Wikipedia's gender gaps are both well-established and well-challenged, and while Wikipedia-based assignments have become more common in composition, teacher-scholars have not fully explored the opportunities for feminist pedagogy offered by the encyclopedia. This article reports on a teacher research study designed to examine the efficacy of the…

This article offers the term "accommodation transfer" as a way to understand the rhetorical skills disabled students transfer alongside writing knowledge as they access college writing assignments and writing classrooms. This study is based on five qualitative interviews with disabled college students and draws upon both writing transfer…

This article posits that inviting students to interrogate and share their worldviews through personal narratives could promote mutual inquiry across difference. Detailing a series of assignments and activities developed from the model of invitational rhetoric, this article analyzes students' writing and reflections to demonstrate how mutual…

Process-based composition pedagogy has ignored the question of "doneness": the criteria used to decide when a piece of writing is complete. This article uses survey results from first- and second-year composition courses to challenge common beliefs about how students determine when writing assignments are sufficiently completed. We find…

Although much research addresses prejudice toward and discrimination of individuals with disabilities, few studies engage with the concept of "ability privilege," or the benefits that typically abled individuals are afforded in relation to their position within the hegemony. Given the fledgling nature of research on ability privilege, it…

Contemporary argument increasingly relies on quantitative information and reasoning, yet our profession neglects to view these means of persuasion as central to rhetorical arts. Such omission ironically serves to privilege quantitative arguments as above "mere rhetoric." Changes are needed to our textbooks, writing assignments, and instructor…

This article describes an assignment piloted in spring of 2008 called the Rhetorical Analysis Project, which required students to analyze three different texts addressing a common issue, compose an argument about the representation of that issue as illustrated by those texts, and revise that argument to match a rhetorical model they chose from…

An instructor is interested in the ways that ethical inquiry can shed light on theoretical and practical concerns that are raised by composition's interest in postmodernism and cultural studies, specifically in whether difference can be negotiated while still allowing for rhetorical agency. Inquiry into ethics and composition can offer a new…

Composition classrooms are the place to talk specifically about the rhetoricity of writing in academic disciplines. Students can use personal experiences to understand what it means to see themselves as aggressive or passive participants of various institutions. Too often students do not understand themselves as having any authority, but are…

Describes the contending rhetorics of two basic objectives for assigning students the task of writing research papers. Considers the assigning of research papers a problematic exercise. Provides student responses concerning their conceptions of research writing. Considers what teachers might do to change student perception of research assignments.…

Despite the multiple potential benefits of asking students working on programming tasks to consider human factors, most programming assignments narrowly focus on technical details and requirements. Female students in particular may be attracted to assignments that emphasize human as well as technical factors. To assess how students respond to…