ABSTRACT
The National Research Center for Literature Teaching and Learning opened its doors in 1987 (as the Center for Literature Teaching and Learning), funded primarily “to stimulate reform in the teaching of literature” (Langer, 1992). The original mission focused largely on literature curriculum and instruction in American high schools. With reauthorization, as the National Research Center for Literature Teaching and Learning (NRCLTL) in 1990, the scope of inquiry was broadened to include the literature curriculum preKindergarten through grade 12. This broader scope was needed because literature was earning an increasingly important role in the elementary school curriculum as schools engaged in a fairly rapid curricular shift-away from a mastery-focused, skills-based, and hierarchical curriculum plan for reading and language arts lessons and toward a more literature-based, integrated, and process-oriented curriculum (Pearson, 1993).
