ABSTRACT
Coming to terms with many of the recent changes in thinking about reading texts is difficult. Most teachers in the western world have trained in a quite different tradition, and the question,” What does it mean in the classroom?” is not addressed explicitly by most recent theory. The idea, for example, that a text might be thought of as a site for the production of multiple-and often contradictory or competingmeanings is a particularly challenging one in the context of the classroom. Moving from a conception of the text as a container of correct meanings for which readers must search, to one in which meanings are thought about as produced rather than discovered, and contested rather than agreed, has enormous implications in terms of assessment and power. Which meanings, after all, are to prevail?
