This paper begins with the assumption that the interpretive practices people acquire in social worlds often transfer to their stances toward and interpretations of worlds encountered in literature (Beach, Thein, & Parks, 2007). The goal of this paper is to identify the history and logic behind one student's negative, ambivalent, and positive responses to classroom texts. This paper joins socio-cultural theories of response to literature (Galda & Beach, 2001) with theories of identity (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 2002) and cultural models (Gee, 1999) to understand the social and cultural history that this student, Molly, drew upon in her interpretations of texts. More specifically, this paper examines Molly's interpretations of her lived-worlds and the worlds of texts that she read outside of class as locations for investigating social and cultural practices that were relevant to her. This paper develops a case study that looks closely at the cultural models (Gee, 1996, 1999, 2004) that Molly drew upon in her interpretations of her lived-worlds and worlds of texts she read outside of class in order to better understand how social and cultural practices and beliefs mediated her responses to classroom literature. Findings from this study suggest that teaching students to identify, acknowledge, and value the stances that they bring with them to the classroom, while at the same time teaching them to understand the usefulness of other theories for interpreting texts, has the potential to engage students in more critical and thorough interpretations of literature.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Evaluating young adult literature on behalf of hypothetical adolescent readers may naturalize a series of myths about who adolescents are, what they care about, and what they are capable of.W ould adolescents choose to read this book? What problems or issues could I address with this book? Would adolescents see these issues as relevant? These are questions that English language arts (ELA) teachers often ask themselves when evaluating young adult literature (YAL), defined in this article as literature marketed for a youth audience. Indeed, these are the kinds of questions that we have used to guide our own instruction in our preservice teacher education courses on YAL. These questions always seemed logical given that they urge preservice teachers to consider and take seriously the needs and desires of their future students. However, we noticed that preservice teachers' responses to these questions often seemed to evoke limited ideas about their future students. Knowing the preservice teachers in our courses to be thoughtful, insightful people, we began to wonder about the questions we were asking and how they might be shaping our students' understandings of adolescents. In this article, we turn a critical eye toward these familiar questions, considering how they might create a restrictive framework for discussing both YAL and adolescence/ts.