This study analyzes the reasons for stop out behavior in a first-year composition class. The study was intended to be mixed methods, but the quantitative data, which was to be collected via survey, yielded too low of an n-value to allow for statistical analysis; therefore, case study research, analyzed through a social context framework, was…

"Mattering" is a key component of success for students (Rosenberg & McCullough, 1981). For community college students, the classroom plays a critical role in their college experience because community college students spend most of their time on campus (Lundberg, 2014). Among college courses, first-year writing classes hold…

Incorporating instructor continuity into the first-year composition (FYC) sequence represents an opportunity for community colleges to make an informed scheduling and advising decision in order to assist in the goal to increase student success rates in FYC. Utilizing course completion data from a community college in northern Alabama, this study…

Providing feedback on student work is a vital part of pedagogy. However, instructors may inadvertently create a distance between themselves and students by asserting authority when evaluating students' work. This may conflict with maintaining a positive atmosphere in the classroom and developing interpersonal solidarity with students, which is…

This dissertation examines the prevalence of school-induced literacy shaming in first-year college writers while examining how these experiences have shaped the students' attitudes towards writing in ways that impacted their academic trajectories. Using a qualitative approach, data was collected through surveys, narrative prompts, and…

While plenty of literature exists that explores faculty-to-student mentorship in higher education, the bulk of this scholarship focuses on graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students, not first-year undergraduates. This is problematic as the first year of college is the one in which mentorship has the largest impact on student…

By 2025, the majority of "jobs in the United States will require postsecondary education and training beyond high school" (Lumina Foundation, n.d., p. 9). Earning college credit in high school, at times earning a postsecondary degree or credential simultaneously while working toward a high school diploma, presents an opportunity for…

In spite of a host of scholarship pertaining to response and the contexts that surround our response practices, few have studied how everyday classroom texts may inform students' interpretations of teachers' written feedback on their writing. This article examines the results from case studies of six students across two first-year composition…

This study explored ESL students' comments on teacher's written corrective feedback in a freshman composition class to find out whether they thought positively about the feedback and how they perceived the power relationship with the teacher. The study followed a qualitative design. Thirteen ESL students were asked to comment on the teacher's…

This narrative essay describes a basic writing instructor's engagement with student confusion in a hybrid Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) course. The story examines the ways confusion can mark sites of engagement for students and teachers and how ALP courses, in particular, might mediate effective (and ineffective) forms of confusion.

In order to comfortably and effectively function in U.S. classrooms, both international students and domestic students benefit from the development of interactive and intercultural communication skills. At Purdue University, a large, public, R1 institution with a substantial international population, the internationalization of the student body is…

This article searches after more nuanced understandings of safe space pedagogies in writing classrooms. Drawing on experiences of teaching a first-year writing course on a campus that had been tagged with white supremacist graffiti, this article uses autoethnography and narrative to rethink the function of place in composition pedagogy and develop…

In this mixed-methods research study, the author investigated a group of first-year college students' responses to and uses of their teachers' written feedback on their draft writing in a First-Year Composition (FYC) course. The author also examined, through corpus analysis, these students' definitions of "useful written teacher…

Each fall, first-year college students enter required composition courses with the expectation that they will learn the necessary skills to write competently for their collegiate careers. Quickly, students who survive and thrive discover that complex factors such as experience, academic cultural etiquette, self-regulation, and relationships with…

This study offers a step-by-step process for encouraging mutuality in the freshman composition class. This discussion begins by reexamining the theoretical underpinnings of response methodology in an effort to situate the act of responding to student writing within the scope of mutuality. In particular, this reconsideration reveals that most…