Enhancing perspectives and inviting response: Using selected critical essays to implement a pluralistic approach to the teaching of seven poems by Robert Frost

Critical analyses are little utilized as resources for pedagogy in American secondary literature classrooms today. Using published scholarly interpretations can assist English teachers in leading their students to a better appreciation and understanding of a primary text by enlivening the literary experience and enriching it beyond the normal limits of anthology activities or initial reader responses. Such literary analyses provide a rich resource for a wide variety of critical insights, enabling teachers to reduce their dependency on the textbook with its inherent limitations and to supplement the activities in the anthology with those of their own design for use at the pre-reading, reading, and post-reading stages. As such a resource, scholarly critical analyses are an important asset to teachers who place equal value on free individual response to literary texts and on exposing students to a range of informed perspectives.;This study, which focuses on seven widely anthologized poems by Robert Frost likely to be taught at the secondary level, attempts to demonstrate a pedagogical approach that incorporates critical essays as instructional resources. The poems included in the study are "Mending Wall," "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Birches," "'Out, Out-,"' and "Fire and Ice." An exhaustive review of printed criticism dealing with these seven poems demonstrates a variety of perspectives, and examples illustrating potential uses of the critical resources are provided. The study also outlines practical recommendations for teacher training in the application of literary analyses to classroom instruction.