Graduate students writing on their own often struggle with knowledge production and identity conflicts. Conversely, writing with others presents its own set of challenges, as collaborators struggle to define roles and expectations. To systematically foster and teach collaborative writing practices for graduate students, we performed a self study…

This article examines Anglo-western assumptions about the role of individual views and voices in constructing knowledge, and how these assumptions can disadvantage students from "Confucian-heritage" cultures whose social values around education and authority constrain their self-expression in western classrooms. Lecturers may mistake their good…

This article shares strategies that educators can use to assist students in meeting the challenges of academic writing more effectively. In order to foreground an understanding of struggling writers, the text begins with a brief review of composition theory and history related to basic writers and identity. It goes on to examine classroom…

This paper reports on the second phase of a project designed to improve students' understanding of assessment demands. In Stage 1, Level 1 students were involved in a range of activities culminating in peer marking. This peer assessment was, itself, marked by the tutors to encourage students to engage positively with the process. Stage 2 of the…

Describes the introduction of an innovative approach to learning and assessing critical science understanding by preservice elementary science teachers. Student teachers submit a cumulative, multivoiced (patchwork) text which integrates smaller pieces written across the module that demand critical and personal engagement and have been given peer…