findings from a recent 3-year longitudinal case study of 13-16-year-olds reading canonical texts and of the responsive teaching they experienced.     

Gestalt psychological theory's value in rhetorical criticism

Rhetorical critics should avoid affirming the constancy hypothesis, the belief that a stimulus contains the response. After foregrounding Burke's avoidance of the constancy hypothesis in Permanance and Change as a model for rhetorical critics, this essay examines five examples of affirmation of the constancy hypothesis in rhetorical criticism. Affirming the hypothesis oversimplifies complex audience dynamics and prevents critics from understanding infrequent, more unified audience responses.     

Teacher Planning,Instruction and Refl ection: What We Know About Teacher Cognitive Processes

The process of teaching is complex and multidimensional. Teaching behaviors and actions are shaped by numerous cognitive decisions made by the teacher before, during, and after instruction. This article examines teacher cognition across the broad field of education and, more specifically, physical education in teacher planning, instruction, and reflection. To date, research has largely examined the areas of planning, instruction, and reflection separately and often in controlled settings. It is suggested that future researchers examining teachers. thoughts and actions employ methodologies, such as case study, that examine the three processes holistically and in the natural teaching environment, thereby linking actual behaviors with the cognitive processes that produced them.     

The relationship between prior knowledge and situational interest when reading text

To examine the relationship between prior knowledge, situational interest, and recall, 34 college students read 15 paragraphs that contained varying amounts of fictional material, rated how interesting they found each paragraph, and were later assessed on how much of the information they retained. Five of the paragraphs contained fictional items that were accessible, and five paragraphs contained fictional items that were inaccessible. Results indicated that the relationship between prior knowledge was curvilinear but varied based on the accessibility of the novel information. For accessible materials, interest first increased as prior knowledge decreased, but then decreased sharply as prior knowledge lessened. For inaccessible materials, interest did not significantly increase, and decreased at a higher level of prior knowledge relative to accessible materials. Overall, people found accessible materials to be more interesting than inaccessible materials, and interest was not a significant predictor of performance on recall or recognition tasks when prior knowledge was controlled.     

Teaching Science Through Drama: an empirical investigation

An investigation was carried out into the effectiveness of teaching one element of a Science syllabus, using Drama in place of conventional practical work. No statistically significant differences were detected in factual recall, but significantly more ‘meaningful’ learning appeared to have taken place when Drama was used. Psychological and educational implications of this finding are discussed.     

The experiences of parents of gifted African American children: A phenomenological study

This study documents the experiences of parents raising African American children who have been identified as gifted. There is a small but growing body of research exploring the experiences and issues of gifted African American children. Parents play the most significant role in a child's development; however, parents of gifted African American children are not currently represented in the literature. This study utilized semi‐structured interviews with the parent or parents from 12 families to explore their experiences of rearing their gifted African American children. Particular attention was addressed to issues surrounding their children's academic and social experiences, including interactions with school, family, and community. Implications are elucidated for individuals working with this population, and suggestions for future research are provided.