This qualitative study investigated teachers' perceptions of their own writing abilities and processes, the adequacy of their pre-service teacher preparation, and the efficacy of in-service, school system and school building-level support, and how each of these components affected the educator's aptitude to teach students in grade six through…

As the cost of college tuition continues to soar, community colleges and state and local governments offer a wide range of access and opportunity programs to best serve low-income and academically underprepared students. In this article, I present a case study of two instructors, both of whom regularly teach Basic Writing courses at the community…

This article argues that teaching writing can help graduate students become better writers. Each year, more than 100 graduate students from more than thirty departments participate in one of two training courses offered through Cornell's John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. This article describes some of how these courses…

This article takes survey and interview responses from undergraduate writing majors in two independent writing programs as points of departure for reflection on the disciplinary work of writing studies. Though scholarship about writing majors focuses on these programs as sites for the distribution of disciplinary expertise, students in this study…

This essay explores the influence of the discourse and practices of the learning outcomes assessment (LOA) movement on three composition instructors' assignments and assessments. While outcomes assessment by itself can be a useful tool, it cannot be separated from the exigency that compels it, in which educational practices must be defended…

WAC scholars have demonstrated a strong commitment to faculty professional development in WAC programs but have yet to engage in much conversation, at least in scholarly literature, about the training of TAs in the teaching of writing. The rising number of TAs in doctoral-granting institutions and WAC programs suggests their role in teaching…

Scholars who teach composition, a staple on the schedule of many a college freshman, often wind up stringing together a series of adjunct teaching jobs while keeping an eye out for that first step on the golden track to tenure. This article reports on a group of 20 people hired by St. John's University to teach in its first-year writing program,…

The authors are faculty in history and English, respectively, at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. What their students want and need, and what the institution's role in the community should be, remain open questions, with policy implications at the departmental, college, city, and even national level. Indeed, President Obama…

Involving two or more academic subjects, interdisciplinary studies aim to blend together broad perspectives, knowledge, skills, and epistemology in an educational setting. By focusing on topics or questions too broad for a single discipline to cover, these studies strive to draw connections between seemingly different fields. Cases on…

In this essay, the authors argue that only by sharing their mistakes and uncertainty can they fully reflect on their own process as teachers, only by understanding their process can they begin to identify the many factors that contribute to classroom messes in the first place, and only by acknowledging the perpetual messiness of their practice can…

In this essay, the author suggests that recent developments in English studies and popular culture create an opportune moment for writing teachers to welcome such literature in composition curricula. The author describes how studying stories by John Edgar Wideman enabled first-year composition students to engage political and interpersonal issues…

A survey assessed teachers' understandings and beliefs about process writing, their instructional decisions for teaching writing, and the training and support for teaching process writing in their classrooms. A 19-item interview schedule was administered to 66 teachers from urban, suburban, and rural schools in upstate New York. Results indicated…