From the article: Surprise "is a defining quality of good response in a pedagogical situation, that is, response that is significant, generative, and ethical. Teacher respondents should be surprised by the texts, meanings, and authors that they respond to; and they should surprise themselves by making discoveries about student learning in writing their responses. Student writers should be surprised by the responses they make to experience, texts, and others; by the textual worlds they create; and by what they learn about writing and themselves as writers in composing a text. In other words, pedagogically situated responses should both conduct and respond to genuine inquiries."