Teaching the universe of discourse

This book is addressed to teachers, other educators, and researchers in the many disciplines related to language learning. It comprises essays written while I was preparing A Student-Centered Language Arts Curriculum, Grades K-13: A Handbook for Teachers, to which it is meant to be a companion volume. Whereas the handbook proposes in some detail an experimental curriculum made up of particular practices and assignments for different ages, the present book sketches a pedagogical theory of discourse that may provide both a fuller rationale for the curriculum, if the reader is familiar with it, and, quite independently, a set of ideas to help advance the current task of reconceiving education in the native language. These essays represent one teacher's efforts to theorize about discourse expressly for teaching purposes.