Few studies have looked at the consequences of standardized writing tests to students' understanding of what it means "to be" a competent writer. Using research techniques drawn from performance studies and art therapy, this qualitative study of middle class, honors students invited them to explore their understanding of what it means to…

This paper is based on a study titled "Enacting Feminisms in Academia", which engaged five feminist lecturers teaching English at five different multilingual universities in Southern Africa. The study explored: (1) the complexity of sociolinguistic and feminist identity construction in multilingual seascapes, and by extension (2) how…

This article describes how a teacher preparation program can positively impact professional dispositions. Pre and post essays from a sample of sixty candidates were qualitatively analyzed to determine the value-added growth of their professional dispositions.

This article presents the findings of an action research project conducted with a group of pre-service teachers of a program in modern languages at a Colombian university. The study intended to go beyond an emphasis on linguistic and textual features in English as a foreign language argumentative essays by using a set of genre-based activities and…

As a result of enrollment expansion, increasing numbers of students are entering into medical school in China. This combined with a shortage of teachers, means that the learning environment typically consists of a large classroom setting with traditional lecture-based learning (LBL) as the major mode to teaching and learning. In this article, we…

This study examined the efficacy of pentop computers on the written expression of three secondary students with mild disabilities. A multiple-probe design was used to establish pentop computers as a potentially effective tool for increasing the quality and quantity of written expression. Each student learned to use the pentop computer and the…

This dissertation pertains to the field of Engineering Education. The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) is hosting this dissertation under a special agreement. This study was motivated by the desire to find an improved, quantitative measure of student quality that is both convenient to use and easy to…

"Why do they always tell you what "not" to do? Why don't they tell you what to do?" a student in an art education course for certification complained. The course is required for undergraduate students and post-baccalaureates, and introduces multicultural education and topics related to teaching, including educational philosophy, school law, and…

As students increasingly rely on digital media to locate information, composition instructors must incorporate into writing instruction critical evaluation of and reflection on students' use of Web content. A growing problem in the composition class is underdeveloped critical digital literacy skills. To become fully literate, students need more…

Written essays are a common feature of classroom and high stakes standardized tests at many age levels. However, little is known about how small alterations in the writing task affect students' writing, an issue made more important by the increasing use of task alterations for students with disabilities. In the present study, 140 college students…

At the turn of the twentieth century, the sound of presidential address changed from an orotund style to an instructional style. The orotund style had featured the careful pronunciation of consonants, elongated vowels, trilled r's and repeated declamations. The instructional style, on the other hand, mimicked the conversational lectures of the…

The purpose of this theoretical essay is to encourage critical reflection of the relationship of specific reading events to traditional conceptualizations of reader stance. While conventional models of reader stance are useful for considering many aspects of reading, there are reading events that engender stances that appear to lie outside of the…

Although models have been a mainstay of academic writing pedagogy for centuries, a recurrent critique has been that they control or limit student writing and misrepresent the affairs they claim to model. These insufficiencies notwithstanding, models are ubiquitous in the ordinary, practical world, and their usefulness to novices can easily go…

This study explores the epistemology present in hip-hop music and its reflection in the writing of one African American student in a postsecondary transitional English class. An integration of hip-hop and academic literacy practices in the student's essay challenges the supremacy of a "standard" academic English and deficit perspectives about…

The author discusses the shift from criticism-as-explanation to criticism-as-performance that has taken place in literary criticism over the past five decades, and the resultant surge in published offerings to what has become a diminishing audience. The question of supersaturation applies to the institutions that demand and reward humanities…