Although many teachers force-feed the "meaning" of poetry to puzzled students or teach poetry by way of dissecting poetic techniques, more productive approaches to the study of poetry exist, as reflected in the literature in the ERIC database. Units of study can be organized around particular kinds of inquiry instead of around a literary…

Intended for literature instructors, this digest explains the relationship of transactional theory (a reciprocal, mutually defining relationship between the reader and the literary text) to the teaching of literature. The importance of the reader's part in literature is first demonstrated, noting that attention must be paid to who the readers are,…

Over the last 15 years or so, research into measurement error has begun to consider not just whether the test items fit, but whether the people who answer the items fit. Attempts to systematically identify people who do not fit the typical pattern have led to several "person-fit statistics." This digest describes the need for such…