Nationwide budget cuts have forced many public school systems to significantly reduce opportunities for engaging in creative arts in the classroom despite the fact that such programs are associated with positive child outcomes. To address this deficit, we developed and executed the "Afterschool Creative Expression Program" (ASCEP) and…

Rubrics have become popular tools for assessing student writing both in classroom and standardized testing environments. Rubric construction and efficacy, however, is a topic that has been largely sidestepped in the literature and in teacher professional development. Composing an effective rubric--particularly for instructional or formative…

We propose "instructional chaining" as an analytic method for capturing and describing key instructional episodes enacted by expert writing teachers to foster the recontextualization over time of the social practices of argumentative writing through process-oriented instructional approaches. The article locates instructional chaining…