Multimedia and Response-Based Literature Teaching and Learning

There is growing recognition among educators of the need for establishing practical pedagogical approaches that facilitate the development of literary understanding. "Literary understanding" is that form of thinking which is characteristically divergent and inward, focused on "personal meanings, understandings of human situations and the complex web of relationships embedded in them" (Langer, in press, pg. 3). Literary understanding is thus seen as an important form of critical thought distinct from "scientific reasoning," which is characterized as convergent, objective, logical. Indeed, scholars over the years (e.g. Britton, 1970, 1983; Bruner, 1986) have suggested that these two forms of thinking represent some of the multiple ways in which people make sense of and construct meaning about their own world, and that, as such, both are necessary to mature thought.