Drawing on surveys and interviews with college writing instructors and students at a public university in the United States, this mixed methods study revealed that in many cases instructors adopted translingual orientations, whereas students were committed to norms in their views of writing across differences. Students' orientations to language as…

African immigrants in the US and across the globe are confronted with issues of language and culture retention, resistance to the loss of the same, and reconstruction of their identities while navigating the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of the host nations. The experiences of one such family are shared through the African Oral…

In this article, we show how two transnational youth, with the instructional support of their teacher, recruited their languages and lifeworlds, particularly their border-crossing experiences, as tools for engaging with school-based literacy practices. We analyze literary texts that the students composed, showing how the students' uses of their…

The ethics and efficacy of explicitly teaching disciplinary discourse conventions to undergraduate students has been hotly debated. This quasi-experimental study seeks to contribute to these debates by focusing on the conventional special "topoi" of literary analysis--conventions that previous Writing in the Disciplines (WID) research indicates…

Discusses how the notion of genre has recently been reconceived by theorists. Questions whether the explicit teaching of genre features and rules enhance the acquisition of such genres by students. Provides tentative responses to this question. Argues for more focused research of this question. (HB)

Responds to Aviva Freedman's article on explicit instruction of genre in the same issue of the journal. Reviews Freedman's argument. Disagrees with Freedman's conclusion that explicit instruction is not useful. Argues that research indicates that explicit instruction of genres can be beneficial to students. (HB)

Responds to two critiques of her own article published in the same issue of the journal. (HB)

Investigates the differential effects of ownership opportunities and instructional support on the writing-task engagement of high school students reporting low-, mid-, and high-levels of writing self-efficacy. (RAE)

Responds to Aviva Freedman's article on explicit instruction of genre in the same issue of the journal. Questions Freedman's conclusions by asking how "explicit instruction" and "genre" should be defined. Considers how craft, as opposed to a body of knowledge, can be learned. (HB)

Analyzes Egon Guba's claims about what empirical research is and about the models that have guided it. Questions Guba's claims that critics have found flaws in the models that have guided empirical research. Considers how these conclusions might affect instruction in empirical research. (HB)

Investigates the experiences of 17 "remedial" readers as they interpreted and performed texts through classroom theater. Discusses results of a study aimed at analyzing patterns of children's text interpretation. Details the students' evolving conception of themselves as actors and interpreters of texts. (HB)

Investigates Piagetian measures of concrete operations in relation to specific school tasks. Shows that seriation ability of fifth graders was relevant to the organization of temporal and causal relationships but that development of theoretically relevant cognitive abilities is a necessary but not sufficient condition for high levels of…

Observes how nine members of the Pine View High School English Department interpreted and implemented Kentucky's state requirement for portfolio assessment of secondary school students. Suggests that the faculty saw the assessment as a test of their competence and felt great pressure to produce good portfolios but little incentive to explore ways…

Investigates the effects of three study conditions (review only, study questions, and analytic essay writing) on high school students' writing and learning from text. Analyzes these strategies with regard to their impact on student concept application, immediate recall, delayed recall, and recall of manipulated content. Finds writing offers…

Describes two chief alternative models of English instruction, critical theory, and constructivism or naturalistic inquiry. Discusses the functions of genre in disciplinary communities. Argues that naturalistic inquiry does not constitute a comprehensive corrective to the legacy of positivism. (HB)