How an author communicates with a reader is a central consideration in the critical examination of any text. When considering the communication of ideas from young people whose voices are seldom heard, the journey from author to audience has particular significance. The construction of children and young people as 'authors' is important,…

"An Introduction to Complexity Pedagogy: Using Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and Complexity in Performance and Literature" offers readers an introduction to the basic concepts of complexity science and how they might be applied in the teaching of composition, creative writing, performance, and literature. The book builds on Critical…

This article examines the deeper purposes behind the teaching of creative writing. To extend an analogy created by William Blake in his poem 'The Tyger', its furnaces are examined and its 'deadly terrors' clasped. It re-interprets the different views of teaching English, as drawn up in the United Kingdom's Cox Report. It argues that these views…

What happens when teachers perceive a growing rift between their pedagogical practice and their students' lived experiences? How do teachers respond to the uncertainty that such a "relevance gap" can create? In a climate in which literacy research is often pressed to address the achievement gap and to contribute to a sense of certainty,…

The creative writing workshop, involving peer critique of manuscripts in progress, is deeply connected to many writerly habits of mind. As such, this article examines workshop as a signature pedagogy in creative writing. Through workshop, students develop awareness of their readers, understanding of how texts are created by readers and through…

In this "Idea Sharing" article, the author introduces Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" as a critique of King James I's (England) concept of an absolute monarchy, in his constitutional treatise, "Basilikon Doron (1599)," the "kingly gift" that advises the young prince on the ethics of government and how to…

This essay describes my design and implementation of a composition course focused on the Native American rhetorical device of survivance at work in debates on Indian removal and U.S.-Indian relations in general. Using a contact zone approach, I found that the course improved writing and thinking skills by pushing students out of their ideological…

Because video on the web has spread almost virally, video crafted out of an amateur aesthetic has contributed to a disruption of professional communication economies as it prompts us to ask: Can we use digital video to make work-related communication cool? Professional writing pedagogies are beginning to respond to new student expectations about…

This paper, drawing upon multidisciplinary studies such as critical and cultural studies, literary criticism, intercultural communication and second language acquisition, suggests a specific literary genre--"migratory literature"--to support intercultural competence for learners of Chinese. We begin by elucidating key…

Three English teachers share their ideas on how their work as a writer helped them as a teacher. One teacher has found that the desire for meaningful response to her own writing has led her to evaluate her students similarly. A second teacher discusses how personal experience translates into teaching how to convey rejection in a useful and tactful…

Purpose: This paper seeks to consider whether the notion of authenticity is useful or meaningful in the context of developing academics as writers. Design/methodology/approach: The approach taken is that of a reflective essay. Recent texts on authenticity in higher education are examined whilst a transactional theory of writing is also considered…

When Don Imus made his infamous comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team in 2007, he provoked widespread (yet short-lived) attention to the circulation of language practices demeaning to women of color. In an elective autobiographical writing course that the author designed with and for urban high school girls, the students…

Working from both literary and composition theory, this book argues that American composition theory and pedagogy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is founded on the Platonic view that invention is a solitary act in which the individual, drawing upon innate knowledge and mental structures, searches for the truth, using introspective self…

Argues that teachers of writing are more concerned about good writing than about good writers, and that they should instead strive to improve the experience of writing, even if that means throwing out the piece of writing produced. (JAD)

To show how Hugh Blair's treatise on rhetoric helped shape the patriarchal context in which women write and to suggest some considerations for modern teachers of writing, it will be useful to look at the ways 18th-century belletristic rhetoric responded to the disruption occasioned by women's entry into public discourse. Blair's work, the most…