Now in its fourth edition, this popular textbook introduces prospective and practicing English teachers to current methods of teaching literature in middle and high school classrooms. This new edition broadens its focus to cover important topics such as critical race theory; perspectives on teaching fiction, nonfiction, and drama; the integration of digital literacy; and teacher research for ongoing learning and professional development. It underscores the value of providing students with a range of different critical approaches and tools for interpreting texts. It also addresses the need to organize literature instruction around topics and issues of interest to today's adolescents. By using authentic dilemmas and contemporary issues, the authors encourage preservice English teachers and their instructors to raise and explore inquiry-based questions that center on the teaching of a variety of literary texts, both classic and contemporary, traditional and digital. New to the Fourth Edition: Expanded attention to digital tools, multimodal learning, and teaching online New examples of teaching contemporary texts Expanded discussion and illustration of formative assessment Revised response activities for incorporating young adult literature into the literature curriculum Real-world examples of student work to illustrate how students respond to the suggested strategies Extended focus on infusing multicultural and diverse literature in the classroom Each chapter is organized around specific questions that preservice teachers consistently raise as they prepare to become English language arts teachers. The authors model critical inquiry throughout the text by offering authentic case narratives that raise important considerations of both theory and practice. A companion website, a favorite of English education instructors, http://teachingliterature.pbworks.com, provides resources and enrichment activities, inviting teachers to consider important issues in the context of their current or future classrooms.

• Concretely addresses what happens when new teachers try to enact inquiry-based and dialogical pedagogy within standardized schools • Provides realistic access and insight into the professional lives of novice teachers in ways that invite preservice and other novice teachers to reflect on the complexities of classroom engagement • Unpacks tension between the standardization of education and the advocates for pedagogy that supports individual inquiries and dialogues within literacy classrooms • Demonstrates methods for prospective and novice ELA and English teachers to “wobble,” or enact inquiry-based or dialogic pedagogy in the context of structured and inflexible schooling systems.

Drawing on Dialogical Self Theory, this book presents a new framework for social and cultural identity construction in the literacy classroom, offering possibilities for how teachers might adjust their pedagogy to better support the range of cultural stances present in all classrooms. In the complex multicultural/multiethnic/multilingual contexts of learning in and out of school spaces today, students and teachers are constantly dialoguing across cultures, both internally and externally, and these cultures are in dialogue with each other. The authors unpack some of the complexity of culture and identity, what people do with culture and identity, and how people navigate multiple cultures and identities. Readers are invited to re-examine how they view different cultures and the roles these play in their lives, and to dialogue with the authors about cultures, learning, literacy, identity, and agency.

Now in its fourth edition, this popular textbook introduces prospective and practicing English teachers to current methods of teaching literature in middle and high school classrooms. This new edition broadens its focus to cover important topics such as critical race theory; perspectives on teaching fiction, nonfiction, and drama; the integration of digital literacy; and teacher research for ongoing learning and professional development. It underscores the value of providing students with a range of different critical approaches and tools for interpreting texts. It also addresses the need to organize literature instruction around topics and issues of interest to today's adolescents. By using authentic dilemmas and contemporary issues, the authors encourage preservice English teachers and their instructors to raise and explore inquiry-based questions that center on the teaching of a variety of literary texts, both classic and contemporary, traditional and digital. New to the Fourth Edition: Expanded attention to digital tools, multimodal learning, and teaching online New examples of teaching contemporary texts Expanded discussion and illustration of formative assessment Revised response activities for incorporating young adult literature into the literature curriculum Real-world examples of student work to illustrate how students respond to the suggested strategies Extended focus on infusing multicultural and diverse literature in the classroom Each chapter is organized around specific questions that preservice teachers consistently raise as they prepare to become English language arts teachers. The authors model critical inquiry throughout the text by offering authentic case narratives that raise important considerations of both theory and practice. A companion website, a favorite of English education instructors, http://teachingliterature.pbworks.com, provides resources and enrichment activities, inviting teachers to consider important issues in the context of their current or future classrooms.

* Concretely addresses what happens when new teachers try to enact inquiry-based and dialogical pedagogy within standardized schools * Provides realistic access and insight into the professional lives of novice teachers in ways that invite preservice and other novice teachers to reflect on the complexities of classroom engagement * Unpacks tension between the standardization of education and the advocates for pedagogy that supports individual inquiries and dialogues within literacy classrooms * Demonstrates methods for prospective and novice ELA and English teachers to "wobble," or enact inquiry-based or dialogic pedagogy in the context of structured and inflexible schooling systems.

Drawing on Dialogical Self Theory, this book presents a new framework for social and cultural identity construction in the literacy classroom, offering possibilities for how teachers might adjust their pedagogy to better support the range of cultural stances present in all classrooms. In the complex multicultural/multiethnic/multilingual contexts of learning in and out of school spaces today, students and teachers are constantly dialoguing across cultures, both internally and externally, and these cultures are in dialogue with each other. The authors unpack some of the complexity of culture and identity, what people do with culture and identity, and how people navigate multiple cultures and identities. Readers are invited to re-examine how they view different cultures and the roles these play in their lives, and to dialogue with the authors about cultures, learning, literacy, identity, and agency.

This is the story of a white high school English teacher, Bob Fecho, and his students of color who mutually engage issues of literacy, language, learning, and culture. Through his journey, Fecho presents a method of "critical inquiry" that allows students and teachers to take intellectual and social risks in the classroom to make meaning together and, ultimately, to transform literacy education. Featuring the voices, beliefs, and struggles of urban adolescents and their teachers, this important book: Describes how critical inquiry enabled students and teachers to cross cultural boundaries and enact a pedagogy that empowers students. Provides a much-needed alternative to current best-practice thinking and educational mandates that demean teacher knowledge and alienate adolescent students. Demonstrates how difficult realities can and should enter the classroom, showing teachers how to channel them into language, discourse, and classroom projects that improve students' literacy and thinking.

Many educators feel caught between mandates to meet literacy standards and the desire to respond to individual students' interests, skills, and challenges. This book illustrates how a dialogical approach to practice will enable teachers to meet the needs of today's diverse student population within a standardized curriculum. Chapters highlight the efforts of four high school teachers to create dialogical classroom space, documenting both the possibilities of and impediments to such an approach to teaching. Drawing on a theoretical framework and rationale for engaged dialogical practice, the authors present and analyze key classroom events that illustrate the productive and restrictive tensions for such work and suggest ways for teachers and schools to implement these ideas, especially for complementing and expanding the Common Core State Standards.