Presents an analysis of teachers' perceptions of themselves as writers with the goal of understanding how teachers' writing ability affects their work and qualifications as writing instructors. Places 32 teachers participating in a 3-day inservice writing workshop into 3 separate "identity concepts" (categories) and a fourth miscellaneous group.…

Examines students' accounts of meaning-making and compares those accounts to students' ideas about writing. Presents two case studies of students as they use their ideas about meaning-making while writing for a first-year composition course. Provides implications of this research for teaching writing. (HB)

Reports on the findings of a study that examined the writing behavior of eight fifth graders as they composed original mathematics story problems. Reveals strategies and techniques employed by students to accomplish this task. Analyzes student story-problem writing behavior. (HB)

Compares the competing claims of students' nonschool literacies with the academic literacy as prescribed by schools. Uses two case studies to suggest ways to attend to both kinds of literacy, public and private. (HB)

Examines variables including handwriting, English mechanics, number of words written, average T-unit length, type of correct answers, and unrelated responses on which male and female adolescents in grades 7 and 10 were hypothesized to differ when producing constructed responses. Results suggest that further studies need to define and separate the…

Draws on the perceptions and experiences of upper-division students enrolled in writing-intensive (WI) classes in their majors at a large state university. Discusses findings as they relate to the ideologies of writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines. Suggests greater attention to a field's inquiry methods and strategies for…

Examines one type of religious identity (Christian Fundamentalism) and profile's one student's oral and written responses in an intermediate-level college writing course as a means of illustrating how his reliance on fundamentalist discourse played a key role in producing his resistance to assigned texts, to the course's stated goals, and to the…

Offers a structural analysis of an explanatory text written by a 12-year-old pupil to demonstrate how the PISA technique (Procedures for Incremental Structural Analysis) contributes to the understanding of conceptual processes in writing. Discusses evidence for the validity of such analysis and its generalizability. (SR)

Undertakes a comprehensive review of research in technology and literacy from 1986 to 1996, examining trends in the amount of research as well as in salient patterns and foci of the research. Discusses findings in terms of number of pages, literacy type, technology type, subject population, special population characteristics, problem, platform,…

Examines the nature of literacy activities in a technology-based fourth-grade classroom, investigating how the writing process is affected when technology is part of the classroom routine. Discusses findings in five areas: defining the writing episode, examining the writing process, assessing growth in written expression, relating production to…

Describes computer-software programs that "read" and score college-placement essays. Argues they may impress administrators, but they also (1) marginalize students by disregarding what they have to say; (2) disregard decades of research on the writing process; and (3) ignore faculty's professional expertise. Argues assessment practices should be…

Outlines four ways the basic writing enterprise has failed: by giving insufficient attention to public relations; by allowing itself to be co-opted by traditional academic politics; by not unraveling the confusion of legitimate differences of dialect with "bad grammar"; and by not taking a more critical and enterprising approach to research. (SR)

This study focused on Italian fourth graders' processes of scientific understanding through writing. Explored whether students could use writing as a means to express and compare ideas, whether writing facilitated the understanding of new topics through conceptual change, and whether writing affected the conceptualization of the writing activity…

Examines a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on sexual harassment at U.S. service academies to determine how power structures affected the report writers' rhetorical choices. Identifies what is valued and devalued in the report's contents. Describes Congress's reaction to the report and speculates on the report's impact on public…

Examines argumentative and research papers written by students using Macintoshes in comparison to those written using IBM-compatibles. Finds that differences are not large enough to justify claims that the use of a graphical user interface affects writing skills. Suggests that rapid changes in technology makes the issue moot. (RS)