When scholars write about their research in writing programs' archives, they often face the ethical question of whether to name the administrators who were involved in documents. The author identifies and provides examples of three basic orientations to this issue, which he calls overt-historical, covert-qualitative, and hybrid-institutional.…

Expresses concern by the facility with which ethnographic research on writing passes into articles, textbooks, and pedagogy. Examines the rhetorical and textual practices that organize ethnographic accounts. Regards ethnography as a professional activity in which ethnographers and their texts engage the ideological through the material conditions…

Suggests that literate ability at the end of the 20th century may best be measured as a person's capacity to amalgamate new reading and writing practices in response to rapid social change. Reviews preliminary reflections on a study of 65 Americans who were asked to answer questions about their own literacy development. (TB)

Presents writing as a form of dialog and the paragraph as a unit of implied dialog. (MM)

Describes a study of the differences between eight experienced writers who describe themselves as either one- or multi-draft writers. Considers advantages and disadvantages of their differences, including the point at which they begin writing, option-exploring behavior, attitudes toward closure, and writer-based versus reader-based early drafts.…

Defends the use of verbal reports, or protocol analysis, as a valid means of understanding cognitive processes and writing processes. (SRT)

Concludes that the rhetorical specification approach to developing essay examination topics (giving writers information about the purpose of a composition, its audience, speaker, and subject) may not be the best way to elicit good writing. (JL)

Provides both anecdotal evidence and research data from a freshman composition program to work out a relationship between theory, research, and pedagogy. (RL)

Notes discrepancies between findings from textual studies and classroom practices and textbooks. Reviews research on cohesion and writing development. Argues that teachers must critically examine writing research and apply it in the classroom. (JAD/RAE)

Explores the convergence between projects in ethnographic research and composition pedagogy that emphasize the critical power of experience. Argues that critical ethnography and pedagogy need to redefine "experience" and its function for research and teaching and that composition can help this redefinition by looking for ways to build…

Views purpose in writing as a complex web of meaning which writers build and which readers in their own, independently constructive way infer. (JAD)

Outlines the histories of the dominant theoretical views of the composing process including the expressive view, the cognitive view, and the social view. Argues that claims for making composition a true academic discipline must be based on a conception of process broader than any of these three views. (SRT)

Presents a discursive survey of bibliographic resources in historical rhetoric and current composition research with annotated bibliographies for the more important sources. (MM)

Explores the relation of essays to canon theory, explains why the only essay canon to be publicly identified in the 20th century is a powerful teaching canon. Shows "where essays live," how they arrive in the teaching canon, and why they stay there. Examines how essays are taught. Looks at the future of the essay canon. (SR)

Asserts that the main goal of writing instruction is to help students attain the competence necessary for academic discourse and the most effective way to do this is to teach the basic strategies for uncovering the rules that govern discourse in any particular context.(SRT)