Dennis J. Sumara

Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Interpretation, Insight explains how a reader's involvement with literary texts can create conditions for developing deep insight into human experience, and how teachers can develop these interpretive possibilities in school contexts. Developed from the author's many years of research, this book offers both a theoretical framework that draws from an interdisciplinary array of sources and many compelling and insightful examples of literary engagement of child, adolescent, and adult readers, as well as practical advice for teachers and other readers about how to create interesting and expansive sites for interpretation that are personally rewarding and productive. Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Interpretation, Insight : *provides an overview of theories of human learning that influence beliefs about language, culture, and identity; *shows how these theories of learning influence beliefs about and practices of reading and interpretation; *introduces new ways to conceptualize reading that emphasize the relationship between individual and collective identities and language/literacy practices; *explains why access to information does not guarantee that understanding and/or insight will occur--by emphasizing the importance of "re-reading" and "close reading" this text shows that development of deep insight depends on interpretation skills that must be taught; and *presents a reconceptualized view of reading pedagogy. This is an essential text for education courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and a must read for teachers and for anyone interested in more deeply understanding how literary works of art can create conditions for learning about oneself, one's situation, and one's possibilities.

Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Interpretation, Insight explains how a reader's involvement with literary texts can create conditions for developing deep insight into human experience, and how teachers can develop these interpretive possibilities in school contexts. Developed from the author's many years of research, this book offers both a theoretical framework that draws from an interdisciplinary array of sources and many compelling and insightful examples of literary engagement of child, adolescent, and adult readers, as well as practical advice for teachers and other readers about how to create interesting and expansive sites for interpretation that are personally rewarding and productive. Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Interpretation, Insight : *provides an overview of theories of human learning that influence beliefs about language, culture, and identity; *shows how these theories of learning influence beliefs about and practices of reading and interpretation; *introduces new ways to conceptualize reading that emphasize the relationship between individual and collective identities and language/literacy practices; *explains why access to information does not guarantee that understanding and/or insight will occur--by emphasizing the importance of "re-reading" and "close reading" this text shows that development of deep insight depends on interpretation skills that must be taught; and *presents a reconceptualized view of reading pedagogy. This is an essential text for education courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and a must read for teachers and for anyone interested in more deeply understanding how literary works of art can create conditions for learning about oneself, one's situation, and one's possibilities.

This book uses the set of relations announced by teachers' and students' readings of literary fictions as a -commonplace location- to interpret the experience of curriculum. In addition to illuminating the complexity of -schooled- readings of literature, "Private Readings in Public" provides insightful and provocative interpretations of the intertwined, overlapping, and ever-evolving intertextual relations that comprise events of curriculum. It will be of interest to those who wish to expand their understanding of the way in which interpretations of shared reading can become a -literary anthropology- where the identities of readers, writers, and teachers are continually re-invented during processes of reading, writing, and teaching."