A cognitive science-inflected pedgaogy bibliography

Bibliography

Bruer, John T. Schools for Thought: A Science for Learning in the Classroom. Cambridge: MIT, 1993. Has chapters on metacognition, reading, and writing, among other subjects. Although clearly geared to teachers of K-12, the subject matter is nonetheless applicable to teaching at all levels. Indeed, for those unfamiliar with cognitive science as it relates to teaching, this serves as an excellent introduction.

Culpeper, Jonathan. "Inferring Character from Texts: Attribution Theory and Foregrounding Theory." Poetics 23 (1996): 355-361. A largely theoretical investigation into the ways in which readers infer character from texts, specifically from linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors of characters in texts.

Gordon, Peter C. and Davina Chan. "Pronouns, Passives, and Discourse Coherence." Journal of Memory and Language 34 (1995): 216-231. From the abstract: "Four experiments examined how pronominalization of entities in different grammatical roles interacts with sentence structure (active vs passive) to promote local coherence in discourse." Some discussion of the repeated-name penalty.

Groeben, Norbert and Margrit Schreier. "Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Aspects of the Concept of Literature: The Example of the Polyvalence Convention." Poetics 26 (1998): 55-62. Asserts that the concepts of literariness and polyvalence are necessarily prescriptive, though justifiably so. Begins with a concise analysis of essentialist and functionalist concepts of literariness as well as descriptive and prescriptive implications of polyvalence as convention.

Hanauer, David. "Integration of Phonetic and Graphic Features in Poetic Text Categorization Judgments." Poetics 23 (1996): 363-380. Presents the results of a study aimed at investigating the role of formal textual features and literary backgroun in the categorization of poetic texts. Utilizes original and manipulated versions of James Joyce's poem "The Twilight Turns from Amethyst."

McNamara, Danielle S., Eileen Kintsch, Nancy Butler Songer, and Walter Kintsch. "Are Good Texts Always Better? Interactions of Text Coherence, Background Knowledge, and Levels of Understanding in Learning from Text." Cognition and Instruction 14 (1996): 1-43. Among other things, this study suggests that for domain experts, a minimally coherent text will yield more active engagement by the reader.

Miall, David S. and Don Kuiken. "The Form of Reading: Empirical Studies of Literariness." Poetics 25 (1998): 327-341. Observes that the dismissal of formalism characteristic of poststructuralist approaches to literature is ill-founded, as it lacks any empirical basis. Reviews two studies that support the claim that literariness is a definable set of formal qualities (foregrounded), and that readers take up a "Formalist Contract" in the act of reading literary texts. As concerns the latter (and as observed in my MA thesis), I would incline to say that the attitudes and assumptions Miall and Kuiken identify are assumed for nearly all texts, not just literary. Excepting this, their analysis is illuminating and provides a useful starting point for those just becoming involved with empirical/cognitive approaches to literature.

Peskin, Joan. "Constructing Meaning When Reading Poetry: An Expert-Novice Study." Cognition and Instruction 16 (1998): 235-263. Utilizes Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew" and Spenser's "Lyke as a Huntsman." A detailed analysis of self-reported expert and novice reader processing of two relatively complex poems.

Puntambekar, Sadhana. "Helping Students Learn 'How to Learn' from Texts: Towards an ITS for Developing Metacognition." Instructional Science 23 (1995): 163-182. Although focused on the role of Intelligent Tutoring Systems in learning, the study and the discussion of attempts to develop metacognitive skills in students are well worth reviewing.

Roth, Wolff-Michael and G. Michael Bowen. "Knowing and Interacting: A Study of Culture, Practices, and Resources in a Grade 8 Open-Inquiry Science Classroom Guided by a Cognitive Apprenticeship Metaphor." Cognition and Instruction 13 (1995): 73-128. A promising study of an attempt to shape pedagogy and student experience via recourse to a structuring metaphor typically reserved for graduate-level instruction.

Zeitz, Colleen M. "Expert-Novice Differences in Memory, Abstraction, and Reasoning in the Domain of Literature." Cognition and Instruction 12 (1994): 277-312. This study analyzes differences in the above-named cognitive processes in experts and novices utilizing a poem (J. I. Merrill's "The World and the Child"), a short story by M. E. Wilkins, and a passage from a scientific text (A Century of DNA). Suggests (controversially, for some) that domain expertise in literature does not yield superiority over novices in the processing of scientific text.


A cognitive science-inflected pedagogy bibliography

James Luberda, University of Connecticut	Updated May 15, 2000
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The following (annotated!) bibliography is, one might say, eternally on the path of becoming. It reflects materials I have come across and, perhaps, utilized in my own developing cognitive science-inflected pedagogy. As such, it is home primarily to resources that relate to: 1) language processing, grammar, text processing; 2) literature, teaching and processing; and 3) metacognition. At the moment, there are few enough entries that I have not broken them up into categories; I reserve that for the future. I will also include links to authors' home pages and full texts when available. I welcome, of course, any suggestions for additional entries. A prefatory critique: One issue I take with some of the studies involving reader-response to literary texts concerns their problematic definitions or assumptions about literature, often bordering, as is not uncommon, upon the mystical. For example, Peskin (1998) asserts: "Poetry communicates universal human truths. It is an instrument to make us see life and live it more intensely. All too often, however, poetry is received in a hostile spirit, for poetry, by its very nature, is often difficult to comprehend" (235). See Zeitz (1994) for a well-handled survey of usable definitions of literature, as well as the various perspectives inherent in those definitions (i.e. literature as a kind of text vs. literature as a mode of reading). The more recent Groeben and Schreier (1998) is another useful resource concerning the concept of "literariness."

Bibliography Bruer, John T. Schools for Thought: A Science for Learning in the Classroom. Cambridge: MIT, 1993. Has chapters on metacognition, reading, and writing, among other subjects. Although clearly geared to teachers of K-12, the subject matter is nonetheless applicable to teaching at all levels. Indeed, for those unfamiliar with cognitive science as it relates to teaching, this serves as an excellent introduction. Culpeper, Jonathan. "Inferring Character from Texts: Attribution Theory and Foregrounding Theory." Poetics 23 (1996): 355-361. A largely theoretical investigation into the ways in which readers infer character from texts, specifically from linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors of characters in texts. Gordon, Peter C. and Davina Chan. "Pronouns, Passives, and Discourse Coherence." Journal of Memory and Language 34 (1995): 216-231. From the abstract: "Four experiments examined how pronominalization of entities in different grammatical roles interacts with sentence structure (active vs passive) to promote local coherence in discourse." Some discussion of the repeated-name penalty. Groeben, Norbert and Margrit Schreier. "Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Aspects of the Concept of Literature: The Example of the Polyvalence Convention." Poetics 26 (1998): 55-62. Asserts that the concepts of literariness and polyvalence are necessarily prescriptive, though justifiably so. Begins with a concise analysis of essentialist and functionalist concepts of literariness as well as descriptive and prescriptive implications of polyvalence as convention. Hanauer, David. "Integration of Phonetic and Graphic Features in Poetic Text Categorization Judgments." Poetics 23 (1996): 363-380. Presents the results of a study aimed at investigating the role of formal textual features and literary backgroun in the categorization of poetic texts. Utilizes original and manipulated versions of James Joyce's poem "The Twilight Turns from Amethyst." McNamara, Danielle S., Eileen Kintsch, Nancy Butler Songer, and Walter Kintsch. "Are Good Texts Always Better? Interactions of Text Coherence, Background Knowledge, and Levels of Understanding in Learning from Text." Cognition and Instruction 14 (1996): 1-43. Among other things, this study suggests that for domain experts, a minimally coherent text will yield more active engagement by the reader. Miall, David S. and Don Kuiken. "The Form of Reading: Empirical Studies of Literariness." Poetics 25 (1998): 327-341. Observes that the dismissal of formalism characteristic of poststructuralist approaches to literature is ill-founded, as it lacks any empirical basis. Reviews two studies that support the claim that literariness is a definable set of formal qualities (foregrounded), and that readers take up a "Formalist Contract" in the act of reading literary texts. As concerns the latter (and as observed in my MA thesis), I would incline to say that the attitudes and assumptions Miall and Kuiken identify are assumed for nearly all texts, not just literary. Excepting this, their analysis is illuminating and provides a useful starting point for those just becoming involved with empirical/cognitive approaches to literature. Peskin, Joan. "Constructing Meaning When Reading Poetry: An Expert-Novice Study." Cognition and Instruction 16 (1998): 235-263. Utilizes Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew" and Spenser's "Lyke as a Huntsman." A detailed analysis of self-reported expert and novice reader processing of two relatively complex poems. Puntambekar, Sadhana. "Helping Students Learn 'How to Learn' from Texts: Towards an ITS for Developing Metacognition." Instructional Science 23 (1995): 163-182. Although focused on the role of Intelligent Tutoring Systems in learning, the study and the discussion of attempts to develop metacognitive skills in students are well worth reviewing. Roth, Wolff-Michael and G. Michael Bowen. "Knowing and Interacting: A Study of Culture, Practices, and Resources in a Grade 8 Open-Inquiry Science Classroom Guided by a Cognitive Apprenticeship Metaphor." Cognition and Instruction 13 (1995): 73-128. A promising study of an attempt to shape pedagogy and student experience via recourse to a structuring metaphor typically reserved for graduate-level instruction. Zeitz, Colleen M. "Expert-Novice Differences in Memory, Abstraction, and Reasoning in the Domain of Literature." Cognition and Instruction 12 (1994): 277-312. This study analyzes differences in the above-named cognitive processes in experts and novices utilizing a poem (J. I. Merrill's "The World and the Child"), a short story by M. E. Wilkins, and a passage from a scientific text (A Century of DNA). Suggests (controversially, for some) that domain expertise in literature does not yield superiority over novices in the processing of scientific text.