ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter, "The Role of Text in Classroom Learning," may evoke for many of our readers images of students sitting at desks or in groups reading published print texts such as basal readers and textbooks. These images may yield a number of questions about the role of text in classroom learning: What are these texts like? How are they being used in classrooms and for what purposes? In what ways do texts used in elementary classrooms differ from those used in secondary classrooms? How do students make sense of and learn with these texts? What are they learning? How do teachers use such texts as curriculum guides? Who controls the content and use of published texts? In this review, we address many of these questions about the uses of printed texts in classroom learning. In addition, we examine how other forms of printed text are used such as trade books, magazines, and newspapers. Further, we examine the written texts that teachers prepare for students' use, such as outlines of lecture notes, worksheets, and graphic organizers; written texts authored by students, such as essays, stories, and lecture notes; and electronic texts used and generated by students. This broadened conception of text also compels us to examine how teachers' and students' oral texts-lectures, recitations, discussions, and conversations-playa role in classroom learning. Finally, drawing from semiotic and other perspectives on text (Ackerman & Oates, 1996; Barthes, 1977/1996; Eco, 1983, 1992; Eisner, 1994; Hartman, 1997; Siegel, 1995), we include studies that analyze the texts derived from multiple forms of representation, such as drawings, paintings, musical renderings, and performances, and unsanctioned student texts such as notes to friends, comic books, popular magazines, and graffiti.
