• Bill Kerns

  Author

• Bea Bailey

  Author

This study describes how action research by pre-service teachers has had a
transformative effect on efforts of an English teacher education program to promote student
engagement. Collaboratively with pre-service teachers, the authors are researching authentic
expressions of literary life involving the use of language arts content to produce texts and
performances of personal and/or social worth. Students play at literary roles and personas such
as directors or literary critics as they meet English language arts course standards in engaging
ways. Curriculum design work discussed in this article includes planning in advance for the
conditions of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) to be present.

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