Developing academic writers must continually position themselves discursively as they negotiate institutional, programmatic, and disciplinary contexts. The inextricable relationship of writing and identities raises questions of access to social identities in schools, a particularly salient issue when considering the complexities and challenges of…

This article describes strategies used by the author in intermediate level reading, writing and social studies-history GED classes in Harlem and the Bronx. Since four out of five of the New York State TASC exams are based on reading, I assign extensive reading and discussion, as well as strategies for answering multiple-choice questions. In…

We tested the long-term effects of a utility-value intervention administered in a gateway chemistry course, with the goal of promoting persistence and diversity in STEM. In a randomized controlled trial (N = 2,505), students wrote three essays about course content and its personal relevance or three control essays. The intervention significantly…

Using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, this study was designed to acquire quantitative and qualitative data that expose community college student perceptions on multimodal compositions compared to traditional writing practices. As traditional writing continues to be privileged in college writing classrooms, a critical pedagogy…

This article investigates the civic writing practices of more than 11,000 students writing letters to the next president in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. election. We analyze how letter topics are associated with socioeconomic factors and reveal that 43 topics--including ones prevalent among students such as immigration, guns, and school…

In this study, I present a qualitative analysis of 11 writing portfolios drawn from a yearlong instructional program designed to apprentice students into the practices of argumentative writing typical of early-college coursework in the United States. The students' formal and informal writings were parsed into utterances and coded along two…

First-year college student retention is important to colleges and universities, as well as beyond academia. An analysis was conduced of emergent themes and subthemes from 144 nonreturning students' stories about school and about home throughout their first-year experience. These students wrote more negative stories about school-related events than…

Against a Racial Real backdrop, I argue for consciously adopting a sociocultural approach to style in linguistically and racially diverse Basic Writing classrooms. To make this argument, I focus on a multilingual writer named Tejada, who reveals how she had internalized a racialized stereotypical discourse about herself as a minority--a discourse…

A substantial body of research has demonstrated the efficacy of early writing interventions that target skills and composing processes; however, much less is known about the effectiveness of classroom writing instruction outside of the context of an intervention. The goal of this study was to investigate if writing instruction and student practice…

According to the authors, teachers often read about inspiring lessons in which historically marginalized students find their voices through assignments and projects that centralize issues of importance to the student. This article describes the authors' revision of a persuasive writing unit to scaffold not only writing skills but also students'…

In this districtwide scale-up, we randomly assigned seventh-grade students within 11 schools to receive a series of writing exercises designed to promote values affirmation. Impacts on cumulative seventh-grade grade point average (GPA) for the district's racial/ethnic minority students who may be subject to stereotype threat are consistent with…

Historically marginalized students continue to experience opportunity gaps in our schools and inequities in their communities. To change these contexts, we want students to develop the skills, mindsets, and ability to act against oppression. In order for that to occur, educators must have support and opportunities to learn and practice acting as…

A successful middle school team of teachers employed effective middle level philosophy to structure a curriculum around themes that were relevant, challenging, integrative, and engaging for their particular students and community. Realizing that their young adolescents were involved in tough, delicate issues in their out-of-school lives, the…

Although cultural diversity is important to the social context of classrooms, few researchers have explored school music experiences from the perspective of students of colour. Possibly of greater concern is the absence of research examining African-American students' educational experiences in early secondary education, during which time the…

One provocative explanation for the continued persistence of minority achievement gaps involves the performance-dampening anxiety thought to be experienced by minority students in highly evaluative settings (i.e., "stereotype threat"). Recent field-experimental studies suggest that modest, low-cost "buffering" interventions…