This article argues that realist and tragic fiction can and should play a central role in Religious Education in communities of faith and in theological education in schools of theology--thereby contributing to theological construction--"because good fiction produces truth". Fiction is a vital source for producing the questions that theology needs…

In this article, two students share their experiences and recommendations on writing. They talk about when and how has a teacher or an assignment made them feel most like a real author.

Neil Gaiman first gained wide notice as an author of comics, most notably "The Sandman" series (DC Comics), and confirmed his reputation as a major contemporary Anglo-American writer with the novels "Stardust" (1999), "American Gods" (2001), and "Anansi Boys" (2005, all William Morrow). But as Gaiman…

Before children learn to read, they act like readers when they play with materials and objects like readers. In play, children beam their projective imagination upon inert material things and animate them with fantasy, infusing objects with meaning. The question of "the real" haunts the psychology of play and through play, the theory of fantasy:…

Murder and magic, illicit love and puppy love, home-grown tragedy and the ravages of far-off war. No one topic defines a first novel, and, no, they are not all autobiographical. Among last season's top debuts, published from August through December 2007, are Ellen Litman's cross-format "The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories" and genre…

There is an increasing interest in the way academic writers establish the presence of their readers over the past few years. Establishing the presence of readers or what Kroll (1984, p.181) calls imagining "a second voice" is accomplished when a writer refers "explicitly" to their readers using explicit linguistic resources…

In this paper we review fifty years of articles published in Australian Journal of Adult Learning in its various iterations. We examine the different roles of the journal: to illuminate the history and trends of adult education authors; to be the flagship of the adult education profession in Australia; to reflect on significant national events;…

In this article, the author offers an appreciation of the writers and their books that have shaped her teaching and thinking. Her face-to-face encounters with these books prompted her to question her own beliefs about literacy, about authority, about language, about writing, about literature. She was surrounded by the living animations of the…

Standard assessment tests have been part of the literacy practice in English primary schools for many years. While educators point to the dangers of "teaching to the test," politicians continue to believe that the best way of achieving accountability is by retaining league tables of these test results. Currently the curriculum is too…

This quantitative study provides a description of current and best practices for authorship determination in student-faculty collaborative research. Doctoral students and faculty (N = 1,009) in education-related disciplines indicated how authorship decisions are made in common practice, how authorship decisions should be made, and their levels of…

Information Scaffolding is a user-centered approach to information design; a method devised to aid "everyday" authors in information composition. Information Scaffolding places a premium on audience-centered documents by emphasizing the information needs and motivations of a multimedia document's intended audience. The aim of this…

Climate change, which is evident in the Arctic more than anywhere else, is an issue that affects all generations. Choices made by today's adults, according to a broad and deep body of research, are likely to influence the nature of nature for today's young people and their successors for a very long time to come. The author contends that…

Critical literacy is the practice of evaluating information, insights, and perspectives through an analysis of power, culture, class, and gender. A critical perspective suggests that the meaning within a text cannot be separated from the historical, political, personal, and social contexts in which it was written. Being critically literate,…

This article explores the citing behaviors of 16 undergraduates in a North American university. After completing a research paper for their disciplinary courses, each participating student was interviewed to identify in his/her writing words and ideas borrowed from source texts and to explain why and how the relevant texts were appropriated with…

This paper introduces a pedagogical approach and strategies for using online resources and interactive media to teach in English about writers and writing from around the world without colonizing or excluding other languages and cultures. First, I explain the context and challenges of teaching world literature: the importance of including diverse…