Overview

A teacher reflects on her teaching practice, bringing literacy scholarship into the arena of Jewish education. In The Second Conversation, university professor Ziva R. Hassenfeld returns to the middle school classroom to study her own seventh grade Bible class. The book explores dilemmas of practice she encountered around interpretive authority in the classroom. She analyzes the questions that came up in her teaching within the context of the most influential religious education scholarship, literacy scholarship, sociocultural theory and literary theory. She highlights the importance of two conversations about interpretive rules within the classroom, the first about the text's meaning, and the second about competing conventions for determining its meaning. Instructors of any type of literature will benefit from Hassenfeld's study, which offers rich ideas about when and how teachers enforce a classroom's way of reading or follow a student's line of inquiry toward more flexible interpretation.

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9781684581887

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Reviews

“With abiding respect for learners, teachers, and texts, Hassenfeld beautifully articulates a rarely addressed but deeply compelling problem of practice. The Second Conversation gets to the heart of teaching and learning and invites educators to join the author in a vital, field-building conversation about the meaning-making process itself—what is at stake and for whom. Serving as a model herself, Hassenfeld guides educators to become ever more intentional in shaping the communities of learning they envision.”  -- Allison Cook, founder and codirector of Pedagogy of Partnership at the Hadar Institute “The time for this book is now, a time in history when conversations in classrooms—religious and secular alike—are being restricted and debated. Playing at the intersections of theory and practice, Hassenfeld draws readers in from the very first words. This should be essential reading for literacy teachers and researchers alike.” -- Lara J. Handsfield, Illinois State University “How can classroom teachers notice and make visible for students the tacit interpretive rules guiding textual response processes? How can we invite students to intellectually question and compare sets of interpretive rules? Hassenfeld explores these questions through a beautifully crafted teacher narrative, infused with delight in the beauties and complexities of the Hebrew scriptural writing she teaches. This masterful book exemplifies how much literacy educators and scholars stand to learn from interdisciplinary inquiries in religious education. Read this book and be transformed!” -- Mary M. Juzwik, Michigan State University

Author Information

Ziva R. Hassenfeld is the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Assistant Professor in Jewish Education at Brandeis University and assistant director of research for the Mandel Center.

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