Although outcomes assessment (OA) has become "common sense" in higher education, this article shows that the concept of "outcomes" tends to limit and compromise teaching and learning while serving the interests of institutional management. By contrast, the pragmatic concept of consequences tends to expand our view of teaching and learning, and…

The author discusses his experience in a university project that led to the creation of a first-year writing text based on interviews with members of a local neighborhood. In particular, he analyzes the negative reaction that many of the community's residents expressed toward the text's portrayals of them. From the tensions that developed, the…

Describes one student who resists personal writing. Explores reasons why some students resist personal writing. Considers how providing the conditions for students to speak surely entails that educators become engaged readers and interlocutors of their students' writing, that they regard their writing as ongoing cultural and constitutive teachings…

Shows how some key postmodern ideas about texts forced a teacher and her students to rethink typical writing assignments and typical student responses. Describes the assignments and considers how they invite postmodern critique. Suggests giving up grandiose, romantic notions that Freshman Composition can fix students either personally or…

Talks about the political and personal difficulties involved in "coming out" as a gay or lesbian college instructor and particularly as those difficulties concern the teaching of undergraduate composition courses with a syllabus addressing gay and lesbian issues. (TB)

Identifies a number of the major aspects of social class that freshman composition addresses in its aims of enabling students to think and write in ways that will make them good citizens of the academic (and larger middle class) community and viable candidates for good middle class jobs upon graduation. (TB)

Provides discussion and critical analysis of the "dog days" of part-time writing instructors in today's academic world. Compares student writing and teacher evaluation of that writing at vastly different colleges at which the same instructor taught. Considers how teacher attitudes are swayed by institutional setting. (HB)

Argues that, although writing teachers have come to see writing as socially constructed, they have failed to understand the teacher's role in such meaning construction. Calls for development of a theory of reading student texts which takes into account teachers' reading of the students themselves. Illustrates reading and misreading of student…

Concentrates specifically on the experience of using "Maus" (a narrative in comic strip form) with one class which met in spring 1996, after the accidental killing of a Black child by a Hasidic Jew in Crown Heights, New York. Uses the text at Medgar Evers College in a freshman composition course which also functions as an introduction to…

Discusses the possibility of constructing a writing classroom in which unsolicited oppositional discourse might be allowed to flourish. Describes one student essay about gay-bashing and the huge response of college composition professionals to its public discussion. Argues that teachers can provide a space where cultures can meet and grapple. (HB)