This article reports on a case study of an exemplary teacher who was a participant in a professional learning project, WriteIdeas. The teacher provided instructional support in writing to a targeted student with learning difficulties in an inclusive Year 8 English classroom. Analytical frameworks were developed and applied to the data that had…

Through the participation in professional learning communities, teachers can reinvigorate their teaching careers. Support systems like the National Writing Project allow teachers to build upon their own strengths, as well as learn from others across all grade levels and disciplines. While more traditional professional development options often…

In this article, the author offers a brief overview of retention scholarship and argues that there are several reasons composition studies professionals should pay attention to this area of research. She then considers how the problem of retention reframes and qualifies the issue of access to higher education, an issue that is central to the…

In this frankly utopian essay, Robert Yagelski's theme is the transformative power of writing as an act in and of itself. He makes us reevaluate our motivation and point for teaching writing in schools and asks us to consider an agenda that will quite frankly scare teachers as he explains why we need an ontology of writing. (Contains 6 notes.)

This article explores the literacy narratives of two "gamers" to demonstrate the kinds of literacy skills that many students actively involved in computer and video gaming are developing during their play. This analysis becomes part of a larger claim about the necessity of re-visioning the place of gaming in composition curricula.…

This article argues that the teaching of public writing should not neglect issues of circulation and local need. In a series of case studies involving small press papers and homeless advocacy, the authors seek to extend recent work begun by Susan Wells, John Trimbur, and Nancy Welch, which raises crucial questions about public rhetoric in the…

As writing-program administrators and faculty are being called upon more frequently to help design and facilitate large-scale assessments, it becomes increasingly important for us to see assessment as integral to our work as academics. This article provides a framework, based on current historical, theoretical, and rhetorical knowledge, to help…

This article uses the convergence of our positionings as feminists, pragmatists, and rhetoricians to theorize communicative gaps related to different beliefs about writing instruction as sites of generative dialogue. We offer a WPA/TA discourse model centered on productive resistance and on discursive power, to posit feminist pragmatic rhetoric as…

College and university instructors who assess student writing, including but not limited to teachers of first-year composition, sometimes keep the gate. Gatekeeping by writing instructors is an activity directly related to grading practices and, in many cases, to grading practices which emphasize formal, mechanical, usually sentence-level choices…

Three English teachers share their ideas on how their work as a writer helped them as a teacher. One teacher has found that the desire for meaningful response to her own writing has led her to evaluate her students similarly. A second teacher discusses how personal experience translates into teaching how to convey rejection in a useful and tactful…

Traditional scholarship on revision often creates a narrative of the "resistant student" versus the "enlightened teacher" who inherently accepts revision as natural and productive. Yet this narrative is a myth, one which often hampers effective instruction. In place of "traditional revision," I argue for teaching "critical revision," a dialogic…

This paper reports on the experience of seven Saudi female ESL students who worked collaboratively in an interactive online writing environment over a period of four weeks. It chronicles their experiences with online writing tasks, documents their responses to online feedback, and examines their attempts to cope with different settings and…

This study investigated the situation of teaching and learning idioms at a university level in Vietnam, a foreign language context. It also examined the evaluation of the idiom teaching process in three language classes over a 15-week period for pre-service teachers of English. The data were collected though questionnaires, in-depth interviews and…

For future literacy teachers just beginning their professional education, nothing's more important than the first core text that builds their foundation for classroom success. That's why every preservice teacher should start with this introductory reading textbook, ideal for teaching fundamental literacy skills to students in pre-K-Grade 6. Based…

Across the country, a growing number of recent high school graduates are participating in summer bridge programs. These programs provide accelerated and focused learning opportunities in order to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed for college success. The state of Texas has given particular attention to summer programs as a way…