national research center on literature teaching and learning university at albany state university of new york 1400 washington avenue, albany, new york 12 report series preparation of this report was supported under the educational research development center program grant number r117g10015 as administered by the office of educational research and improvement, u.s. The findings and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of the sponsoring agency. national research center on literature teaching and learning the national research center on literature teaching and learning is a research and development center located at the university at albany, state university of new york. The center was established in 1987 as the center for the learning and teaching of literature , and in january 1991 began a new, five year cycle of work administered by the office of research, office of educational research and improvement, u.s.

The center's mission is to conduct research and sponsor activities to improve the teaching and learning of literature, preschool through grade 12, in schools across the nation. Center sponsored research falls into three broad areas: teaching and learning processes, curriculum and assessment, and social and cultural traditions in the teaching and learning of literature. Special attention is given to the role of literature in the teaching and learning of students at risk for school failure, and to the development of higher level literacy skills, literary understanding, and critical thinking in all students. For information on current publications and activities, write to: literature center, school of education, university at albany, 1400 washington avenue, albany, ny 12. The multimedia and literature teaching and learning project was initiated to explore the potential of multimedia and hypermedia for supporting the response based teaching and learning of literature. Response based approaches to literature teaching and learning regard readers as active meaning makers whose personal experiences affect their interpretations of literary works. Response based practice likewise emphasizes the reader and the constructive reading process.

There are many reasons to believe hypermedia might provide a promising enhancement to text for supporting response based pedagogies and indeed, many contemporary scholars believe that it is ideally suited for such purpose. The project's initial phase involved the development of criteria for considering hypermedia from a response based perspective and their application to a critical review of commercial software. A group of ten graduate students developed eight evaluative categories which fell roughly into three groupings technical were concerns, response based considerations, and classroom issues. Applications for review were identified through a detailed search of listings dedicated to hypermedia materials. Fifty four multimedia/hypermedia literature programs and/or program series were identified, and forty five were acquired from their publishers and reviewed. The applications thusly acquired were evaluated by twenty five graduate students.

Findings from the review revealed that commercial hypermedia literature applications were moderately priced, designed for commonly available platforms, technically quite good, and related to works commonly taught in elementary and high school classrooms. In particular, average ratings on response based criteria for the applications we reviewed were 4.69 on a scale of 1 to 10 , while the same software packages averaged 7.26 on technical criteria relating to multimedia design. The project's second phase accordingly involved the development of prototype applications for supporting literature teaching and learning at both the elementary and secondary/post secondary school levels designed to address what seemed to be conspicuously lacking in commercial software, namely, support for student responses. The elementary level application, kidspace was designed around the metaphor of a universe populated by individual students' worlds. Students can visit each other's worlds as readers, but they can only create author in their own.

Each world supports a variety of personal spaces in which students are encouraged to recursively construct, explore, write, reflect, and otherwise express their feelings about their own and others' work. The secondary/post secondary application, the beats is an open ended program which is centered on the texts of the major beat authors, which contains hypermedia tools designed to support student and teacher discourse and reflection about literary works. These include the personal notes tool, the notes tool, the links tool, and media tools. The project's third phase involved pilot testing the prototypes in actual classroom settings. kidspace was tested in six elementary classrooms chosen to reflect varying grade levels, student populations, and learning environments. Major findings from the pilot involved the highly motivating nature of the program, its ability to uniquely support student responses, and the importance of epistemological and technologically complementary classroom environments for these capabilities to be realized. A class of twenty six undergraduates enrolled in a creative writing course at a community college in upstate new york participated in the initial piloting of the beats.

Both the instructor and the students' responses to the beats were extremely positive. Both believed that the program and its response based tools offered a unique and interesting environment in which to explore literature. Indeed, data collected from the pilot study suggests that students on line responses were both quantitatively and qualitatively different from their regular classroom responses. As schools see more and more students coming to the learning process equipped with predispositions and skills for electronic communications, it becomes more and more clear that issues surrounding the use of such new media need to be addressed. The findings of the multimedia and literature teaching and learning project suggest that electronic media support unique and important forms of meaning making that need to be included into a necessarily broadening view of literature study. table of contents envisionment building report series 6.7 language arts, v71 n3, march 1994. National research center on english learning amp achievement university at albany, school of education, b 9 1400 washington avenue, albany, ny 12 518 442 5026 the center on english learning amp achievement cela is a national research and development center located at the university at albany, state university of new york, in collaboration with the university of wisconsin madison.

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The center, established in 1987, initially focused on the teaching and learning of literature. In march 1996, the center expanded its focus to include the teaching and learning of english, both as a subject in its own right and as it is learned in other content areas. Cela's work is sponsored by the office of educational research and improvement oeri , u.s.

Department of education, as part of the national institute on student achievement, curriculum, and assessment. A response based approach to reading literature is based on research conducted at the national research center on literature teaching and learning, supported under the research and development centers program grant number r117g10015. Distribution is supported in part under award number r305a9605 as administered by oeri.

However, the contents do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the department of education, oeri, or the institute on student achievement. Published 1997 in this research report, i will discuss my work on response based instruction, the strategies teachers call upon to orchestrate such classroom experiences, and ways in which it supports the development of students' thinking. This work is part of a larger program of research into the teaching and learning of literature i began some years ago. During the past few years, an increasing number of researchers and theorists have been focusing on related issues relevant to language arts readers about the processes involved in understanding literature from a reader based perspective e.g. Benton,1992, corcoran, 1992, eeds amp wells, 1989, encisco, 1992, rosenblatt, 1993 , as well as ways to support students' learning in the elementary and middle grades e.g.

Andrasik 1990, cianciolo amp quirk 1992 close 1990, 1992 goodman amp wilde 1992 many amp wiseman 1992 mcmahon 1992 nystrand, gamoran, amp heck 1993 zancanella 1992, zarillo amp cox 1992. Still others have been focusing on literature based and whole language instruction at the primary level e.g. Jipson amp paley 1992 mills, o'keefe, amp stephens 1992 morrow 1992 roser in press uhry amp shephard 1993 villaume amp worden 1993 walmsley amp adams 1993 yatvin 1992.

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On the heels of the reform we have all witnessed in writing education has followed a widespread rethinking of literature in the english language arts, initiated as often as not by teachers who have wanted to bring their literature instructional practices in line with their student focused approaches to writing. During this time, i have become increasingly aware that as teachers experiment with the many related types of response centered approaches including whole language and literature based instruction , many are uncertain about the place of instruction in these paradigms and their role in it. On the one hand they are attracted to the notions underlying a pedagogy of student thoughtfulness because they think it provides students with ownership for their own learning, motivates and engages them in making sense, and provides a context for them to try out, negotiate, and refine their ideas in interaction with others. Often i am asked, does anything go, and if not, how do i know what to do? once i get an initial response, what do i do with it? i consider these concerns valid, even predictable. The old teaching routines almost all of us learned in graduate coursework and saw modeled in curriculum guides, instructional materials, and assessment instruments don't apply when response based instruction is the goal.

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Yet the field has not yet provided adequate guidelines or strategies to allow teachers to build new bones, internalized routines and options to take the place of plot summaries and leading questions guiding students toward predetermined interpretations 151 new bones that can guide their moment to moment decision making as they plan for and interact with their students. For the past few years, through my work at the national research center on literature teaching and learning funded by the u.s. Department of education, office of educational research and improvement , i have been working toward a reader based theory for the teaching of literature 151 one that can help us understand what it means to make sense of literature from a reader's point of view, and what that means for refocusing our instructional goals and practices see langer, 1990a,b 1991, 1992a,b 1993 roberts amp langer 1991. One part of this work helps explain the process of literary understanding while the other addresses ways in which such understanding can be most effectively taught. Taymans an emerging theme in professional development for adult literacy program staff over the past decade has been the topic of learning disabilities ld.