English Education - Volume 42, Issue 2, 2010

English teacher educators’ commitment to Deweyan progressivism has cost them in recent years. It has contributed to their being pushed to the margins when it comes to serious, top-level discussions about the direction of American education. This essay reexamines the case for progressivism and its relevance as an element of CEE’s ongoing effort to reinterpret itself since the 2005 CEE Summit.

This article examines the construction of an intercultural critical literacy practice in a Web-based discussion forum as one way to globalize interpretive practices within the English classroom.; English education students in the United States and Sweden discussed a short story over a period of three weeks.; The analysis of the students’ postings identified five patterns of an intercultural critical literacy practice in which global readers identify and critique the cultural values and beliefs they use to interpret texts and understand their own lives.; Knowledge of the characteristics of an intercultural critical literacy practice can assist English educators in the construction of similar global interactions and critical practices with their students.

Joseph O. Milner explores a narrowing of differences between English teacher educators and classroom teachers. Using North Carolina as anational barometer for his action research, Milner cites the shifting attitudes of classroom teachers toward the shared values of English teacher educators, and he opens the door for similar research projects in other states.

Delane Bender-Slack takes on the important subject of teaching for social justice. Her article’s strength is in its uncompromising look at complex, often misinterpreted teaching challenges. This article focuses on actual teachers working for social justice in their classrooms. Working from a strongtheoretical framework, she pushes us in new directions to understand the growing complexities in teaching for social justice.

Anna Soter and colleagues push the response to literature limits by first exploring; expressive response to account for readers’ personal connection to literature and offering a “third space” that; any reader might make at different times and for different reasons.’ This third space causes us to reconsider the work that aesthetic response has been doing all along in responses readers make to literature.