Transacting With Texts

This chapter presents an applied model for supporting preschool children's executive function, skills that serve as protective factors against risks associated with poverty, using Rosenblatt's transactional theory. The authors posit pedagogy that elicits children's responses to an author's/illustrator's picturebook whereby preschool readers' responses are mediated by the teacher through reflective discussion. Children are encouraged to reflect upon literary characters' motivations, behaviors, and problem solving. A demonstration case analysis shows how this model is implemented in a diverse and inclusive university laboratory preschool program where approximately half the children are served through Head Start, a federal program for children living in poverty. Given the preschool years are an especially sensitive period for acquisition of executive function skills, the authors assert that supporting young children's transactions with and interpretations of a text is the type of transactional strategy that has potential for narrowing the opportunity gap.

What Makes a Good Graded Reader: Engaging with Graded Readers in the Context of Extensive Reading in L2

<p>It is widely accepted in the ESOL field that Extensive Reading is good for ESOL learners and there are many studies purporting to show that this is true. As a result, the publication of Graded Readers in English today is a major commercial concern, although David Hill (2008, p. 189), former director of the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading, in his most recent study of Graded Readers, comments that they are being produced 'in a hostile climate where extensive reading is little valued, practised or tested.' However, anecdotal evidence from teachers and researchers claims that learners do not read anywhere near the recommended one Graded Reader a week prescribed by Nation and Wang (1999, p. 355) to provide the necessary amount of comprehensible input for increasing vocabulary. If these claims and Hill's comments are true, there may be a mismatch between the kind of reading material produced for learners of English and the nature and teaching of the texts currently recommended by teachers and librarians. Such a situation would not only be a huge waste in terms of resources; it could also lead to the alienation of generations of English learners from a potentially valuable means of improving and enjoying language learning. My study investigates this discrepancy by looking at the perceptions of the main stakeholders in Graded Readers, namely the publishers, the judges and academics, the teachers and the learners, to see how they differ and why. As each population is different, the methodologies used in the study are various, making for an approach described as 'bricolage' (Lincoln & Guba, 2000a, p. 164). At the heart of the study are five case studies of learners, set against the backdrop of data gathered from all the stakeholders. As the results indicate that the purpose of the reading appears to govern the perceptions of the individual learner, I found Louise Rosenblatt's (Rosenblatt, 1978) Transactional Theory of Reading Response was an appropriate framework within which to interpret the data.</p>

What Makes a Good Graded Reader: Engaging with Graded Readers in the Context of Extensive Reading in L2

<p>It is widely accepted in the ESOL field that Extensive Reading is good for ESOL learners and there are many studies purporting to show that this is true. As a result, the publication of Graded Readers in English today is a major commercial concern, although David Hill (2008, p. 189), former director of the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading, in his most recent study of Graded Readers, comments that they are being produced 'in a hostile climate where extensive reading is little valued, practised or tested.' However, anecdotal evidence from teachers and researchers claims that learners do not read anywhere near the recommended one Graded Reader a week prescribed by Nation and Wang (1999, p. 355) to provide the necessary amount of comprehensible input for increasing vocabulary. If these claims and Hill's comments are true, there may be a mismatch between the kind of reading material produced for learners of English and the nature and teaching of the texts currently recommended by teachers and librarians. Such a situation would not only be a huge waste in terms of resources; it could also lead to the alienation of generations of English learners from a potentially valuable means of improving and enjoying language learning. My study investigates this discrepancy by looking at the perceptions of the main stakeholders in Graded Readers, namely the publishers, the judges and academics, the teachers and the learners, to see how they differ and why. As each population is different, the methodologies used in the study are various, making for an approach described as 'bricolage' (Lincoln & Guba, 2000a, p. 164). At the heart of the study are five case studies of learners, set against the backdrop of data gathered from all the stakeholders. As the results indicate that the purpose of the reading appears to govern the perceptions of the individual learner, I found Louise Rosenblatt's (Rosenblatt, 1978) Transactional Theory of Reading Response was an appropriate framework within which to interpret the data.</p>

What Lies Beneath the Stated Meanings: a Transactional View of Language Learners Making Meaning with Texts

<p>This thesis reports on a year long case study conducted into the processes and products of English Second Language (ESL) learners reading fiction texts for pleasure in a high school extensive reading program. Although 'extensive reading' is usually associated with interactive language learning perspectives such as 'Second Language Acquisition' (for one view within this perspective see Krashen [1982]), a different theoretical perspective was applied in the present study. Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reader response is used to analyse and discuss data made about teenagers reading for pleasure in an extensive reading program. At the heart of Rosenblatt's transactional theory is the assumption that every reading event is unique to the person, text and context of that reading experience. To understand what it means to make meaning with a text, each of those things must be considered. Thus in order to better understand ESL learners' processes and products of reading for pleasure, this thesis provides a fine grained, deep description of how one reader made meaning with texts. This description is contextualised and enriched through the inclusion of case study data from other ESL and native English speaker participants. By focusing on one reader, the complexity of the interrelationships of reader, text and context are amply demonstrated. This, it will be argued, provides a valuable lens through which teachers and researchers may view other readers, other texts and other contexts. Conclusions drawn from this study will claim that Rosenblatt's transactional theory not only readily facilitates language learning goals (for example, extensive use of the target language) but importantly provides another perspective, apart from the predominant interactive language learning perspectives, on what it might mean for readers to make meaning with texts read for pleasure. Understanding the processes and products of reading for pleasure from a transactional view has pedagogical import for the utilization of extensive reading programs, and perhaps most importantly, for the intellectual development of second language learners.</p>

What Lies Beneath the Stated Meanings: a Transactional View of Language Learners Making Meaning with Texts

<p>This thesis reports on a year long case study conducted into the processes and products of English Second Language (ESL) learners reading fiction texts for pleasure in a high school extensive reading program. Although 'extensive reading' is usually associated with interactive language learning perspectives such as 'Second Language Acquisition' (for one view within this perspective see Krashen [1982]), a different theoretical perspective was applied in the present study. Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reader response is used to analyse and discuss data made about teenagers reading for pleasure in an extensive reading program. At the heart of Rosenblatt's transactional theory is the assumption that every reading event is unique to the person, text and context of that reading experience. To understand what it means to make meaning with a text, each of those things must be considered. Thus in order to better understand ESL learners' processes and products of reading for pleasure, this thesis provides a fine grained, deep description of how one reader made meaning with texts. This description is contextualised and enriched through the inclusion of case study data from other ESL and native English speaker participants. By focusing on one reader, the complexity of the interrelationships of reader, text and context are amply demonstrated. This, it will be argued, provides a valuable lens through which teachers and researchers may view other readers, other texts and other contexts. Conclusions drawn from this study will claim that Rosenblatt's transactional theory not only readily facilitates language learning goals (for example, extensive use of the target language) but importantly provides another perspective, apart from the predominant interactive language learning perspectives, on what it might mean for readers to make meaning with texts read for pleasure. Understanding the processes and products of reading for pleasure from a transactional view has pedagogical import for the utilization of extensive reading programs, and perhaps most importantly, for the intellectual development of second language learners.</p>

Adapting to Frequent Changes: The Roles of Job Crafting and Personal Needs

Drawing on the transactional theory of stress and self-regulation theory, we propose a conceptual framework to examine how change frequency relates to approach or avoidance adaptations. Multiwave, multisource data from a matched sample of 424 subordinates and their supervisors indicate that (a) approach and avoidance crafting mediates the negative relationship between change frequency and adaptivity, (b) the need for human connection weakens the relationship between change frequency and approach–avoidance crafting, (c) the need for control strengthens the relationship between change frequency and approach–avoidance crafting, and (d) change frequency has a weakened (strengthened) indirect effect on adaptivity via approach crafting and avoidance crafting when employees have a high need for human connection (control). This study expands the research on job crafting and adaptivity and provides practical implications for organizations undergoing or soon to undergo changes.

Markets and Contractual Fairness

Contract is the quintessential legal institution of a market economy, but the contemporary philosophy of contract law is dominated by promissory and autonomy theories that tend to treat contract’s role in facilitating commerce as little more than a happy accident. It is thus striking that in his ambitious effort to generate a purely transactional theory of contract law Peter Benson places markets at that center of his account of transactional fairness. His argues that the abstract equality of contracting parties requires equality of exchange, an equality mediated by the just price. Echoing the scholastic tradition, Benson identifies the just price with the competitive market price. We thus have a fascinating example of an anti-functionalist, anti-distributive theory of contract that nevertheless incorporates the market as an important theoretical element. In this essay, I evaluate Benson’s use of markets, placing it within both the broader discussion of markets in contract law theory and in the larger argument that he is making about contract law. Ultimately, Benson justifies the appeal to markets not because of any attractive distributional features of competitive prices but because such prices have a formal structure that satisfies the demands of Benson’s formal theory. It is an ingenious and subtle argument. However, I am not ultimately persuaded. While I think that the rule for unconscionability cases that Benson extracts from his concept of equality of exchange is defensible, I am not persuaded by Benson’s formal approach to the fairness of markets. Rather, I will argue that competitive markets often do not have the formal features that Benson ascribes to them. Furthermore, a key aspect of his understanding of transactional fairness is best understood as resting on an attractive distributional feature of competitive markets rather than on their formal structure.

The Transactional Relationship between Parental and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: The Mediating Effect of Nurturant–Involved Parenting

Sameroff’s transactional theory emphasizes a bidirectional process between parents and offspring. The present study explored the reciprocal relationships between parental and adolescent depressive symptoms using a cross-lagged model and examined the mediating effect of nurturant–involved parenting on the relationship between them. Data for the present study were collected from a longitudinal study, and a total of 1644 adolescents and their mothers and fathers participated in the present study. The results revealed a reciprocal relationship between maternal and adolescent depressive symptoms, and the child-driven effect was more robust than the mother-driven effect. Adolescent depressive symptoms significantly predicted paternal depressive symptoms, but not vice versa. In addition, adolescent depressive symptoms indirectly predicted maternal and paternal depressive symptoms by deteriorating nurturant-involved parenting. These findings highlight a child-driven effect on parents’ psychopathology, which may shed light on the mechanism underlying depression transmission between parents and adolescents.