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13 pages, 199 KB

Open AccessArticle

by Yi Wu

Religions 2025, 16(8), 1071; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16081071 - 19 Aug 2025

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One of the harder lessons offered by history is that only the first half of the revolution seems worth carrying out. This study examines how, contra Christianity, which spells out the fate of revolution in its entirety, Gnosticism stands as a symbol for revolution arrested and immortalized in its most radical phase. It shows that Gnosticism is a revolution that structurally renounces the prospect of phenomenal victory in exchange for the eternal preservation and constant renewal of its revolutionary energy. I do so by examining how, rejecting worldly victory, the critical spirit of Gnosticism seeks its minimal and sole embodiment in the individual (the individuated, the indivisible, the residue). I argue that, by building the court of radical inwardness as its theater for enacting what I call the “politics of world loss,” Gnosticism invents the noumenal as that impossible space for enacting the quintessentially phenomenal, i.e., the political. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Religions and Humanities/Philosophies)

23 pages, 299 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Effects of Invented Spelling Instruction on Literacy Achievement and Writing Motivation

by Katie Schrodt, Erin FitzPatrick, Sungyoon Lee, Debra McKeown, Alexis McColloch and Kimberly Evert

Educ. Sci. 2024, 14(9), 1020; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14091020 - 18 Sep 2024

Viewed by 8098

Abstract

Early writing performance strongly predicts long-term literacy performance. It follows that early underachievement in writing is highly correlated with early underachievement in reading. One strategy teachers and students can use to approach writing in the kindergarten classroom is invented spelling. Invented spelling is children’s spontaneous or self-directed attempts to represent words in print by matching sounds to known letters or phonics patterns. A quasi-experimental study was used to evaluate the impact of invented spelling on foundational literacy skills and writing motivation in 63 kindergarten students at a rural school in the Mid-South. The research questions focused on the impact of invented spelling instruction on a variety of literacy outcomes, including foundational skills, spelling, and motivation. The results indicate the significant main effects of invented spelling instruction on students’ invented spelling (p < 0.001), conventional spelling (p < 0.001), complex vocabulary use (p < 0.001, writing motivation (p = 0.040), and writing achievement (p < 0.001). Other outcomes as well as implications and future directions are reported. The invented spelling intervention encouraged low-stake risk taking when writing and removed barriers to writing entry. Allowing time and space for invented spellings means students can focus on communicating their ideas in print without being hindered by the expectation to conform to conventional spellings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Building Literacy Skills in Primary School Children and Adolescents)

18 pages, 791 KB

Open AccessArticle

Supporting Emergent Writing in Preschool Classrooms: Results of a Professional Development Program

by Barbara D. DeBaryshe

Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(9), 961; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13090961 - 20 Sep 2023

Viewed by 5067

Abstract

Emergent writing is a key component of early literacy development and contributes to later school success, yet it receives little attention in most preschool classrooms. This paper presents results of a quasi-experimental study of a teacher professional development package that included writing as one of four focal areas. The study was conducted in 15 Head Start classrooms located in the U.S. state of Hawaiʻi. The participants were 39 lead and assistant teachers and 240 children. Intervention teachers had higher quality writing environments and overall classroom environments, while intervention children showed better outcomes on emergent reading and upper case letter knowledge. Emergent writing was assessed only in the intervention group, where children showed large gains along with changes in code-related skills needed for invented spelling. Results are discussed in terms of recommended practices for early writing instruction and teacher professional development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pedagogical Possibilities for Early Childhood Education)

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7 pages, 193 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Ecological Literacies of St. Hildegard of Bingen

by Michael Marder

Philosophies 2021, 6(4), 98; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies6040098 - 29 Nov 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3948

Abstract

Literacy is, literally, a question not of education but of the letter. More than that, it is the question of the letter in the two senses the word has in English: as a symbol of the alphabet and a piece of correspondence. It is my hypothesis that ecological literacies may learn a great deal from the literalization, or even the hyper-literalization, of the letter and that they may do so by turning to the corpus of twelfth-century Benedictine abbess, polymath, and mystic St. Hildegard of Bingen. After all, Hildegard, who was exquisitely attuned to the vegetal world, which was at the core of her theological and scientific endeavors, corresponded through letters with the leading personalities of her times and also invented a language, called lingua ignota (the unknown language) replete with ignotas litteras (the unknown letters). Who better than her can spell out the senses of ecological literacy? Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Environmental Crisis)

13 pages, 1956 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Early Literary Evolution of the Notorious Pirate Henry Avery

by Richard Frohock

Humanities 2020, 9(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9010006 - 30 Dec 2019

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 8769

Abstract

Henry Avery (alternately spelled Every) was one of the most notorious pirates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and scholars have written much about Avery in an effort to establish the historical details of his mutiny and acts of piracy. Other scholars have focused on the substantial literary production that his life occasioned; the early literary history of Avery’s exploits evolves quickly away from the known facts of his life, offering instead a literary trajectory of accumulated tropes about Avery’s motivations, actions, and transformations. This literary invention of Avery is a compelling subject in itself, particularly as writers used his story to explore pressing philosophical and political concerns of the period. In this essay, I consider how early fictions about Avery look well beyond the history of a particular pirate to ruminate on topical ideas about the state of nature, the origins of civil society, and human tendencies toward self-interest and corruption that seem—inevitably—to accompany power and threaten civil order, however newly formed or ostensibly principled. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pirates in English Literature)

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