Every day in classrooms, teachers and students think about and with text. Their beliefs about what text is, who created it, and how to evaluate it are an influence, often a profoundly important one, on how they use text. This book brings together research on epistemology, belief systems, teacher beliefs, and text -- research that is usually presented separately, and in different disciplines. The editors illustrate what a cross-disciplinary body of work looks like, what varied insights are possible, and when the central concerns are beliefs and text. <br> <br> Written by respected researchers in the fields of psychology and education, the chapters are clustered thematically into three sections:<br> * childrens' and adults' beliefs about text.<br> * beliefs about what should be taught and how particular content should be taught and assessed in classrooms.<br> * commentary on knowing versus believing, on the literatures that inform this body of work, and on belief systems.<br> <br> The first to address this important topic in a single volume, this book provides an essential synthesis of current research in an active area of inquiry. The chapters are pieces framed in a time and place with particular intentions -- one of those intentions is that they separately and as a whole stimulate discussion about beliefs and text.<br>