This program profile describes a restructure of the PhD exam intended to enhance graduate-level instruction and advisement within the Rhetoric and Composition program at Georgia State University. We explain how a mix of institutional constraints and mentorship opportunities drove revisions to our doctoral exams and processes of doctoral…

The language of economics and economic imperatives are driving standardized school reform in the United States without input from teachers. This teacher action research project responds to concerns about contemporary school reforms by considering how economics-minded dialogue about literacy education can help teachers support students' literacy…

The Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts, together with the new tests being developed to assess them, are placing a greater emphasis on writing in elementary schools than in the recent past. This article explores similarities and differences of the standards with past state standards, explaining the reason both for why things…

This chapter tells a story of course reform, describing in a fresh and candid way the steps taken toward change and the results achieved. The authors emphasize that instructors need considerable support in order to teach differently, as well as underscore the need to consider scalability of reform even at the pilot stage.

This paper analyzes the influence of three different learning paradigms for learning literacy--formalist, cognitive-processing, and literacy practices--on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. It argues that the Common Core State Standards are based largely on a formalist paradigm as evident in the emphasis on teaching text…

This paper defines the concept of "improvement infrastructure" and "educational capital" for education, and it uses the case of the National Writing Project to develop an extended, data-based illustration of the design and generativeness of an improvement infrastructure. Since 1983 there have been multiple "waves" of…

In this review of research in applied linguistics and language teaching and learning in Singapore, more than one hundred national publications for the period 2000-2007 will be reviewed. Since this period encompasses certain changes that were introduced in Singapore schools at the start of the new millennium, it would be appropriate to take stock…

Argues that the process-conference approach to writing has handed back control of the learning process to the learner and is likely to have far reaching effects on the reading program as well. (HOD)

Provides discussion and critical analysis of the evolving field of English studies, with particular interest in the influence of the social science upon literary study and teaching. Establishes a tension between the humanities and social science strands in literary study today. (HB)

Noting that the success of the Bay Area Writing Project and the National Writing Project derives largely from their involvement of classroom teachers and from collaboration between university professors and those teachers, this paper discusses recent California legislation that places significant power in the hands of teachers in determining staff…

This paper suggests that the idea of "taking stock" of the current program--reflecting on what educators believe to be best practice--and then "charting a course" of action to better align practice with vision is a deliberate way for teachers to build capacity to enact reform. It begins by providing a brief overview of the changing direction of…

The principle of athletic coaching is applied by analogy to first year community college writing instruction. The role of the coach and five essential elements are discussed: practice and drill (nongraded exercises); fouling out (assessment); playbooks and plays (resources and strategies); big games (formal research papers); and postmortem (review…

Proposes a model for writing program administrators to use to assess the effectiveness of composition programs. Argues the need to consider local conditions, evaluate the internal coherence of programs, and consider the external relevance of programs. Describes how using this model led the Writing Center at Northern Arizona University to make…

Because the writing-process movement has been deemed our field's founding "paradigm"--at least since Hairston's 1982 essay declared it so--"process" has remained stuck in the philosophical and historical assumptions of a "paradigm." The paradigm theory, has, from its first associations with composition, offered a view of change wholly unsuited to…

Collaboration in the classroom is a major theme of educational reform today. Electronically-supported conversation (ESC) is one way of using technology to support collaboration in the classroom. ESC offers several instructional benefits over simple spoken discourse. We describe a simple model ("two cans and a string") for how ESC could…